So I was flying and, while discussing with bystanders late evening, on my fourth battery, didn't notice that the bird was flying at 25 m/s. When I noticed, it was 4.5 km away, and I had crossed a lake. Only then the screen went off with poor reception. Having had the bird RTH by itself many times, I didn't worry, and of course, it came back online, happily returning home...
...or rather, trying hard to do so. Air speed's different from ground speed, of course. And while it had taken like 20 seconds to cross that lake, it now took like over 5 minutes. No way to see that bird back. So once the lake was crossed and some forest too, I was over open fields and started to descend to land it somewhere safely.
Needless to say, screen went off again. It's not a disc world after all... So we jumped into our car and gained higher ground and more proximity. The screen never came back online. Having written it off in my mind, I still kept the left control fully down to land, hoping it would at some point pass on signal, even if it didn't get anything back.
We ended up finding it. Happily sitting in the field, blinking its red lights frantically with low power, which helped us locating it as it was getting dark. Of course one of those flights I had been too lazy to put my trackimo on... When we picked it up, it did its last breath and switched off. As we controlled the recording later, it had been sitting there since 16 minutes. Also, from the video it appeared it had come down in several steps, like as if it was receiving at times my order to go lower - and at the end it very quickly and safely landed.
So question: I have RTH set. Would it anyway do a safe landing by itself, or was it my keeping the lever down all the time that made it land?
Thanks!
M
...or rather, trying hard to do so. Air speed's different from ground speed, of course. And while it had taken like 20 seconds to cross that lake, it now took like over 5 minutes. No way to see that bird back. So once the lake was crossed and some forest too, I was over open fields and started to descend to land it somewhere safely.
Needless to say, screen went off again. It's not a disc world after all... So we jumped into our car and gained higher ground and more proximity. The screen never came back online. Having written it off in my mind, I still kept the left control fully down to land, hoping it would at some point pass on signal, even if it didn't get anything back.
We ended up finding it. Happily sitting in the field, blinking its red lights frantically with low power, which helped us locating it as it was getting dark. Of course one of those flights I had been too lazy to put my trackimo on... When we picked it up, it did its last breath and switched off. As we controlled the recording later, it had been sitting there since 16 minutes. Also, from the video it appeared it had come down in several steps, like as if it was receiving at times my order to go lower - and at the end it very quickly and safely landed.
So question: I have RTH set. Would it anyway do a safe landing by itself, or was it my keeping the lever down all the time that made it land?
Thanks!
M