6km, 3.8miles, long distance flight

[2trickpony]

Well I know I said I was finished with long distance but the conditions this morning were
just too good and managed to hit the magical 6km mark. :shock:
Took a drive to Aberdeen Beach and had a great flight - until the battery let me down!
Observations from this flight:
DONT presume that if you go the max distance at 55% battery that you will have enough power to get all the way back, if you hit a head wind then you probably wont manage it. (had to perform safe emergency landing at 14% battery)
Lots of radio noise at this location, so fpv was not great, but the stock radio performed flawlessly.
Interestingly enough, the Phantom went into FS on the way back ?? must lengthen the 2.4 antennas on the P2.

Flytrex mission details here:
http://www.flytrex.com/mission/quadcopt ... lee-25000/

Video is uploading but will takes hours on my rubbish broadband, will post asap.

 

[superraz375]

Very impressive!!

 

[gasato]

Impressive! Did you achieve that with the stock DJI transmitter?

 

[2trickpony]

Impressive! Did you achieve that with the stock DJI transmitter?

Yes.
I dont know how DJI did it but they made a fantastic little radio controller !!

 

[gasato]

Also, care to share your FPV setup? I'm particularly interested in the antennas; yesterday I received the Circular Wireless 8-tun Helical Antenna and I look forward to try it; on the transmitter, I have a Geoavia Fiveleaf antenna.

 

[2trickpony]

Also, care to share your FPV setup? I'm particularly interested in the antennas; yesterday I received the Circular Wireless 8-tun Helical Antenna and I look forward to try it; on the transmitter, I have a Geoavia Fiveleaf antenna.

Yep, no problem.

On the Phantom I have the ImmersionRC 600mW TX with Nimrod antenna:
http://horizonfpvantennas.mybigcommerce ... p-or-lhcp/

On ground I have the ImmersionRC Duo receiver with 1 Nimrod and 1 Blackhawk Micro helical antenna:
http://horizonfpvantennas.mybigcommerce ... -in-black/

The receiver is connected to my Black Pearl monitor for displaying the video.

Hope this helps!

 

[Jimpic]

Very impressive! I'll try that too when I find a good location.
Yesterday i made 4207m all over the sea... I thought it would never come back.
it landed on the beach with 15% left.

 

[moonlitnite]

Many thanks for sharing! You get better signal propagation over water, correct?
Michael

 

[2trickpony]

Very impressive! I'll try that too when I find a good location.
Yesterday i made 4207m all over the sea... I thought it would never come back.
it landed on the beach with 15% left.

There is no way I would attempt any long distance purely over water. Thats why I followed the beach.
There are too many issues that could happen and send your Phantom to a watery grave.
You NEED to be able to land safely (or crash) at ANY time so best over dry land.

NIce flight though

 

[2trickpony]

Many thanks for sharing! You get better signal propagation over water, correct?
Michael

I think any improved signal over the water where he was might be lost with interference from the nearby town.

 

[Almmohd]

Very impressive! I'll try that too when I find a good location.
Yesterday i made 4207m all over the sea... I thought it would never come back.
it landed on the beach with 15% left.

Wow and I was worried at 1100m at the beach. How fast were you flying to make this trip?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[2trickpony]

Here's the video:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aqFo6l48HI[/youtube]

 

[Jimpic]

Very nice! and very safe landing. You even tilted the zenmuse to check the sand before landing
Did you use Dashware?
I have been trying to use it all day on Linux Ubuntu (with windows 7 in virtualbox) with no luck.

You are right about long distance over water. It was my last try... I am preparing a video to show what happened when I turned back.

Wow and I was worried at 1100m at the beach. How fast were you flying to make this trip?

No very fast: 12m/s (average) in GPS mode.

 

[MontanaMike]

Awesome flight 2Trickpony! I noticed it looks like familiar FS behavior at 7 min in..then, the slow RTH crawl back.. At 8:30ish you got control back and put it back in ATTI to speed back home. Curious if you tried getting control back before 8:30, or was that when you managed to get strong enough signal back?

Also, it looked like you gained altitude a couple different times on the way out. Was that to maintain vid signal?

My personal record is only out to 1500 meters, but might try for more someday.. I don't think I have intestinal fortitude to try that over water though!

 

[2trickpony]

Very nice! and very safe landing. You even tilted the zenmuse to check the sand before landing
Did you use Dashware?
I have been trying to use it all day on Linux Ubuntu (with windows 7 in virtualbox) with no luck.

You are right about long distance over water. It was my last try... I am preparing a video to show what happened when I turned back.

Wow and I was worried at 1100m at the beach. How fast were you flying to make this trip?

No very fast: 12m/s (average) in GPS mode.

Thanks!
Yeah, nothing worse than the "I'm going down" feeling!
Had to tilt the Zenmuise just to make sure I wasnt landing on rocks/people etc.
I use Dashware and have had no problems with it so far on my Win7 laptop.

 

[2trickpony]

Awesome flight 2Trickpony! I noticed it looks like familiar FS behavior at 7 min in..then, the slow RTH crawl back.. At 8:30ish you got control back and put it back in ATTI to speed back home. Curious if you tried getting control back before 8:30, or was that when you managed to get strong enough signal back?

Also, it looked like you gained altitude a couple different times on the way out. Was that to maintain vid signal?

My personal record is only out to 1500 meters, but might try for more someday.. I don't think I have intestinal fortitude to try that over water though!

You are spot on, FS kicked in around 7 mins until I got control back. The worrying thing about FS in this instance is, because it flies straight back and doesnt follow the curve of the beach, it would have ended in a lost Phantom in the sea once the auto land kicked in at low battery.
I always try to get as much height as possible to help with the video, but at this location I had to keep within limits.

Cheers

 

[ianwood]

Very impressive. I guess you hold the record for the Phantom.

 

[MontanaMike]

I think I saw a 41 mph top speed on the way too.. Nice! Cruising!

 

[gasato]

Congrats! Watched the whole video, you lost some valuable time due to the FailSafe kicking in and coming back at half speed. Wondering if would be safer to just have the FailSafe mode coming back at full speed? Or at least have it as an option in the Assistant Software. Excellent landing aswell. So, you did actually use the stock transmitter, BUT with TP-Link 8dBi antenna mod! Read that into the info box; I tought it was 100% plain TX. I'll look into that mod too. Thanks for sharing your FPV setup.

 

[2trickpony]

The gear: