A dissapointing moment

Hovtech · May 31, 2014

I have been planning to film the drawbridges across the Chicago river for 2 months now. Finally after much worrying and trepidation of what could go wrong, I got to downtown Chicago this morning around 9am. Just a few tourists out. So I did all the basic checks and put her down to get the satellites. OMG, the bridges are going up for a flotilla of boats! This is an orgasmic video I'm going to have here. No sats yet though.

10 minutes nothing, 4-5 back to 0. This went on for 45 minutes. I moved it all around the bridge. Down the street a bit. Nothing. Bridges all back down, disappointing. It would also lose connection from 1 inch away. Tried a 30 second flight, but too much swaying away. Just missed a lamp post. Finally I decided that this whole thing was not a good idea. Apparently too much interference and the buildings where blocking sats. Even if it did get 6 I feared I'd lose sats while in the air. Kept thinking about that Manhattan video where he flies onto a building then just misses a pedestrian. In the most disappointing moment I just said, "It's over". Packed up and left. My dream crushed. Any thoughts?

BTW, then went to a state park on the bottom of Lake Michigan in Indiana and got some great video. So the day wasn't a total loss.

BlackTracer · May 31, 2014

I have a thought. Practice taking off and flying in atti mode. In all conditions especially breezy. That's easy for me to say since I am only mediocre in atti. Sattelites shmatellites. Lol

Hovtech · May 31, 2014

I have been practicing my atti flying, but I'm still not good enough to send it 2,000 (V+ Booster) down the river. Lots of crosswinds too.

kgarrison · Jun 1, 2014

I'm not sure why so many people are afraid of ATTI mode. Any previous multicopter experience and ATTI is like a Godsend. GPS is icing on the cake when you want to just park it. Everyone should practice constantly in ATTI so you are not relying on GPS mode. Eventually, you should then move up to manual mode. The advantage in really understanding ATTI and Manual is that the chance of a mishap due to GPS getting confused your expensive bird deciding to fly back to China are greatly minimized. With our larger hex's and octo's, we basically only fly in ATTI unless there is a shot that we want the copter to just park in hover.

Phantom_Menace66 · Jun 1, 2014

Hovtech said:
I have been planning to film the drawbridges across the Chicago river for 2 months now. Finally after much worrying and trepidation of what could go wrong, I got to downtown Chicago this morning around 9am. Just a few tourists out. So I did all the basic checks and put her down to get the satellites. OMG, the bridges are going up for a flotilla of boats! This is an orgasmic video I'm going to have here. No sats yet though. 10 minutes nothing, 4-5 back to 0. This went on for 45 minutes. I moved it all around the bridge. Down the street a bit. Nothing. Bridges all back down, disappointing. It would also lose connection from 1 inch away. Tried a 30 second flight, but too much swaying away. Just missed a lamp post. Finally I decided that this whole thing was not a good idea. Apparently too much interference and the buildings where blocking sats. Even if it did get 6 I feared I'd lose sats while in the air. Kept thinking about that Manhattan video where he flies onto a building then just misses a pedestrian. In the most disappointing moment I just said, "It's over". Packed up and left. My dream crushed. Any thoughts?

BTW, then went to a state park on the bottom of Lake Michigan in Indiana and got some great video. So the day wasn't a total loss.

Possibly all the steel in the bridge interfering? As you said, buildings, cell phone towers etc etc. At least you had sense to pack up and go elsewhere & not risk crashing it... Kudos

CarlJ · Jun 1, 2014

Phantom_Menace66 said:
Possibly all the steel in the bridge interfering? As you said, buildings, cell phone towers etc etc. At least you had sense to pack up and go elsewhere & not risk crashing it... Kudos

That would be my guess, but I don't know nothin bout city flyin.

Also of note: SCREW atti mode in downtown Chicago!

viper102 · Jun 1, 2014

GPS operation in urban environments can be problematic due to the concrete canyon effect of all the tall buildings blocking the receiver's view of the satellites. Interference from cell towers to GPS receivers is very uncommon because the GPS receiver frequency is far enough away from any cellular operator's frequency. Your phantom simply could not see the satellites because of the tall dense buildings blocking the view

Chamb0 FPV · Jun 1, 2014

When i fly from my garden i only ever get about 5 sats, So what i do is take off with just 5 sats get to about 50ft hold it there for about a minute, i then get 10+ sats, then i just fly around as normal and when i flip home switch it comes back to where it got 10 sats and i just take control and land.