fly away vs atti

Meta4 · Feb 13, 2015

yorlik said:
I don't need to read your facts to tell my how gps works in my life. sats do go away in clouds, heavy snow, and heavy rain in my world. I am glad this is not so in yours.

GPS satellite reception is not affected by cloud cover for anyone else.
Sounds like you have your own weird physics happening there.

GPS is designed to provide all-weather navigation anywhere in the world - and it works.
Do you think ships and planes have to stop and wait for the clouds to go away before they can get a fix.
No - that's what happened back in the old days when they used a sextant and had to see the stars and the horizon.
We've gone way past that.
If you have a problem with GPS, it's not because of clouds or rain.

dalebb · Feb 13, 2015

yorlik said:
dayton, OH. I went thur thru sun last week with NO sat because of such heavy overhead clouds.

really? I find this very odd. :shock:

nynelyvz · Oct 8, 2015

Man I got confused reading all this. I thought I had a handle on what it would do in Atti and RTH. I just went out and tried this. I fly in Naza mode exclusively. Way more control. So what it will do in Phantom Mode I am not sure. I powered up and ran through the normal process. 7 sats. Took off in gps, flew about 60 feet from my home point. I have my RTH altitude set to 150 feet. I swith ed to Atti mode, turned off transmitter, got conto signal lost and coming home. I started this at 40 feet. It started to climb to 150 feet and flew back to original home point and landed. So in Naza mode at least, and signal loss it WILL RTH.

JoeSchmoe · Oct 8, 2015

nynelyvz said:
Man I got confused reading all this. I thought I had a handle on what it would do in Atti and RTH. I just went out and tried this. I fly in Naza mode exclusively. Way more control. So what it will do in Phantom Mode I am not sure. I powered up and ran through the normal process. 7 sats. Took off in gps, flew about 60 feet from my home point. I have my RTH altitude set to 150 feet. I swith ed to Atti mode, turned off transmitter, got conto signal lost and coming home. I started this at 40 feet. It started to climb to 150 feet and flew back to original home point and landed. So in Naza mode at least, and signal loss it WILL RTH.

yup.... We knew that... AND .. IT WILL NOT 'suddenly re-acquire the signal.. and go back to flying normally' when it gets close either. Maybe some of the the Differences are from P2V+ v.2 to v.3 ?

And Yorlik my friend.... did you know that Yorlik spelled backwards is Kilroy?

nynelyvz · Oct 8, 2015

So to clarify. If I have 6 or more sats , lose control signal it doesn'tmatter if I am in GPS or Atti mode it will RTH. BUT if I have signal loss and less then 6 sats (the perfert storm) it will land straight down where it is, or drift away?

BlackTracer · Oct 9, 2015

nynelyvz said:
So to clarify. If I have 6 or more sats , lose control signal it doesn'tmatter if I am in GPS or Atti mode it will RTH.

Correct.

nynelyvz said:
BUT if I have signal loss and less then 6 sats (the perfert storm) it will land straight down where it is, or drift away?

Correct again. It will land "straight" down. Quotes because it is in atti mode and will drift with the wind as it lands "straight" down.

RoyVa · Oct 9, 2015

If you havent already go to DJI web and über your model go to downloads and get the manual. It has good info.

nynelyvz · Oct 9, 2015

Yeah, I have read the manual many times. If you have then you would know it is vague at best. And the majority of the post here are far from what the manual says.

Mark The Droner · Oct 11, 2015

Okay, I'd like to question the idea that clouds don't affect gps which was posted earlier in the thread. I strongly suspect this is incorrect for reasons which seem obvious to me. Can somebody expound on this? Thanks

JoeSchmoe · Oct 11, 2015

Cloudy days seem to affect GPS for me.. Both the time it takes..and the number of sats it will eventually acquire..? One of the things Ive learned from actually flying.

Also.. I think ...maybe a satellite TV Dish has a specific Shape for acquiring a signal.. so perhaps we dont notice the 'difference' in TV reception/ Performance on cloudy days..

Maybe a Phantoms satellite reciever is a lot less efficient at receiving signals than that Directv dish and it 'works harder' at getting AND keeping the signal on cloudy days?

BlackTracer · Oct 12, 2015

Marknmd said:
Okay, I'd like to question the idea that clouds don't affect gps which was posted earlier in the thread. I strongly suspect this is incorrect for reasons which seem obvious to me. Can somebody expound on this? Thanks

Try googling this. There are many answers to this in agreement with each other.

RoyVa · Oct 13, 2015

Cloudy overcast days do effect ThenGPS signals. They take longer to get a lock and you sometime even get less satellites. Even the app us weather confirms the satellite issue as do many of the threads and discussions.

BlackTracer · Oct 13, 2015

RoyVa said:
Cloudy overcast days do effect ThenGPS signals. They take longer to get a lock and you sometime even get less satellites. Even the app us weather confirms the satellite issue as do many of the threads and discussions.

Can you post some links to these threads and discussions? All the threads and discussions I have found say GPS reception is not significantly affected by clouds. They more say that a sheet of water will attenuate a signal significantly, but not water droplets as in a cloud or rain. So keep a layer of water off your antenna, but don't worry about clouds.

RoyVa · Oct 13, 2015

It has more to do with the receiver puck/ antenna and the type of GPS receiver unit. Some are much better than others.

A GPS signal bouncing off a reflective surface prior to reaching the GPS receiver antenna is referred to as multipath. Because it is difficult to completely correct multipath error, even in high precision GPS units, multipath error is a serious concern to the GPS user.

The chart below lists the most common sources of error in GPS positions. This chart is commonly known as the GPS Error Budget:

GPS Error Budget
Source Uncorrected Error Level Ionosphere 0-30 meters Troposphere 0-30 meters Measurement Noise 0-10 meters Ephemeris Data 1-5 meters Clock Drift 0-1.5 meters Multipath 0-1 meter Selective Availability 0-70 meter

kirk2579 · Oct 13, 2015

Marknmd said:
Okay, I'd like to question the idea that clouds don't affect gps which was posted earlier in the thread. I strongly suspect this is incorrect for reasons which seem obvious to me. Can somebody expound on this? Thanks

Once I updated my phantoms to the 4mm 5 dbi gain antenna I pretty much didn't care about clouds , light snow, trees, light rain.
I set it in my take off spot in driveway day or night , sun , cloud and it locks and flys . sometimes 40 -60 seconds other times double that but I have some nice video in winter snows.