Minor crash. How do you land QUICKLY when bat goes red?

[IceFireSoul]

Hello,

Last night I was flying above the biggest stadium here in Sofia; where the Roger Waters show is being prepared (during the night). At one point I got the red battery lamp; I was already descending at that time - but couldn't descent as fast as I wanted. I usually pull the left lever to about 1.5 marks down (the little line marks on the knob itself); 1.5 down below center position - and try to make circles at the same time.

Last night this didn't suffice and Phantom fell and self-landed in the stadium. I had luck the guys gave it back.

How do you land FAST?

 

[edunwody]

I time my flights. I know at 8 mins plus I will run out of gas. I get the phantom in close at 6 mins.
I hand catch 90percent of the time.
If you fly it too far away and when you get the first light. It will crash. Must be close when you get the first light.

End of story.

E


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[IceFireSoul]

Not enough. I time mine too-at 5 mins alarm goes and I start heading home; I also hand-catch it.

But-sometimes after the 5 mins I can hover closeby for 5 more; other times at 5 I see the red light and panic. Also, if I am high (like 140 meters up) and alarm hits, just taking it down takes me 3-4 minutes-so was the question-how fast can you descend safely?

 

[martcerv]

Didnt you crash because it came down quicker then you wanted, and you needed more time to get it back to where you wanted to land

Once auto land kicks in throttle hover percentage goes up steadily until it is at 90%, if you gave it more throttle and flew back towards your intended landing site you may have made it back, once battery gets very low it will drop even at 100% throttle and if you have a heavy phantom this will be much faster then a stock light phantom so try and avoid this auto land completly if you are flying heavy and struggling for lift. But being far away at the end of your battery life is never a good idea and why timing your flights is a best so make sure you are in a safe area with a couple minutes left in your max flight time.

The fastest way down would be in manual mode, pitching nose down and let it drop then give it throttle at the bottom to level out. This is a very high risk maneuver though and if you haven't mastered manual control then it will bring it down faster but most likely end in a big crash. I would also never try this with very low battery as you may not have enough juice to level out at the bottom ending in a big crash again. In GPS or ATTI mode its pretty slow to get down from higher altitudes and at times it may not look like its descending at all so try avoid being too high near the end of your flight, never drop throttle below 10% as this may shut down the motors.

 

[Nwales]

I timed my flights at first I the field next to my house, an soon as red light flashed I checked the timer normally 6-8 mins .

Plus if using go pro you can check recording time, to give you a idea how long you been flying .

I now have dual batteries so get a bit long flight time , and I only found last night my futaba t8 has two timers on it :lol:

So first timer is set at 6mins just to let me know getting close , an second timer beeps at 8mins so by the time 8mins beep I know I should be fairly close to landing point .

Last thing you want is auto land in a lake /river/sea etc :lol:

 

[Buk]

A little off topic, but do you start your timers when you plug the battery in or when you start the propellers and take off? By the time I plug in, wait for green lights and do the calibration dance, that's a couple of minutes.

 

[martcerv]

I time from take off to landing, the warm up doesnt use much battery and I know my battery times for total flight which always starts up after the warm up anyway.

First flight takes the longest warm up time but all flights after its ready to go 15 seconds or so after a battery change yet total flight time is pretty much the same with slow and fast warm up for me.

 

[IceFireSoul]

So, you say, don't turn lever more than 10% down to prevent motors shut-off. Does it mean I can turn it down at least 2/3s? As currently I am afraid to put it down more than like 40% (Meaning I keep it close to center point when descending to avoid prop wash).

 

[martcerv]

You can lower it but to avoid propwash you will need to also be moving in a direction not straight back down through its own turbulence. I have seen mine get very out of shape early on when descending quickly but now I never descend straight down to avoid this. I mostly use the phantom to shoot video so getting bad propwash turbulance ruins the footage and I dont like the look of a phantom that looks like it may start doing its own flips. In GPS or ATTI modes I rarely would go below 25% throttle only if flying in atti fairly quickly forward and seeing that I am about to hit something unless I drop atlitude quickly. Manual mode is a different beast altogether giving you much greater control over altitude gains and drops where the other flight modes the NAZA's primary function is to maintain a level altitude so this can be a bit tricky to drop down quickly and smoothly fighting the NAZA and turbulance as it also tries to maintain a level attitude which is what causes the prop was descending while level.

A while back I had a similar incident to you when I got caught in an updraft and by the time I realized how high I was I was pretty crazy high. I had FPV and good clear video all along but kind of found it hard to see my landing zone which from up there wasnt visible as it was well below and out of sight. I was running a timer and so did know I had not much time left to land but I also didnt want it coming down in the large dam or thick forest around me.

Here is the video, its private as I dont really want to publicly show the altitude as it wasnt deliberate and this was very hard to get it down at all. I found I wasnt dropping much altitude until I got well in-front of the dam wall that was causing the updraft, lesson learned here when flying such a location with a gentle breeze blowing straight off the valley and onto the wall flying above this is not a good idea.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv1F2zkqSX4[/youtube]

If this would happen to me again I would use my manual mode quick descent trick, this would both help me pitch down to an angle I could see well below me and also let me drop altitude quickly if I could see that below me was safe. Next time I fly I will film a fast descent in manual mod to show how it can be done but an example from not a great height can be seen in this other video below at 4:28s though you can nose down much more for an even faster descent here I was only about 45 degrees but I have gone to slightly inverted a few times and the ground comes at you rather quickly that way lol. Flying LOS this method is quite risky as you need very clear view of the orientation and if out of sight you will likely get it just spinning completely out of control. With this method you dont really need to drop throttle too much just pitch the nose until it loses lift then level it out again near the bottom.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jTnb-szvYE[/youtube]