Another fly away

Flying Ant · Feb 14, 2017

This was really scared me as it would not return home.

I climed it as high as I could. It was scary as I totally lost it. I eventually had control over the drone, but had to find where to land it safely. It was a couple thousand feet away and over water.

This is the second time

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jbuy41 · Feb 14, 2017

Do you have your limits set for max attitude and distances?

rockydog · Feb 14, 2017

Nothing showing on your link.

Matts175 · Feb 14, 2017

When all else fails, just shut the transmitter right off. It will come home.

Are you sure you have the "Signal lost" set properly to "return to home"?

Flying Ant · Feb 14, 2017

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Flying Ant · Feb 14, 2017

When I hit RTH, it didn't stop. I cannot remember 100% hearing "home point updated" - but it looked as if was going to the previous home spot.

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Further, the drone was getting incredible amounts of interference so I was planning to stay close.

Flying Ant · Feb 14, 2017

rockydog said:
Nothing showing on your link.

Fixed.

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With The Birds · Feb 14, 2017

you got a compass error almost immediately after take off. You should have used the map to fly home manually rather than attempting RTH, if it engages there is a good chance it won't come back to the home point flying with bad heading data.

Loz · Feb 14, 2017

Matts175 said:
When all else fails, just shut the transmitter right off. It will come home.

As mentioned in previous post, This is not always true, most normal times yes, but in this case it appears there was a compass error, so relying on automated RTH which requires working compass, would be optimistic at best.
In these situations, by observing RTH is not working as it should, best to switch to ATTI mode and fly manually home.

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With The Birds · Feb 14, 2017

Loz said:
This is not always true, most normal times yes, but in this case it appears there was a compass error, so relying on automated RTH which requires working compass, would be optimistic at best.
In these situations, by observing RTH is not working as it should, best to switch to ATTI mode and fly manually home.

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Yep. Good chance the AC will drift with the prevailing wind in ATTI mode until performing an autoland at critical battery in these circumstances.

Loz · Feb 14, 2017

Yes by manually flying (rather than drifting) one is flying back - compensating for prevailing conditions manually, intending to get back before battery dies like any other flight. I'm not saying it's necessarily easy, rather when things go bad like this, this is a (the only?) way to get AC back in one piece.

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With The Birds · Feb 14, 2017

Loz said:
Yes by manually flying (rather than drifting) one is flying back - compensating for prevailing conditions manually, intending to get back before battery dies like any other flight. I'm not saying it's necessarily easy, rather when things go bad like this, this is a (the only?) way to get AC back in one piece.

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Well that was my suggestion. It has worked for me when I stupidly launched from a metal structure and ended up with the depicted heading almost 180deg from actual.

geoffN · Feb 15, 2017

Flying Ant said:
This was really scared me as it would not return home.

I climed it as high as I could. It was scary as I totally lost it. I eventually had control over the drone, but had to find where to land it safely. It was a couple thousand feet away and over water.

This is the second time

HealthyDrones.com - Innovative flight data analysis that matters

If it's happened before and it was "scary".............. seems a bit mad to do the same thing again + over water?!!

ChiefStealth · Feb 15, 2017

In the logs, there are several times when the drone changes into Atti mode. That means a GPS problem. RTH relies on GPS too. If you have GPS problems, RTH will not work right. You should have seen the Atti mode problem, and landed immediately.

Flying Ant · Feb 15, 2017

geoffN said:
If it's happened before and it was "scary".............. seems a bit mad to do the same thing again + over water?!!

I live on Long Island - flying over water is somewhat inevitable. But the days Flight wasn't supposed to be over water, but on the shore line instead. It took off over water.

With that, the first time it happened it was strange. I did a bunch of test flights that day and in days following and everything was fine. No actually flew it further than I ever attempted after the first incident (479M in a residential area). The captor was fine.

When it flew away yesterday, it was my third take off of the day. The first 2 were fine. Besides the normal "strong interference" warning, it was very responsive. Then it happened.

I left it in as I drove from 1 parking lot to another. I wonder if that had anything to do with it?

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FLBoyZ06 · Feb 15, 2017

I don't understand the "the normal 'strong interference' warning comment. That doesn't sound normal to me.

DanMan32 · Feb 15, 2017

You would think if the compass information was known to be bad, that the AC would instead get it's heading from GPS. Not ideal, but it is something, as long as it is moving horizontally rather than wandering completely in the wrong direction.
I've also wondered why you can turn off VPS, but not GPS. Indoors, you're likely better off with VPS only.

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Loz · Feb 19, 2017

DanMan32 said:
I've also wondered why you can turn off VPS, but not GPS. Indoors, you're likely better off with VPS only.

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Indoors (under bridges etc) you'd want to switch to ATTI flight mode, which ignores GPS, allowing for manageable flight control without GPS - it's one of several reasons that it's a good idea to learn how to fly in ATTI mode.

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