Go Home behavior after cancelling Go Home...

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Not that anyone is stupid enough to do this (except me), but if my P3A tells me it is about to go home because of low battery, and I cancel the request, then lose contact with the aircraft, what will it's behavior be? Will it just hover until it exhausts its battery? Fall from the sky? Try to go home? In my case, I wanted just one more photo before I allowed it to come home, and just then lost contact, due to trees in the foreground. The bird was some distance away and I'm trying to figure out where it is. The Healthy Drones .csv and .kml show it descending rapidly (10'/sec) immediately before it stopped recording at about 120' above the ground.
 
then lose contact with the aircraft
Whenever the remote controller loses contact with the Phantom, RTH will be auto initiated 3 seconds later. By default, RTH will make your Phantom return to home. However, there is a configurable setting in the DJI GO app that'll allow your Phantom to hover or auto land at its current location. If your Phantom reaches the critical low battery level before it makes it home, it'll auto land at its current location.
 
Test it. From a wide open area, Fly till you get close to low battery warning, bring it in to a comfortable distance (15 meters?) but don't land it. Let the low battery RTH initiate (with the RTH altitude set appropriately), cancel RTH, then shut off the RC and see what happens.
 
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Test it. From a wide open area, Fly till you get close to low battery warning, bring it in to a comfortable distance (15 meters?) but don't land it. Let the low battery RTH initiate (with the RTH altitude set appropriately), cancel RTH, then shut off the RC and see what happens.


Wouldn't that have to be tested at least 21 metres away because RTH won't kick in within a 20 metre radius?
 
Wouldn't that have to be tested at least 21 metres away because RTH won't kick in within a 20 metre radius?
My bad. I believe you are correct. Just picked a random number as opposed to the Phantom being too far while testing. :)
 
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Test it. From a wide open area, Fly till you get close to low battery warning, bring it in to a comfortable distance (15 meters?) but don't land it. Let the low battery RTH initiate (with the RTH altitude set appropriately), cancel RTH, then shut off the RC and see what happens.
That's a good way to test except if the phantom is 20 meters away from the home point or less it will land right where it is. So just make sure you're are 21 meters or so away from the home point in order to initiate RTH.
 
The Healthy Drones .csv and .kml show it descending rapidly (10'/sec) immediately before it stopped recording at about 120' above the ground.
If you want help finding it, send a link to your HealthyDrones report and we'll see what the brains trust here can come up with.
 
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Sounds like it auto landed for whatever reason. Do as Meta4 suggested and we'll try to help you find it from the flight data.
 
Auto landed at 48% battery? Seems odd. Should be easy to find. Go along the road until you hit the outcropping and walk up the rock ledge

The warning about throttling the battery is also odd. It was plenty warm.
 
Not that anyone is stupid enough to do this (except me), but if my P3A tells me it is about to go home because of low battery, and I cancel the request, then lose contact with the aircraft, what will it's behavior be? Will it just hover until it exhausts its battery? Fall from the sky? Try to go home? In my case, I wanted just one more photo before I allowed it to come home, and just then lost contact, due to trees in the foreground. The bird was some distance away and I'm trying to figure out where it is. The Healthy Drones .csv and .kml show it descending rapidly (10'/sec) immediately before it stopped recording at about 120' above the ground.
Did it initiate RTH because of the distance and altitude? In any event it would still return to home when you reached the limit you have set for low power. Is it possible you hit something ... like a tree or ridge? I think you hit something along that ridge of rocks.

Others suggest autolanding. I don't think so at 40%...
 
What was the ambient temperature where you took off that day? It may have worked up a sweat trying to ascend in thin air and the battery restricted rpms in order to get home and it sank into a tree.
 
What was the ambient temperature where you took off that day? It may have worked up a sweat trying to ascend in thin air and the battery restricted rpms in order to get home and it sank into a tree.
No. The altitude is too low for it to have lift problems. Likely kissed a rock or something. What is curious is that the P3 was complaining of a low battery and throttling output at 48% charge.

So - the question again. When was the battery last charged?
 
34.689996° 112.180658° would be a good starting point IMO. Appears to be about a 26% grade over about a mile.

What's the deal with 98 ft RTH?

No. The altitude is too low for it to have lift problems. Likely kissed a rock or something. What is curious is that the P3 was complaining of a low battery and throttling output at 48% charge.

So - the question again. When was the battery last charged?
It was close to 7000 feet altitude..........

The battery was possibly struggling(increased use due to thin air) and the calcs to get home were based on that. Density Altitude has killed many pilots and damaged numerous a/c.
 
If the Phantom had already determined that it had reached bingo fuel and you continued beyond that, it would probably just descend.
It's calculating flight time + descent time (about 3 mins).
The terrain appears to be all downhill from where the flight record stops with nothing significantly higher nearby and you were about 270 ft above the terrain so there should be no collision with trees or terrain in the event of RTH.
i-ZQ4QNNK-X2.jpg


The GPS point Air Ontario gave appears to be a good location to start looking.
There is a cleared road to the west that would take you to within 800 feet of the end of the yellow line.
i-HqRfQdr-XL.jpg
 
You rose 1,500' from where you started and as I am sure you are aware, the temperature can be substantially different when even that altitude change. I know what the sensors say, but as quick as you rose up there I have to believe that temperature was a factor. The error you received definitely points to a power output issue, typically caused by cold weather. Perhaps they couldn't take the shock of the sudden temp change.


Sent from my iPad using PhantomPilots mobile app
 
You rose 1,500' from where you started and as I am sure you are aware, the temperature can be substantially different when even that altitude change. I know what the sensors say, but as quick as you rose up there I have to believe that temperature was a factor. The error you received definitely points to a power output issue, typically caused by cold weather. Perhaps they couldn't take the shock of the sudden temp change.


Sent from my iPad using PhantomPilots mobile app
Look at the HD data - battery temp was 70 degrees at start, over 100F at the end. If anything, it got too warm.
 

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