All about the Range

[Quinten]

hello,

My name is Quinten and I am new to the drone scene with the P3s being my first ever drone. Had recently saw a video of the parrot disco fixed wing drone coming to reality and decided I would finally take a plunge into this hobby. Was initially going to buy their bebop 2 drone but seeing as this was the same price it was a no brainer which one to go with.

For one I live in Chicago in a very urban district so I know I'm going to have to drive out to parks or rural areas to really be able to use it. My question though has anyone used one in a city environment?? Is it even remotely possible??? Can I go to one of the neighborhood parks and still be able to affectively control it still being in a heavily populated area?

Two I plan on buying the dbs attenna mod to go with it but was reading that it doesn't really affect the video streaming. I hope that part isn't true as that's the part I'm interested in the most.

I'm honestly more interested in the fixed wing drones more than the helicopters which is why I can't justify myself spending close to 1k on one. Hopefully dji responds with a fixed wing one as well. Just hoping I can get some usefulness out of the p3s while I wait for that disco drone to come out.


Edit: forgot I'm also in a car club and was interested in getting rolling videos and pictures while we drive around. How capable do you think this drone is with having a moving point of interest like that.

 

[Noble 1]

You can absolutely pilot your drone in any public park in Line Of Sight. I flew my fpv quad in Central Park in NY and you should not have problems. Behind buildings, yes but not at the park!

From what I've read, dbs mod will allow you greater penetration for both video and transmitter signal in city. The brick buildings are going to be a problem tho. It will penetrate through blocks of regular houses but brick and concrete, car garages, tall steel buildings... lots of wifi interference... you may have to purchase additional mod such as the "bird side range mod" which is an am you put on the phantom. Also, problem may be that the P3S has no lightbridge technology- therefore, you may be limited to line of sight in a very serious sense.

In regards to Point Of Interest with a moving vehicle the answer is no. POI uses a gps location xyz coordinates and then you set altitude, circumference, and speed of travel. It will not do this for a moving object. However, you can turn on Follow Me or Tether and you should be able to keep the remote in a moving car and be able to do something really similar to POI. From what I understand about tethering, you should be able to choose tether mode and then pan left or right and it will keep you at the center of view. Its the mode that changes the orientation so no matter which way the drone faces "back" on the right stick will be towards the remote.

 

[Quinten]

Ok that's what I meant using the follow me feature then. So with that can I set the altitude as well and have it be able to keep up even going say around 30mph??? How would that be on battery life as well???

Yea I saw someone mention that bird sight mod. I will see how it performs after a dbs mod first to see if that necessary. So let's say though if I was to sit on the roof of my house which is in a very populated neighborhood with lots of wifi signals around I should still be able to get a good signal between my bird and the remote right?? I would like to be able to take good pictures of the neighborhood as well but seeing as it's a very populated area. If I were to lose it the chances of me finding it again would probsbly be very slim compared to bring in a rural area lol

 

[Noble 1]

Yep, so you turn on p3p, ascend, turn on follow me. It will ask for altitude and for distance away from you. You set those 2 parameters and then it will follow. So then you set your remote on your passenger seat or hand it to your wingman. Then as you drive your car the p3p will follow at set distance and altitude. This shouldn't hurt the flight time much, its not aggressive flying.

I know that phantoms have had issues with "return to home" feature landing on roofs and buildings due to gps but as far as I can tell, you should be able to take off from your roof, fly around your neighborhood and get sweet shots all over and not likely get lost. If you lose video stream you can hit the return to home button and it should increase its altitude, and then travel to your rooftop and land.