- Joined
- Jan 7, 2017
- Messages
- 120
- Reaction score
- 54
- Age
- 62
My Son got a small non-GPS drone for Christmas, he was flying it on his property and ended up having a fly away. He said he was up about 50 feet, and it started acting odd so he tried to bring it home. It suddenly made a direct bee-line to the woods directly below and vanished. He looked for it for quite a while, and I went over and helped look as well, but we were unable to locate it.
A couple days later I took my P3S over to try and fly over the tree tops to see if we could at least see it. When I powered my P3S up I immediately got a message stating strong magnetic interference and to calibrate the compass. Calibration failed, tried two more times with the same result so I gave up. He told me there was a tower of some sort across the road from his property so we walked over to check it out. It was a 100 foot or so tall tower with access points used to provide Internet service. Having worked in that industry for several years I knew we were looking at 5.8, 900 or 2.4 radios, both Omni and sectional antennas. I figured that was the issue for sure and advised him to not fly on his property again because he would probably have the same results.
I ended up sending my P3S back and getting a P4. I took it out to his place just to check to see if I would still have the signal issue and I did not. Everything looked fine with the exception of GPS sat counts seemed to fluctuate quite a bit. I took the P4 up about 100 feet but really did not want to chance it so I did not stray too far away. So now, I do not know if the interference issue was temporary, or if the P4 was able to just work around it. I know he is wanting to get another drone when he can swing it, but not sure if it would be safe for him to fly on his property or not.
I have included a Healthy Drones link to my flight if anyone wants to check it. Not a critical issue by any means, just has my curiosity up.
A couple days later I took my P3S over to try and fly over the tree tops to see if we could at least see it. When I powered my P3S up I immediately got a message stating strong magnetic interference and to calibrate the compass. Calibration failed, tried two more times with the same result so I gave up. He told me there was a tower of some sort across the road from his property so we walked over to check it out. It was a 100 foot or so tall tower with access points used to provide Internet service. Having worked in that industry for several years I knew we were looking at 5.8, 900 or 2.4 radios, both Omni and sectional antennas. I figured that was the issue for sure and advised him to not fly on his property again because he would probably have the same results.
I ended up sending my P3S back and getting a P4. I took it out to his place just to check to see if I would still have the signal issue and I did not. Everything looked fine with the exception of GPS sat counts seemed to fluctuate quite a bit. I took the P4 up about 100 feet but really did not want to chance it so I did not stray too far away. So now, I do not know if the interference issue was temporary, or if the P4 was able to just work around it. I know he is wanting to get another drone when he can swing it, but not sure if it would be safe for him to fly on his property or not.
I have included a Healthy Drones link to my flight if anyone wants to check it. Not a critical issue by any means, just has my curiosity up.
