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- Apr 5, 2014
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I have been on travel for a week and missed my bird so much that I had to take it for a evening flight when I came home.
It was cloudy and it had been raining but now the wind was calm.
I waited for Home Lock, and waited and waited. Could only get 5-6 satellites. (Usually get 7-11 from same spot)
Tried another more open location. Waited a long time and finally got stadey green lights and 7 sats.
Took of and let it hover as I always do for a while to see if all was normal. After some minute I decided to fly some 30m away and 15m up. Then I noticed that the back wings stopped blinking green and instead red like on low battery. At this point my bird started to live its own life! Drifting a lot in random directions. I COULD NOT CONTROL IT! Not decent or anything! I was ready to do a "emergency" rotor-shut-down but realized that every now and then it got satellite signal (7 satellites) for 3-5 sec. The back wing lights turned to green blinking again and meanwhile I could get back some control. But only for some 3-5 sec at the time! Eventually with a lot of effort I got it down for a hand-catch.
I realized that if there is a satellite issue the control is completely lost! The altitude was also showing very different values all the time. +- some 50m!
I think many fly-aways can be related to satellite lock! I think that if you go under 7sats after takeoff it will set a new Home Lock position in a rather random place. Then it will try to fly there and on the way it might lose satellite lock again and then get a new position even more far away!
Just checked this site: http://www.multirotoruk.co.uk/solar-weather
I realize now I was a fool to try fly with dodgy satellite connections!
EDIT: If it was not a night flight and it was very close so I could see exactly what direction it was I don´t think I would have made it back! I am 90% sure that RTH would have not done anything at all to help since the satellite connection went in and out at random.
It was cloudy and it had been raining but now the wind was calm.
I waited for Home Lock, and waited and waited. Could only get 5-6 satellites. (Usually get 7-11 from same spot)
Tried another more open location. Waited a long time and finally got stadey green lights and 7 sats.
Took of and let it hover as I always do for a while to see if all was normal. After some minute I decided to fly some 30m away and 15m up. Then I noticed that the back wings stopped blinking green and instead red like on low battery. At this point my bird started to live its own life! Drifting a lot in random directions. I COULD NOT CONTROL IT! Not decent or anything! I was ready to do a "emergency" rotor-shut-down but realized that every now and then it got satellite signal (7 satellites) for 3-5 sec. The back wing lights turned to green blinking again and meanwhile I could get back some control. But only for some 3-5 sec at the time! Eventually with a lot of effort I got it down for a hand-catch.
I realized that if there is a satellite issue the control is completely lost! The altitude was also showing very different values all the time. +- some 50m!
I think many fly-aways can be related to satellite lock! I think that if you go under 7sats after takeoff it will set a new Home Lock position in a rather random place. Then it will try to fly there and on the way it might lose satellite lock again and then get a new position even more far away!
Just checked this site: http://www.multirotoruk.co.uk/solar-weather
I realize now I was a fool to try fly with dodgy satellite connections!
EDIT: If it was not a night flight and it was very close so I could see exactly what direction it was I don´t think I would have made it back! I am 90% sure that RTH would have not done anything at all to help since the satellite connection went in and out at random.