Post your personal best range P3P/Adv
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Oso
Premium Pilot
I debated whether or not to post this since I didn't want to sound like I was bragging. In the end, I chose to brag.
Below is a screen shot of my old P3A floating between Pluto and one of it's moons, Charon. That's roughly 7.45 billion kilometers away, and I still had one bar of control signal and one bar of video (FPV) signal. My only mod was that I cut a Coke can in half and put one half on each antenna. Even with that high tech mod, I still lost contact for about 12 hours each day. Maybe it was when my location on Earth turned away from Pluto and I no longer had LOS for the signal. Hopefully the experts can chime in on that if you want. It didn't RTH because it didn't have any sats for GPS.
The trick to saving battery is that once I escaped Earth's atmosphere, I let go of the sticks so it would float through space without using too much battery power. The only glitch I had is that when it reached Pluto and I did give it some throttle, I got the pesky "Propulsion output was limited to protect battery" message. I think it was due to the coldness of space, so the battery was not warm enough. I just ignored it. I mean it's not like it could fall out of the sky, right? What may have actually saved me power wise though is that I turned off the front LEDs. No doubt that was a BIG help.
I know you guys probably think this is not true, so I have to confess. I actually launched from a hot air balloon near my mother's house in Rio Rancho, New Mexico so that it would be easier to reach space. Because of that, my starting altitude was actually about 2000 feet AGL. That may be cheating, but I still think the range is impressive.
My plan is to use Pluto's gravity to propel my P3A back to Earth. If it goes badly, I do have my FAA number attached and I will take full responsibility. If the label burns off during re-entry, well then never mind. It wasn't me.
Below is a screen shot of my old P3A floating between Pluto and one of it's moons, Charon. That's roughly 7.45 billion kilometers away, and I still had one bar of control signal and one bar of video (FPV) signal. My only mod was that I cut a Coke can in half and put one half on each antenna. Even with that high tech mod, I still lost contact for about 12 hours each day. Maybe it was when my location on Earth turned away from Pluto and I no longer had LOS for the signal. Hopefully the experts can chime in on that if you want. It didn't RTH because it didn't have any sats for GPS.
The trick to saving battery is that once I escaped Earth's atmosphere, I let go of the sticks so it would float through space without using too much battery power. The only glitch I had is that when it reached Pluto and I did give it some throttle, I got the pesky "Propulsion output was limited to protect battery" message. I think it was due to the coldness of space, so the battery was not warm enough. I just ignored it. I mean it's not like it could fall out of the sky, right? What may have actually saved me power wise though is that I turned off the front LEDs. No doubt that was a BIG help.
I know you guys probably think this is not true, so I have to confess. I actually launched from a hot air balloon near my mother's house in Rio Rancho, New Mexico so that it would be easier to reach space. Because of that, my starting altitude was actually about 2000 feet AGL. That may be cheating, but I still think the range is impressive.
My plan is to use Pluto's gravity to propel my P3A back to Earth. If it goes badly, I do have my FAA number attached and I will take full responsibility. If the label burns off during re-entry, well then never mind. It wasn't me.
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I usually fly with DJI Go on my Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 9.7" tablet, though I also have Litchi. I use an Android app AZ Screen Recorder to record the flight on the S2. For that YouTube video, I used Cyberlink PowerDirector 13 Ultra to overlay those telemetry data onto the actual video recorded by the P3A.
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