I am new to this forum, flying and Phantoms having purchased my first practice fly toy about a month back and taking my Phantom 1 for it's first flight about 10 days ago. All was going very well until this AM during a quick flight when I got a little cocky and disoriented then lost sight of my quad against a light gray sky at about 400 yards; or more accurately I was distracted for a split second and my eyes got tricked into believing my Phantom was another speck that turned out to be a soaring turkey vulture.
My wife was immediately distraught. I wasn't much better off especially considering the GoPro strapped to the belly was borrowed.
I immediately recalled two accounts I read recently and decided to give them a try. The first was "just let go of the sticks" there was certainly no sense in me trying to control what I couldn't see. I then tried some slight elevation changes to see if either my wife or I could locate the quad. When that didn't work I went to a last ditch effort and to use the quote I recall from the thread I can't find "I took a leap of faith and turned off my transmitter" . . . . . . . and waited . . . . . . . and waited . . . . . . . for what seemed like a really, really long time before my wife yelled out "I hear it" and there it was driving itself back at a pretty lazy pace.
Now I don't know if there was another way to activate the homing feature. I'm not complaining mind you, the thing came back and landed itself exactly where it started off but I would have appreciated getting control of it again since I was flying at the dog park and I didn't want them or it getting hurt.
Bottom line though is it worked which was way cool after reading about all the fly-aways and watching all the you-tube video mishaps. My own video isn't that interesting - while attempting a 180 degree return I managed to do a 360 and then in a panic I turned an additional 90 degrees.
Thank you Phantom Pilots - the manual certainly didn't have the information I needed to same my as$ today.
My wife was immediately distraught. I wasn't much better off especially considering the GoPro strapped to the belly was borrowed.
I immediately recalled two accounts I read recently and decided to give them a try. The first was "just let go of the sticks" there was certainly no sense in me trying to control what I couldn't see. I then tried some slight elevation changes to see if either my wife or I could locate the quad. When that didn't work I went to a last ditch effort and to use the quote I recall from the thread I can't find "I took a leap of faith and turned off my transmitter" . . . . . . . and waited . . . . . . . and waited . . . . . . . for what seemed like a really, really long time before my wife yelled out "I hear it" and there it was driving itself back at a pretty lazy pace.
Now I don't know if there was another way to activate the homing feature. I'm not complaining mind you, the thing came back and landed itself exactly where it started off but I would have appreciated getting control of it again since I was flying at the dog park and I didn't want them or it getting hurt.
Bottom line though is it worked which was way cool after reading about all the fly-aways and watching all the you-tube video mishaps. My own video isn't that interesting - while attempting a 180 degree return I managed to do a 360 and then in a panic I turned an additional 90 degrees.
Thank you Phantom Pilots - the manual certainly didn't have the information I needed to same my as$ today.
