Electrical wire interference

[bbuck]

So I was flying my p4 today, on my return trip I flew over power lines, I've flown over them before but higher I guess, anyhow p4 started going around in about 10 foot circle, I was not directing it with the rc, it stabilized on the other side of the wires so I brought it down to about 4 feet and flew under them. Is this normal behavior around power lines?

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[Streetmagus]

Don't be surprised. They're known to cause interference. It's stated not to fly by power plants and stuff like that.
There is a guy on youtube where he drone went crazy and he crashed it, after flying by one.

 

[Erised]

If you get to close to high power lines they may affect your craft, something similar to your situation happened to me, my P4 was about 30 feet away and 20 above a small 14,400 volt line and I was hovering, the bird all on it's own slide directly over the lines, and maintained altitude and stayed there, I had to move the stick a lot to get it moving.
The Electric field on AC power lines don't go very far, being AC the magnetic flux cancels itself, but high power lines are 3 phase and that generates a week field around all the lines. I checked out some graphs and they make some pretty cool shapes. My craft did not warn of a compass error, I think the field was not strong enough but enough to trick it in calculating that's were it was suppose to go. Others have had weird thing happen the their craft also, it probably depends on the load of the lines at the time. One thing for sure is that I'm not going to try to find out when and why with my bird, I will still fly above them but I will keep my distance.

 

[dgriffnz]

I've flown under power lines strung across the local "Shaky Bridge"...coming back under the bridge I noticed the P4 gaining altitude for no apparent reason. I increased the forward flight and it again behaved as expected - power lines definitely should be avoided!


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[Carlpembroke]

I would also guess the demand for power through cables changes from time to time due to demand so two different days can be completely different. Just a theory

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[Sky Pirate]

Just a few days ago I went to look at a place that I was thinking of flying from, I wanted to check it out as it had electricity cables running across part of the field. After setup my screen told me to fly with caution as there was interference. Better to be safe than sorry, so I went somewhere else to take off.