Testing long distance navigation and RTH feature on P3P

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The DJI app does not have a compass heading to follow, so I had to use a hand-held compass to find an old World War II tank buried in the desert. The scenery is not beautiful. It is pure open desert.

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Great video, just wish i had s dessert here in the UK , i sent my phantom 3 standard 350m out to sea but got a little nervous to say the least
 
Love it. Great video. Grandpa, believe me you don't want a desert. I live in Dubai and there is nothing to film but sand.


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Love it. Great video. Grandpa, believe me you don't want a desert. I live in Dubai and there is nothing to film but sand.


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You know, I love my desert. Don't get me wrong, I love the forest and trees too. But right now there are so many forest fires burning in this state that I'm glad I don't have anything to burn around me. The state, California, is pretty dry from the drought we are in the middle of. And the accumulation of decaying foliage has not burned in decades. In the county next to mine, San Bernadino county, 85,000 people had to be evacuated, and 200 homes have been burned. I can see the smoke from 90 miles away. It looks like an Atomic Bomb went off over there. There are about 6 major fires burning in the state right now. I love being able to go out of my back door, more of less, and ride my Quad (4 wheeled off road vehicle) for 40 miles in any direction without hitting a fence. You and I live in different kinds of desert.
 
The DJI app does not have a compass heading to follow, so I had to use a hand-held cversatile ss to find an old World War II tank buried in the desert. The scenery is not beautiful. It is pure open desert.

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Nice video. I also have some of the older Garmin GPS handheld units. I have 3 of the GPs 5 units. Not color and small screen but very versatile units. They were mainly built for hikers etc but could have some street data also. Only drawback was the 19 mb download for street map data. The 5 had auto routing. Not sure the 3+ had that. You could just enter gps coordinates and it would take you there plus it did many other great things.
I also have the Garmin Oregon 400. It's color and has a real time compass. I find these in pawn shops cheap. Well worth having. The gps 5 was $499 when it came out. The Oregon was over $400. You can turn off street data for people in the bush to unclutter screen. As gps units got more popular and used in cars, a lot of the hiking features were not available in them. But you could find a pizza shop or nail salon. I have one on my jet ski, atv, and my bike.. I have the Drone Mods gps tracker to put on my Phantoms. I can call it, I will get the coordinates and then enter that into the gps unit to track a lost drone. Hasn't happened yet. I could use the gps on my phone but I like the Garmin better. Plus, if my phone didn't have reception where drone was lost...what good is that? I know what you must be thinking. If my phone had no reception, how could I call it. I could drive away to where I could get phone reception, call it and get coordinates. ...enter them into gps and go back to find drone.
 
Monte55
I got my first GPS, which was a Garmin GPS 38, back in bout 1998 or 9. It did not work very well. Lost signal in trees and deep canyons. Ended up mounting it on my boat. Mainly used it for tracking. I finally got the Garmin GPS 3 plus at WalMart for about $350.00. Fell in love with it. My son and I go fishing a lot up on the San Joaquin Delta in California. Hundreds of small channels and tiny island to navigate around. You can easily get lost on the water out there. The last time we went I it was foggy as Hell. Could not see more than 50 feet in front of you. Fortunately I had created a route through the water ways by using my TOPO Map program. I created a waypoint for every turn we had to make. We followed the GPS route on the Garmin. Making turn after turn without ever seeing land or sky. It reminded me of flying on instrument in actual IMC. There were 24 different waypoints to follow. We finally reached the last one and dropped anchor. When the fog finally lifted and we could see where we were, we were right in the middle of Frank's Track fishing spot exactly where we wanted to be. Later in the day, the fog came back in as we were heading for the dock. We just reversed the route and headed in. Soon, we had 4 other boats following in our wake. They were lost. We signaled to them to follow us, and they did. It was so cool.
The only bad thing was, that there were no **** fish in Frank's Track that day.
Two years ago, I lost my precious Garmin GPS 3 plus in the desert somewhere. Never did find it. So I went on eBay and found a ton of them for under $50.00. I bought three! Now I have one in my truck and one mounted on my Quad. The other is just a spare.
I also used my when I was flying cross county in my C-210. It wasn't aviation legal, but I sure could hold a track well. It gave me altitude, heading, track, and ground speed. I loved it.
 
Monte55
I got my first GPS, which was a Garmin GPS 38, back in bout 1998 or 9. It did not work very well. Lost signal in trees and deep canyons. Ended up mounting it on my boat. Mainly used it for tracking. I finally got the Garmin GPS 3 plus at WalMart for about $350.00. Fell in love with it. My son and I go fishing a lot up on the San Joaquin Delta in California. Hundreds of small channels and tiny island to navigate around. You can easily get lost on the water out there. The last time we went I it was foggy as Hell. Could not see more than 50 feet in front of you. Fortunately I had created a route through the water ways by using my TOPO Map program. I created a waypoint for every turn we had to make. We followed the GPS route on the Garmin. Making turn after turn without ever seeing land or sky. It reminded me of flying on instrument in actual IMC. There were 24 different waypoints to follow. We finally reached the last one and dropped anchor. When the fog finally lifted and we could see where we were, we were right in the middle of Frank's Track fishing spot exactly where we wanted to be. Later in the day, the fog came back in as we were heading for the dock. We just reversed the route and headed in. Soon, we had 4 other boats following in our wake. They were lost. We signaled to them to follow us, and they did. It was so cool.
The only bad thing was, that there were no **** fish in Frank's Track that day.
Two years ago, I lost my precious Garmin GPS 3 plus in the desert somewhere. Never did find it. So I went on eBay and found a ton of them for under $50.00. I bought three! Now I have one in my truck and one mounted on my Quad. The other is just a spare.
I also used my when I was flying cross county in my C-210. It wasn't aviation legal, but I sure could hold a track well. It gave me altitude, heading, track, and ground speed. I loved it.
I really wished I would have had one of these when I was flying my 150. I think they had Loran then but not in my budget. I love these things.
 
Grandpa. Great reply. Yes we do live in very different deserts. It shot hot hot here with little else but sand and a few palm trees. I am really looking forward to temps coming down which means I can fly again. 40 plus is no fun.


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Grandpa ... if you have the coords to the tank already, open up Google Earth, make a waypoint on that coordinate pair, export the file to KML, and get a copy of Litchi or Autopilot and import it into a mission .. Then you can fly directly to the tank/coords. No need for the Garmin, sadly.
 
I've been considering buying Litchi. Have to think about it a little more. What does Autopilot cost?
I think AutoFlight AutoPilot retails for about $40 USD. It is very robust, but the main difference between the 2 of them and it is a considerable one in my opinion is:

Litchi missions are cached on the aircraft. This means losing signal is not consequential - losing GPS is a problem. If signal is lost, the aircraft could care less and will continue following its instructions (mission).

Autopilot runs real-time from the TX and depends on telecommunication between TX and AC .. this puts a high level of importance on connectivity between bird and transmitter. If one should lose connectivity, the mission could very well be scrubbed. Autopilot is a very robust platform however, barring that issue. Extremely fine control and activity are realized with the Autopilot interface.

The serious aerial videographer would make good use of both methinks. Great aerial videography is not dependent on flight autonomy however. There is no substitute for good planning, creative vision and creative foresight, and a bit of serendipity, luck even!
 

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