Help understanding Signal

toddseimer · Feb 4, 2016

Flying my Phantom the other day at a golf course and I had the RC signal lost message pop up, lost FPV but I was still able to control it and bring it back home (via the GPS map). Here's my healthy drones report if someone can help me understand if I truly lost RC signal or just the wifi FPV signal?
HealthyDrones.com - Innovative flight data analysis that matters

gsweig · Feb 4, 2016

The one time it happened to me, my phone battery was low and it turned off my wifi to save battery

Samuel Castleton · Feb 4, 2016

It means you lost signal to the aircraft. When that happens it causes the wifi to loose connection also therefor disabling fpv. That's why its always important to set the homepoint so it will come right back to you [emoji4]

Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots mobile app

Sinisalo · Feb 5, 2016

First let's talk about how bad of GPS signal you had, you could have lost signal and switched to atti mode which causes you to drift and if you aren't used to it a crash is almost certain. Your signal score was very bad as well, you might want to watch this DJI video and also try to not have trees blocking your line of sight to the drone.

Remember if you would have lost GPS and signal that Return to home would not work.

toddseimer · Feb 5, 2016

Sinisalo said:
First let's talk about how bad of GPS signal you had, you could have lost signal and switched to atti mode which causes you to drift and if you aren't used to it a crash is almost certain. Your signal score was very bad as well, you might want to watch this DJI video and also try to not have trees blocking your line of sight to the drone.

Remember if you would have lost GPS and signal that Return to home would not work.

Thank you so much for the feedback, I was trying to determine how dangerous the situation was but this really helps. Looking back there were a couple of things I think affected my signal, the trees (even though they were bare and slightly below LOS) between me and the bird. I was confused because my fpv went out and I got the RC Signal Lost but I could still control the bird and the GPS map worked to help me bring it back home.

Sinisalo · Feb 5, 2016

toddseimer said:
Thank you so much for the feedback, I was trying to determine how dangerous the situation was but this really helps. Looking back there were a couple of things I think affected my signal, the trees (even though they were bare and slightly below LOS) between me and the bird. I was confused because my fpv went out and I got the RC Signal Lost but I could still control the bird and the GPS map worked to help me bring it back home.

Yeah control signal and video signal are 2 different frequencies, you nearly lost GPS and Control signal though which in that case you would have either drifted into something or auto landed possibly into water and you wouldn't have known the exact last location.

toddseimer · Feb 5, 2016

Sinisalo said:
Yeah control signal and video signal are 2 different frequencies, you nearly lost GPS and Control signal though which in that case you would have either drifted into something or auto landed possibly into water and you wouldn't have known the exact last location.

What would affect me almost losing my GPS signal, interference in the area or LOS?

Sinisalo · Feb 5, 2016

I would be more worried about line of sight obstructions but if there were no obstructions you could have had interference with your signal from wifi networks. My son has an XK Detect X380 and there is one park that has free wifi throughout, when he flies there he gets half the range that he normally would get. I would never want to lose GPS signal though so you should make sure to keep an eye on the top of the go app to make sure it says safe to fly gps and monitor how many satellites you have throughout your flight.

toddseimer · Feb 5, 2016

Sinisalo said:
I would be more worried about line of sight obstructions but if there were no obstructions you could have had interference with your signal from wifi networks. My son has an XK Detect X380 and there is one park that has free wifi throughout, when he flies there he gets half the range that he normally would get. I would never want to lose GPS signal though so you should make sure to keep an eye on the top of the go app to make sure it says safe to fly gps and monitor how many satellites you have throughout your flight.

will do, thank you for your help!

RodPad · Feb 6, 2016

Sinisalo said:
First let's talk about how bad of GPS signal you had

Any thoughts on why the low Gps signals?
Overcast / Heavy cloud cover?
I will have to look through some of my logs, I have a hill to my East. It goes up about 2000' in 3/4 of mile. I figured that was factor and weather was giving me some poor results at times.