High Drama and Amazement, Happiness and Thankfullness

Joined
Mar 16, 2017
Messages
62
Reaction score
12
Age
67
Location
Philippines
How I got my drone back I will never know. I set up a Litchi Mission to overfly a small village up the mountains where I live. I took great care in setting all the altitude parameters, checking in Google Earth. My height buffer was 8o feet (25 meters). For some reason my poor drone dropped about, at a guess 150 feet. Drama starts at around 1.45 . When the mission was running I lost connection, which I didn't worry about, but I was thinking the mission was taking longer than forecast. Anyway Aircraft returned home and I eagerly grabbed the SD card and started to watch the flight. You can imagine my horror when I saw the footage, and had to reassure myself by looking at my baby sat on the table, that it was really home. I still have know idea how it suddenly made the decision to come home ! Or why the drastic drop in altitude !!

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Did I do something wrong ?
 
I'm stunned you didn't lose your drone on any one of the three hundred occasions it should have crashed.. Anyway, without seeing your mission data it would only be a wild guess. Were your WPs relative to ground in the mission settings as that would account for the rise and fall of the terrain? If so, you need more of a buffer, another 20 mtrs at least. It either completed the mission or did a smartRTH when the drone detected insufficient power to continue. I flew at Kasibu for 18 months when I worked there and your footage reminded me of the beautiful landscape.
 
I'm stunned you didn't lose your drone on any one of the three hundred occasions it should have crashed.. Anyway, without seeing your mission data it would only be a wild guess. Were your WPs relative to ground in the mission settings as that would account for the rise and fall of the terrain? If so, you need more of a buffer, another 20 mtrs at least. It either completed the mission or did a smartRTH when the drone detected insufficient power to continue. I flew at Kasibu for 18 months when I worked there and your footage reminded me of the beautiful landscape.
Hi, thanks for your reply Tevek. Pretty well all my take off are at sea level. On Google Earth I checked the height of the mountains at every way point and then added the 25 metres or so. As you can see at the start of the video I was easily clearing the mountains, all around. I think you are right about Smart Return to Home, however, I'm surprised it didn't make the same decision, to back up and fly up, earlier with the obstacle avoidance system, which was obviously working well !
 
Hi, thanks for your reply Tevek. Pretty well all my take off are at sea level. On Google Earth I checked the height of the mountains at every way point and then added the 25 metres or so. As you can see at the start of the video I was easily clearing the mountains, all around. I think you are right about Smart Return to Home, however, I'm surprised it didn't make the same decision, to back up and fly up, earlier with the obstacle avoidance system, which was obviously working well !
I plan all my missions on the app and use 'relative to ground' and fly mostly in undulating areas. The average tree height is about 35 mtrs and I add another 40 mtrs as Google is relative to ground level and doesn't know the height of any natural or man made structures. I leave OA turned off as I've had flights where the sun at mid day interferes with the quad and either slows it down or indeed has stopped it all together. In your case OA saved you big time!
 
I plan all my missions on the app and use 'relative to ground' and fly mostly in undulating areas. The average tree height is about 35 mtrs and I add another 40 mtrs as Google is relative to ground level and doesn't know the height of any natural or man made structures. I leave OA turned off as I've had flights where the sun at mid day interferes with the quad and either slows it down or indeed has stopped it all together. In your case OA saved you big time!

Thanks again , I maybe mistakenly thought that when in Google Earth, when you slowly move the mouse pointer across terrain that the AGL , terrain height, was shown on the screen. If I move the pointer to the sea it says zero, maybe it is not accurate as you say on mountains and such
 
Thanks again , I maybe mistakenly thought that when in Google Earth, when you slowly move the mouse pointer across terrain that the AGL , terrain height, was shown on the screen. If I move the pointer to the sea it says zero, maybe it is not accurate as you say on mountains and such
The other thing to remember is that all WPs are relative to your take off point which is why I set up my mission in the app so that I can see how it looks before loading. You can see any mistakes (hopefully) before you fly.
 
How I got my drone back I will never know. I set up a Litchi Mission to overfly a small village up the mountains where I live. I took great care in setting all the altitude parameters, checking in Google Earth. My height buffer was 8o feet (25 meters). For some reason my poor drone dropped about, at a guess 150 feet. Drama starts at around 1.45 . When the mission was running I lost connection, which I didn't worry about, but I was thinking the mission was taking longer than forecast. Anyway Aircraft returned home and I eagerly grabbed the SD card and started to watch the flight. You can imagine my horror when I saw the footage, and had to reassure myself by looking at my baby sat on the table, that it was really home. I still have know idea how it suddenly made the decision to come home ! Or why the drastic drop in altitude !!

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Did I do something wrong ?
Yip was holding my breath there,nice flight ,very good it came back,yay,:)
 

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
143,066
Messages
1,467,358
Members
104,935
Latest member
Pauos31