Flew BVR in wind today

[Tmesis]

I flew in wind I knew was a bit too much today and learned some things about the phantom firmware. Losing battery power to my fpv didn't help. I really thought I'd lost my p2 non-vision.

My initial reaction to losing the power to my screen was to power off the tx to initiate RTH.

Id already found that In RTH only limited stick input by the autopilot is applied by the naza. Can I call this limited input X. The wind was too strong for X to overcome the wind so the phantom drifted.

It seems that iIf RTH is initiated, the phantom will try to hover in its current GPS position before initiating RTH. If it cannot achieve this with X, it will just try to get back to the position it got lost until it can. It will not climb to 66ft nor re-oreint itself to home until it can hover where tx was lost. If the wind overcomes X, the phantom will not add more stick input. So unless the wind drops, the remaining battery power is all that will keep it in the air.

I switched the tx back on, selected atti and HL and added full aft stick, the phantom eventually came into view. I switched the transmitter off again to try and re-initiate RTH.

I found if the phantom does manage to arrive over the home point, it will not descend until it manages to hover for a time at this location using the maximum stick deflection X. If the wind does not subside, it will not descend. Manual landing is necessary f the phantom cannot manage a hover over the registered home point using the limited stick deflection X.

I reckon, and this s just gut feeling of wind speed that (1) is no more than 18mph wind speed.

 

[OI Photography]

Great observation, thanks for sharing. Honestly hadn't occurred to me that the Phantom would cap the amount of pitch during RTH at less than the maximum available.

 

[Tmesis]

Great observation, thanks for sharing. Honestly hadn't occurred to me that the Phantom would cap the amount of pitch during RTH at less than the maximum available.

You are more succinct than I!

That is exactly what it does.

To my mind it should do everything it can to get back home.

 

[OI Photography]

I guess it makes sense, the RTH will need to be functional whether or not the GPS data (which is necessary for "speed" calculations) is available or reliable, and allowing max pitch as the default could produce speeds too high when there's no wind or a tailwind. This is probably the best-compromise solution they had to use.

 

[macheung]

Home lock works in ATTI mode? I thought it only works in GPS mode.

 

[OI Photography]

Hmm guess not, I never use it (manual mode). For some reason I was thinking it would still work if a home point was recorded first, but that was just wishful thinking.

 

[Big Ben]

I expect the reason for less than full stick speeds during RTH is because it flies autonomously and unsupervised. If for instance it would find a building in its way it can make the difference between bouncing off a window and crashing through it showering the people in the room with glass shards and chopping them up with four frenzied props. :shock:

Don't want that. :|

 

[Shrimpfarmer]

Very useful post so thanks for reporting this.