First RTH experience

[Liamus27]

Heart in the mouth time at the weekend as I experienced by first signal loss with RTH automatically activated. Fortunately the aircraft was really close to me so no great panic but I launched from a fairly thin piece of pathway by a river so was concerned about the accuracy of the RTH landing him in the water. He returned as expected and I (for some reason) couldn't cancel the RTH so I reverted to ATTI mode and took control as I didn't want him to land. All in all no big deal but was momentarily worrying.

The Phantom was only 550ish feet away when it happened so can only assume the train line bridge I flew over interrupted the signal?

 

[p fandango]

you get used to it after a few times when it does as it should, i normally rely on it to RTH once the battery is getting low. I still worry when I know the wrong switch, & activate the failsafe/RTH instead of going back to GPS from using ATTI lol

 

[richwoodrocket]

I almost never let it return to home and land. When I get it in range again I take over control again.
The beeping is too annoying to let it land by itself. Plus it can draw unwanted attention...


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[Liamus27]

I almost never let it return to home and land. When I get it in range again I take over control again.
The beeping is too annoying to let it land by itself. Plus it can draw unwanted attention...


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Do you take over by cancelling the RTH or switching to ATTI?

 

[Exception]

I have used RTH several times when getting out of range. This past weekend I had a rather close call. Knowing that I would be flying around some building I set the RTH altitude to 400”, but was unsure based on my home location if the high was high enough. When I lost signal behind a building RTH initiated as normal, but I began to panic second guessing myself and hitting the controls. As the aircraft was raising it picked up my throttle forward command around 200” and began to head home. Lucky for me it was just a really really close call, and a cheap lesson. Tips: verify RTH altitude is well above all surroundings (which was) and trust RTH to do its thing (don’t hit the controls, especially throttle forward).

 

[captainmilehigh]

Yeah, it's hard not to panic and try to blindly fly it back. I too set my RTH altitude high enough to clear everything in its path on the return. If that pic is how close it was to the building on its return, you were lucky. A bunch of us just learned a valuable lesson here. Thanks for sharing. [emoji106]


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[Jayfdee]

Yes the first unplanned RTH is scary,as others have commented I usually retake control and hand catch.
I have had 3or 4 genuine loss of signal RTHs, and have regularly tested the function by turning off the transmitter.