First out of Visual Range GS Mission

Joined
Nov 2, 2014
Messages
50
Reaction score
1
I went to a local ball field, flew a battery for warmup in the ares, and then used two batteries practicing GS missions around the park, etc, until I was confident in the machine and the software...

On my last battery I had out there (4), I immaculately planned a mission that brought the P2V+ out beyond range, went to a river, followed the coastline for a bit, then followed a small canal back to the park...I double and triple checked altitudes ( making sure I was FAR above any ground objects...the highest object in the area was about 100 feet, so I was at nearly 300 feet the whole time) at each point. Total distance of mission was about 2 miles.

I hit GO, and away she went. I immediately thought "omg what have I done...this isn't going to end well". I quickly lost signal, and it was all up to the machine.

JUST then, the random guy that was there with his kid comes walking back...I had talked with him during my first battery of the day while I flew close-by, he thought it was neat...then he'd walked away.
Anyways, so as my P2V+ is out on the mission, here I am standing in the field with no quad in sight, me standing with the controller to my side. It was embarrassing! I just KNEW he thought I must have crashed it somewhere. So, I called him over and show him the GS aspect of it, and how it was off flying along the river right now. He of course thought that was amazing...meanwhile, I'm standing there nervous as all heck that I'd never see it again. So, we wait a bit, and I point out the direction it would be coming back from.
Blip..update. My WiFi connects for only an instant, and updates the waypoint map, but loses connection again. It was almost to the next to last waypoint, on the way back! The relief just FLOODED over me.
Sure enough, 20 or 30 seconds later, reestablished a strong WiFi connection, and then soon after saw the little girl come flying in hot. I still had 65% battery left! The flight wasn't even 5 or 6 minutes, but it had felt like it was 30 minutes long.

I landed the bird immediately, said Bye to the random guy, and packed up to go. In my haste, I didn't follow my post flight checklist...and when I got home, saw that the mp4 for that flight was corrupted!!!

I'll look into how to fix that file tonight after work...but just wanted to come here and sing the praises for this machine. That was pretty amazing.
My GPS tracker (trackimo) finally is arriving today, so I'll feel much less apprehension about losing LoS in future missions.
 
Just curious.... what is your post flight checklist. I have PSV & now PSV+ and NEVER let them out of my sight. I'm ready to venture out, and I DO NOT want to lose my babies. :eek: And what is trackimo? Do you recommend getting it first?
 
Trackimo is just one of many GPS tracker options you can get for your bird...a bit of searching around here and googling can show many others. The Trackimo is about $100, with the first year free...it's $5 a month after that. Most (All?) gps trackers will require some sort of ongoing fee, since they communicate the location via cell service.
It's up to your comfort level, whether you feel like you should have a tracker onboard before heading out of Line of Sight...
I only went out without a tracker because I'm impatient! Haha, and had flown enough times, activated Failsafe mode purposefully, and a few times when connection was lost...and the P2V+ had done exactly what it was supposed to do every time, so it's earned my confidence enough.

I don't have my Postflight checklist here at work with me, but I know that the first thing on it that I am supposed to do after touchdown is to shut engines off. The next thing is to press Stop Recording on the app. But...I never hit Stop Recording because I was in such a rush, so I think directly powering off the battery while the camera was still recording caused the file to be corrupted.
 
Hi,

yes this is the case. When you power off without having stopped the recording the file initially is corrupt. But somewhere I've read there is quite a simple way of repairing it. Just had one such case with a Video that was not worth it so I didn't care.

Back to the Topic:
I can exactly feel what you felt. I have my P2V+ for about a month now and the GS Hardware for a week. With the Vision APP I was already quite confident and sent it out to the Maximum range Limit of 500 meters. But since I've read a lot of Posts (older ones, frankly) stating it is not recommended to use the 2.4GHz Datalink System on the P2V+ because of bad interference and possible loss of control I start VERY VERY carefully in very short range and test it out.

So far she did exactly what I told her to do. No Problems with the control, I was always able to take back the control with my Transmitter. But bringing it our of visual contact is another Dimension. And I can't wait to have it fly a larger Mission. I hope to have enough confidence soon so I dare to do that :)

Rgds,
Kent
 
follow these instructions for repairing corrupt video files when you forget to close video before turning off phantom, (shutting down battery)

http://live555.com/drones/DJI-Phantom-2-Vision+-video-fix/

download the file "djifix.exe"

Easiest way:

  1. Download the file "djifix.exe". Then open the folder that contains the application "djifix.exe" (that you just downloaded).
  2. Select the file that you wish to repair, and drop it onto the "djifix.exe" application.
do not try to run the djifix.exe , but just drop the video clip onto the file and it will run itself
easiest way
 
  • Like
Reactions: lalvar40
to BuzzZoom

My GPS tracker (trackimo) finally is arriving today, so I'll feel much less apprehension about losing LoS in future missions.


Take attention with using a GPS tracker , it disturbe the signal at 2.4Ghz

dropke
 

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
143,066
Messages
1,467,356
Members
104,934
Latest member
jody.paugh@fullerandsons.