Air Data UAV Flight Log Mileage Discrepancy

[Billie Nelson]

Air Data UAV evidently ranks among the most widely used drone flight logging websites, but when I linked it to my Litchi flight logs, the figure showing the accumulated mileage flown by my drone, amounts to only about one third of the true total mileage. Not only that, but the individual flight paths shown in Air Data UAV, are only fragments of the entire flight paths that my drone flew.

Oddly enough, those under-reported flight paths, all seem to end abruptly at the point where my controller lost signal from the drone, at which point a straight line is drawn from that point, back to the launch location, as though a RTH was triggered, which was most certainly never the case.

The reason I can be so sure that the total cumulative mileage flown is being under-reported in Air Data UAV, is that the total TIME spent aloft on those Litchi missions, is correctly recorded, as is the time that elapsed during each Litchi mission. Attached is a screenshot of my Phantom 3 Standards' flight history, as depicted by Air Data UAV.

Given that I only fly fully autonomous Litchi missions, at the cruise speed of 17.9 mph, arriving at the total mileage flown entails simply multiplying 17.9 miles her hour, by the total hours flown. In my case, a total of nearly 20 hours of flight time is accurately reported in Air Data UAV's summary page, so I expected to see a total mileage of at least 340 miles, which is nearly TRIPLE the figure of 134 miles estimated by Air Data UAV's summary page.

I wrote Air Data UAV twice, to point out this glaring discrepancy in total mileage flown, but never did get any response whatsoever. This got me to wondering whether there might be a different flight logger that provides more accurate flight mileage data, that I could use instead of Air Data UAV.

I was even set to pay for a subscription with Air Data UAV, which would have allowed me to track the miles flown by more than one drone, but given their complete disinterest in responding to my very basic inquiry, I shelved that idea. Thus far I haven't been able to find a substitute flight logging website. I sure would be grateful if any other drone meisters out there, can point me in the direction of a flight logging website whose cumulative flight mileage figures are more accurate than the ones Air Data produces.

 

[Meta4]

Oddly enough, those under-reported flight paths, all seem to end abruptly at the point where my controller lost signal from the drone, at which point a straight line is drawn from that point, back to the launch location, as though a RTH was triggered, which was most certainly never the case.

If you are flying waypoint missions that take you out of contact with the controller, Litchi won't be able to count the miles the drone flies without signal, because there is no data for the time without signal.
Any other software reading flight data would have the same issue.

 

[Billie Nelson]

Ah, I see. This clarification solves the mystery, and I thank you for taking a moment to explain how vital that controller link is to distance calculations, Meta4. I did notice that abrupt discontinuity at precisely the spot where the signal was lost on each outbound flight. Oh well, I suppose I can always just multiply that cruise speed by total hours aloft, to arrive a the true total distance flown.