What is the law on distance and flying a drone, I assumed it was the same as planes and heli's where you must maintain visual contact with the aircraft the entire time.
P4 Range?
- Thread starter Moonie
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They don't say how far you can go, just line of sight. So it's open to interpretation. I can see really far away if I use binoculars...
N017RW
Premium Pilot
True but LOS is defined to exclude vision aids other than prescription lenses. Don't recall the specific verbiage.
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Here's an interesting article: FAA Cautiously Suggests Relaxed 'Line-Of-Sight' Rules For Drones
Sounds like they may allow FPV piloting as an alternative to LOS.
N017RW
Premium Pilot
Been only getting 8600 feet recently with my P4 using just the windsurfer antenna. Decided to change video channels in the software to channel 31 and fly 50 feet higher....took it out to 14,222 feet this morning with absolutely no video interference, and only a slight RC reduction at one point which cleared up....so lets see...
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Are you really comparing DJI to Porsche? A company that's been around for almost 85 years, is valued at 28 billion dollars, has a handle on customer service, and is ripe with German engineers.Nah, no problem Fredz. Its just that it goes like this.
"Hey Joe, you tried the new GT3 yet? Oh yeah, it's fast as hell. But Bob, did you notice the brakes? Oh yeah Joe, Porsche said those new brakes are as good or better than on the last GT3. Ah, no, I tried, they fade badly. The last GT3 had more effective brakes." Another guy comes and says "yeah, I bought the car and the brakes suck." Now comes the fourth guy into conversation and says "nah, the new GT3 stops wondeful. I changed the calipers to 8 piston AP, put in some massive floating rotors and that thing slows from 180 to zero with no fade lap after lap." Well, you get the picture
Hence, just like anything will stop well on huge calipers and rotors, not everyone wants to leave the Porsche dealer, after a long wait with promise of even better brakes, to finally receive their car and find out that those brakes on the old car were better in spite of the manufacturer promising better braking. And most didn't buy the best to now have to go and fit custom brakes when last year's model didn't require it in order to get excellent performance.
At least Porsche fesses up to mistakes like that when they happen and do their best to rectify the situation. Now DJI on the other hand....
I'd find another analogy.
SD
N017RW
Premium Pilot
DJI would be wise to move away from trying to predict range and use it for marketing. As many have said before ambient conditions dictate range amongst a population of similar devices.
Just finished another flight where the image was cutting out at 800 meters. No doubt about it, my personal phantom 4 has crap FPV compared to my 3 advanced. 800 meters brings me back to phantom 2 days.
How did you get to channel 31? Does the channel hack work with the updated go app for phantom 4?
N017RW
Premium Pilot
Yes, the channel didn't go away with the latest GO App update. Just changed from auto to custom and selected channel 31 which looked like it had very little interference....
In the past the numbers given for the advanced and pro were often exceeded. Now is a different ball game. I honestly feel that, as with the phantom 3, if people can get to 1 mile or 1.6 kilometers easy, the bitching stops. But when, like me today, you start having your image cut out on the successor to the phantom 3, the 1600 euro phantom 4, at around 800 meters, the bitching begins. Now had I come from the phantom 2 vision plus to the 4, I probably wouldn't be complaining much. But having flown my phantom 3s for over 300 flights, 98% of them past 2 kilometers on stock transmitters, the phantom 4 becomes a difficult adjustment. And while sometimes I got it to around 1600 meters, or maybe even 1800, compared to my phantom 3 it felt like a a hotel's WiFi. It begins to work and good, then not so good. An inconsistency of sorts. Then I would go and run the same course with the advanced and boom, solid until the end. Which, consequently, is always more distance. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.
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