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- Nov 2, 2014
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Whew! My GPS Tracker paid for itself today. What a day.
I went to a new place, at the juncture of two rivers, with a gorgeous Line of Sight in all directions to have some fun and to check out my ranges before my Stage 4 gets here on Monday. (Yay FPVLR!)
I went out with two batteries before this run, I was getting about 1700-1800 feet until the 2.4 and the 5.8 were cutting out almost simultaneously...RTH worked fine, and she'd come puttering back like normal. Life was good!
Until!
I went to go across to the other shore at the beginning of my third battery...I was paying attention to my distance...1800...1900...2000...wow! (Great for stock...no booster app) Oh, trees...maybe, need some altitude just in case...video static, cuts off. I throttle up and give right lateral inputs to try and stay from above a house, and clear the trees. I flip the failsafe. I hear from my location that the buzz changes to a more measured tone, so I was happy, it had gone into failsafe fine. Then 10 seconds later...no buzz. Ummmm. Nothing...the seconds pass. I am freaked out.
I wait maybe 2 minutes out of sheer hope that maybe I went deaf or something. I check the "Find my Phantom" in the app...the location it shows is on the water. My heart drops.
I pop open my GPS tracker that I installed on a leg of the bird, and the fix showed it supposedly in the yard of the house across the river. Thank goodness for that, or I'd of assumed the "Find my Phantom" was right and it was lost in the water.
I put the location in my car GPS, and the drive to get there was nearly an hour!!! Ugh.
So, I ended up driving there, freaked out the whole time...it was in the exact spot that the GPS Tracker has said it was...within 1 foot or less. I couldn't be more happy.
So...this is my "HOORAY FOR GPS TRACKERS" thread. For what it's worth, mine is a Trackimo...but I'm sure any other brand of tracker would have done fine in this situation also...so I'd rather tout a tracker generically, than specifically the Trackimo.
It appears the P2V+ DID go into failsafe and started heading back, but it just auto-landed shortly after. It wasn't the battery...I'd just taken off, and the battery was still at 50% an hour later when I got to it, sitting in standby mode without the engines running.
I'm going to assume that the satellite count dropped to below 6 on the way back, and it forgot where home was...so it executed the land at location feature.
Here's the video...is that about what it looks like happened? (Loss of gps sats leading to autoland)
http://youtu.be/4V57gN31sSA
Lessons learned? No more going out of 5.8 or 2.4 range on purpose. I'm grounding myself until I get the Stage 4 installed, so I can be confident I can keep control at all times via FPV. Like my video shows, you never know when you may lose gps sats. (It was very clear, and I was at 10-ish sats when I took off with that battery)
I went to a new place, at the juncture of two rivers, with a gorgeous Line of Sight in all directions to have some fun and to check out my ranges before my Stage 4 gets here on Monday. (Yay FPVLR!)
I went out with two batteries before this run, I was getting about 1700-1800 feet until the 2.4 and the 5.8 were cutting out almost simultaneously...RTH worked fine, and she'd come puttering back like normal. Life was good!
Until!
I went to go across to the other shore at the beginning of my third battery...I was paying attention to my distance...1800...1900...2000...wow! (Great for stock...no booster app) Oh, trees...maybe, need some altitude just in case...video static, cuts off. I throttle up and give right lateral inputs to try and stay from above a house, and clear the trees. I flip the failsafe. I hear from my location that the buzz changes to a more measured tone, so I was happy, it had gone into failsafe fine. Then 10 seconds later...no buzz. Ummmm. Nothing...the seconds pass. I am freaked out.
I wait maybe 2 minutes out of sheer hope that maybe I went deaf or something. I check the "Find my Phantom" in the app...the location it shows is on the water. My heart drops.
I pop open my GPS tracker that I installed on a leg of the bird, and the fix showed it supposedly in the yard of the house across the river. Thank goodness for that, or I'd of assumed the "Find my Phantom" was right and it was lost in the water.
I put the location in my car GPS, and the drive to get there was nearly an hour!!! Ugh.
So, I ended up driving there, freaked out the whole time...it was in the exact spot that the GPS Tracker has said it was...within 1 foot or less. I couldn't be more happy.
So...this is my "HOORAY FOR GPS TRACKERS" thread. For what it's worth, mine is a Trackimo...but I'm sure any other brand of tracker would have done fine in this situation also...so I'd rather tout a tracker generically, than specifically the Trackimo.
It appears the P2V+ DID go into failsafe and started heading back, but it just auto-landed shortly after. It wasn't the battery...I'd just taken off, and the battery was still at 50% an hour later when I got to it, sitting in standby mode without the engines running.
I'm going to assume that the satellite count dropped to below 6 on the way back, and it forgot where home was...so it executed the land at location feature.
Here's the video...is that about what it looks like happened? (Loss of gps sats leading to autoland)
http://youtu.be/4V57gN31sSA
Lessons learned? No more going out of 5.8 or 2.4 range on purpose. I'm grounding myself until I get the Stage 4 installed, so I can be confident I can keep control at all times via FPV. Like my video shows, you never know when you may lose gps sats. (It was very clear, and I was at 10-ish sats when I took off with that battery)