High Altitude Flying?

Spig_Wead · Aug 27, 2016

Somewhat a newbie here. Have a question, coming from Michigan and now at my new home in Colorado I'm planning on taking my new P4 up to my property in the Mountains to fly. Lots of open space and not much to bother your flying up there. I'm going to be starting out at about 9600 feet what concerns should I have at the altitude?

rockydog · Aug 27, 2016

You shouldn't have any problems...DJI quote maximum service ceiling as 6000 metres -(over 19000 feet).

QuadBart · Aug 27, 2016

My family's mountain house sits at 9958' ASL and I fly there often. No issues with the P4 "working" at that altitude, however, the P4 (or any of my drones) does NOT handle the same.

Air is less dense. The biggest difference you'll notice and need to be aware of is the P4 will respond more slowly. Give yourself more time and space when moving along the "X" axis and/or descending as it will take the P4 a little longer to slow down or stop.

The motors will be louder as they are working harder. Your battery/flight time will be shorter because of this.

Your property looks like it has lots of nice open space and fairly flat. You can see our place is surrounded by trees and is on the mountain, which makes for interesting flying to ensure you don't collide with trees on the "high" side which can be many feet higher than on the low side. Because our place and area is surrounded by trees, I rarely fly in Sport mode.

I've gone as high as ~11,000'. That was the flying altitude which was ~200' above take off height (meaning I did not exceed 400' above where I took off). I also noticed flying around 8,000' ASL, the P4 doesn't handle much different than where I live which is about ~6000' ASL....

Spig_Wead said:
Somewhat a newbie here. Have a question, coming from Michigan and now at my new home in Colorado I'm planning on taking my new P4 up to my property in the Mountains to fly. Lots of open space and not much to bother your flying up there. I'm going to be starting out at about 9600 feet what concerns should I have at the altitude? View attachment 63348

clickclickw00t · Aug 27, 2016

QuadBart's advice is on point!

tcope · Aug 27, 2016

QuadBart said:
You can see our COMPOUND is surrounded by trees and is on the mountain, which makes for interesting flying to ensure you don't collide with trees on the "high" side which can be many feet higher than on the low side.

I fixed your post.