Anyone else di this?

[hrosee]

I always worry about fly-a-ways so I started something new today.

I let everything boot up as normal including the flashing greens for course lock and home point. Then I take her up to about 20 feet, put her in CL and make sure the course lock was set correctly. Then I put here in HL and pull the right stick back to make sure it knows where home is. At least the right direction.

Before I take off, if I don't see or miss either of the fast greens, I reset both manually with the left switch while on the ground. This only takes an extra couple of seconds and seems worth while to me.

The reason I started this was because on my second battery today I thought I would flip into HL and bring her back. I had site of her. When I pulled the right stick back after switching to HL it went in a different direction that it should have. Thinking back I could have been in CL but in any event I implemented this new procedure.

What do you guys think? Any one else doing this? Anyone doing anything else just in case?

 

[tferrari]

This seems like a good practice to me. Anything extra you can do to ascertain whether or not your unit is acting strangely before you take it on a serious journey seems like a good idea.

If operating the unit in an area that may have WiFi (i.e. a residential area), you could use a 'WiFi Analyzer' app on your phone to see the WiFinetworks in the area and display the strength of the network to see if you may expect 2.4 GHz interference.

Some people are checking the battery voltage 'under load' with a test setup to ensure the battery is in good condition. I've heard that a battery can read the correct 'full charge' voltage when it's not under load, but once a load is applied a faulty battery can exhibit serious voltage sag. Please correct me if I'm wrong?

 

[Fyod]

Regarding surrounding wifi:
Ever since I unpacked my P2, I have been flying on the grounds of my friend's Telecom company. They are a wifi ISP and where I began flying, there are not only multiple 2.4GHz AP's, but also long range 5.8GHz antennas on the buildings and a couple on a 60ft. pylon. I had VRS on a couple of the first few flights there, not knowing about what the Wifi interference causes, until I read up on it and had hesitation to fly there again. Then I upgraded to the more stable 3.04 and we've done dozens more flights there without any hesitation from the quad, even testing the 300m height and 1000m distance limits. Never did the P2 lose controller signal. The grounds are about 700sq.ft. and you can catch wifi signal on your phone just about anywhere you stand, including the road just ouside. One (quite amatuer) hickup we made was when we decided to test Auto Home by flipping the controller off. The quad returned just fine, but was about 2m off from the starting point (normal) and almost hit a gutter, luckily we were able to grab it by hand because there wasn't time for taking over control.

I'm not saying local wifi shouldn't be considered, but I think this is the most rigorous test that I could've done, even though it was done due to insufficient knowledge of possible outcomes.

I did have siginifacant interference at another spot that has a 5.8GHz antenna, to the point there was barely any video on the FPV, but the wifi antenna was cloder to the ground. We once flew very close to the antennas on the pylon mentioned above with barely any intereference. This leads me to conclude that interference is much more of a problem on the receiver side than the transmitter side, atleast in the case of FPVs. In other words, it is important where the pilot is standing, not where the quad is flying.

I have talked a lot with him about 2.4 and 5.8 frequencies, since he's been dealing with this most of his life. So when he assured me the surrounding signals wouldn't take te Phantom down, of course I was hesitant, but in the end he was right. I can ask him any questions you guys can think of.

 

[tferrari]

Regarding surrounding wifi:
Ever since I unpacked my P2, I have been flying on the grounds of my friend's Telecom company. They are a wifi ISP and where I began flying, there are not only multiple 2.4GHz AP's, but also long range 5.8GHz antennas on the buildings and a couple on a 60ft. pylon. I had VRS on a couple of the first few flights there, not knowing about what the Wifi interference causes, until I read up on it and had hesitation to fly there again. Then I upgraded to the more stable 3.04 and we've done dozens more flights there without any hesitation from the quad, even testing the 300m height and 1000m distance limits. Never did the P2 lose controller signal. The grounds are about 700sq.ft. and you can catch wifi signal on your phone just about anywhere you stand, including the road just ouside. One hickup we made was when we decided to test Auto Home by flipping the controller off. The quad returned just fine, but was about 2m off from the starting point (normal) and almost hit a gutter, luckily we were able to grab it by hand because there wasn't time for taking over control.

I'm not saying wifi is an issue, but I think this is the most rigorous test that I could've done, even though it was done due to insufficient knowledge of possible outcomes.

I know it's only an isolated first-hand case, but if there were ever a time where a 2.4Ghz signal chose to cause interference, I imagine this would have been a good opportunity.

 

[Fyod]

I would bet we've done atleast fifteen 15min flights there, that would be about 4 hours of flight and if anything should've gone wrong, it would have, a long time ago.

 

[tferrari]

Very interesting, thanks for sharing.