Mechanically, how high can I go?

[Super Dave]

USA. 400 feet, why care how much further, or higher out will go if there is not intent?

Hmmm, sounds religious.
"It's God's will, and that's that. No further reason to be inquisitive or to advance science, you'll burn in hell"

 

[gunner50]

Looking at the hypothetical scenario, if you only wanted to go high and didn't care about the return the answer is fairly simple.
If you could get about 23 mins from a battery, multiply that by 5 metres/second and you get 6900 metres
If you want to get your Phantom back and the higher level wind doesn't carry it away, you have 5 m/s climbing and 3 m/s descending which means you could allocate 37% of your battery to the climb and 63% to the descent.
Using 23 mins battery time that would get you up about 2550 metres.

If I'm at Denver which is 5300ft and the mountains close by are 14000 how high can I go will my drone fly or not if so what do you think my safe distance might be???

 

[Meta4]

If I'm at Denver which is 5300ft and the mountains close by are 14000 how high can I go will my drone fly or not if so what do you think my safe distance might be???

You can fly to 500 metres (1640 ft) above your launch point.
If you want to fly from high mountains the Phantom has a max ceiling height of 18000 ft so you'll have no issues in Colorado.

 

[DroneJI]

People people people most of us know the law is 400’ “from the launch site” but he’s asking what’s the maximum height it’s physically capable of going? If I were at Crater Lake Oregon I would already be thousands of feet above sea level. Or in Alaska I don’t know the height of the tallest mountain up there but say your at 18000’ will it fly from there or is the air to thin? I saw a idiot fly his MPP above 10000 from whatever altitude he was at (the MPP had to be hacked!?!?) but it went up pretty high i think the Phantoms are physically capable of going higher tan a mavic but I could be wrong? I personally would not want to fly from a already high location because of air currents at that altitude your bird may never be seen again.

 

[solentlife]

I'm no atmospheric Scientist .... but lets suggest this :

DJI state 6000m (as example) as the max height capability of a Phantom 3. That can only be based on standard atmospheric conditions and calculated lift vs weight of the P3. As the P3 climbs - it experiences a reduction of lift due to thinning of the atmosphere around it ... same as an aircraft does. P3 will reach a theoretical maximum altitude where lift = weight and it will basically hover (we'll ignore drift due to air currents etc).

Therefore - what is maximum height a P3 could attain if the 500m restriction was removed from FW ? It will all depend on atmospheric conditions at the time of flight. With a slight increase in air 'density' (I mark density as its not actually the correct term to use - but all understand it) ... the props can effectively give lift to a higher altitude. It really becomes an unknown result as in "How long is a piece of string" ....
In theory - the max altitude could be without limit if the air 'density' allows it.

Nigel