A cold, breezy flight with some lessons learned

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After having a great flight the other day, I've been desperate to get out, but the wind up here is really strong, with the lowest being 15m/s since I filmed this video.
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Today the forecast showed 8m/s AGL pushing up to 12 at 50m but I thought I'd see how I got on. As soon as I stepped out in my proposed flight area, I knew that I would be pushing it, but, since I spent 10 minutes getting dressed and half an hour walking there, I decided to do some very controlled testing, just to see how the P3S handled the conditions and then share my experience here.

Conditions were 8m/s AGL NW with gusts of God knows what (they are pretty strong, but certain areas of the island are sheltered, didn't turn out that way today though)
-12C with windchill
0% snow.
Low humidity (very important as didn't want prop freeze)
Takeoff Location

In the interest of safety, I set myself a rough ceiling of 30m and was in a very wide open area. I keep the batteries inside my coat against my body so they stay warm.

Flew around a bit and noticed that some of the gusts were diverting the drone even though I was on GPS with 10+ satellites. I did fly up to ~70m at one point but it was really windy up there so didn't stay long. A bit later I also got the warning "Propulsion output is limited to ensure the health of the battery." which I've never had before, but guessed it must be a combination of having to cane the battery to combat the wind and the windchill. I brought it back at that point at 40% power after 13mins flying (minutes per battery on HD=27m36), not much worse than I get on a good day. Given I didn't fly very far, but I hand grabbed it rather than watching it descending before getting gusted bouncing off rocks and into the sea.

Lo and behold healthydrones log shows that there was a 'Major Deviation' on cell one. Should be okay though if I avoid these conditions again.
I've shared the HD flight log here for those who may be interested.

Sorry for the long post, but thought someone might be interested
 
I drive a Lithium powered car and can say that in cold temperatures both the output and the input are limited to protect the battery cells. In my car these limits show as dotted lines on the energy use display. It seems that Lithium is more sensitive to temperature than other battery chemistries. I am really encouraged to hear that DJI has designed temperature protective logic into the Phantom line.
 
Awesome video. Always strange isn't it you would t have guessed there was any wind looking at the video.

What is that peice of music. I like it a lot?
 
Awesome video. Always strange isn't it you would t have guessed there was any wind looking at the video.

What is that peice of music. I like it a lot?

Dazza, I'm sorry that was misleading, the video was from a day without wind. I was just showing what I was trying to recreate. The music is credited at the end, can't remember what it's called
 
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After having a great flight the other day, I've been desperate to get out, but the wind up here is really strong, with the lowest being 15m/s since I filmed this video.
To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
Today the forecast showed 8m/s AGL pushing up to 12 at 50m but I thought I'd see how I got on. As soon as I stepped out in my proposed flight area, I knew that I would be pushing it, but, since I spent 10 minutes getting dressed and half an hour walking there, I decided to do some very controlled testing, just to see how the P3S handled the conditions and then share my experience here.

Conditions were 8m/s AGL NW with gusts of God knows what (they are pretty strong, but certain areas of the island are sheltered, didn't turn out that way today though)
-12C with windchill
0% snow.
Low humidity (very important as didn't want prop freeze)
Takeoff Location

In the interest of safety, I set myself a rough ceiling of 30m and was in a very wide open area. I keep the batteries inside my coat against my body so they stay warm.

Flew around a bit and noticed that some of the gusts were diverting the drone even though I was on GPS with 10+ satellites. I did fly up to ~70m at one point but it was really windy up there so didn't stay long. A bit later I also got the warning "Propulsion output is limited to ensure the health of the battery." which I've never had before, but guessed it must be a combination of having to cane the battery to combat the wind and the windchill. I brought it back at that point at 40% power after 13mins flying (minutes per battery on HD=27m36), not much worse than I get on a good day. Given I didn't fly very far, but I hand grabbed it rather than watching it descending before getting gusted bouncing off rocks and into the sea.

Lo and behold healthydrones log shows that there was a 'Major Deviation' on cell one. Should be okay though if I avoid these conditions again.
I've shared the HD flight log here for those who may be interested.

Sorry for the long post, but thought someone might be interested
Upload you flight here, copy paste the results url here, you might see some more info, then health drones displays.

Rod
 
Your flight log is on your mobile device, The same data that lets play back you flight on your mobile.
Nothing to with the sd camera card.

Rod
 
Does it matter that I've already uploaded it to Healthy Drones?
Sorry, it took me a day get back.
Nope, it should still be on your mobile device. If you can playback your flight.
The screen before you pick camera view, no need to be connected, top left icon, I think it called academy, didn't make that far in skool.

Rod
 
@RodPad I must be being dense, I can't find out how to do it. I've gone into the flight log which is still there but there doesn't seem to be a way to get a .txt file out of it. The only options I have are to sync it with DJI cloud or 'Share it with my friends' on facebook etc...
 
I fly in New Brunswick Canada and recently in -8 to -15C with winds up to 20kmh. I.m glad to see I'm not the only one to have the propulsion limit warning. After flying a 4.6km circuit, my P3 4k came back up wind at only 1m/s. That's a very long and slow return over 500m! Fortunately I started to take a walk so I could land it early. 17% power with 200m to go when I landed it. I'm not sure it would have made it home since the altitude was 100m.
 

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