so this has been bugging me since this morning. doing a close-up inspection on a 200ft guyed tower, nothing i havent done before, but today the drone started drifting really badly when i got within maybe 15 feet of the structure. im talking like it wanted to just slide sideways no matter what i did on the sticks. wind was calm, maybe 5mph from the west, so that wasnt it.

my gut says its compass interference from all the steel and the antenna arrays but the controller never threw a compass warning. managed to get it back out safely but i lost probably 40% of the footage i needed. anyone dealt with this before around heavy metallic structures. running a autel evo II pro if that matters

yeah compass interference doesnt always trigger a warning, thats kind of a known thing and its honestly a little terrifying when you think about it. what you're probably hitting is a combination of magnetic anomaly from the tower structure plus the GPS signal getting partially blocked or reflected when you're that close. the drone is trying to hold position but its getting garbage data so it compensates wrong. i switched to flying in atti mode intentionally when im that close to steel structures - its scarier but at least youre actually in control instead of fighting the autopilot. takes practice though, wouldnt recommend just jumping into it on a job site.

this is exactly why i always do a ground compass calibration away from the structure before i even launch, then move to launch position. not saying that was your issue but its a habit worth having. also 15 feet from a guyed tower seems really close, those guy wires are basically invisible in certain light conditions. not trying to lecture you just had a buddy almost take one to the face on a retrieval situation and now i think about it differently