Night flight, I'm addicted

HienoKaveri said:
had a close call at night myself too. blasted off from my home yard and went for a walk, with the Phantom in the air. I didn't realize it but I walked pretty far away from home, and was taking the Phantom higher and higher. So I'm up at about 3500ft high (yes, really) admiring the strings of lit roads below, and the battery alarm goes off. I also lose connection now, RTH initiated. I realize to my horror, homepoint is at home where I left, the bastard will run out of fuel before it will get there and have time to land with the slow descent. I desperately try to regain control, yes, get it back and can see telemetry. It's coming down sooooooooooooooo slow, can't see or hear it yet. By now I'm preparing to accept that I've lost it.. still try to descend and moving around at the same time pretty much at random. Finally I see red/green lights and am able to bring it closer to me, battery down around 15%.... keep coming down... coming down.. will I make it?

I catch my bird by the leg, 8% battery remaining. WHEW.
SCARY!
I know the feeling...
What % did you have battery warning set to?
The RTH descent is faster than the manual descent with latest firmwares. An option the get her down faster would have been to set a new home point closer to you (Flip S2 flip times) and take her down with the RTH.

I made a post and video about a similar incident: viewtopic.php?f=27&t=17307
 
XL-Studios said:
HienoKaveri said:
had a close call at night myself too. blasted off from my home yard and went for a walk, with the Phantom in the air. I didn't realize it but I walked pretty far away from home, and was taking the Phantom higher and higher. So I'm up at about 3500ft high (yes, really) admiring the strings of lit roads below, and the battery alarm goes off. I also lose connection now, RTH initiated. I realize to my horror, homepoint is at home where I left, the bastard will run out of fuel before it will get there and have time to land with the slow descent. I desperately try to regain control, yes, get it back and can see telemetry. It's coming down sooooooooooooooo slow, can't see or hear it yet. By now I'm preparing to accept that I've lost it.. still try to descend and moving around at the same time pretty much at random. Finally I see red/green lights and am able to bring it closer to me, battery down around 15%.... keep coming down... coming down.. will I make it?

I catch my bird by the leg, 8% battery remaining. WHEW.
SCARY!
I know the feeling...
What % did you have battery warning set to?
The RTH descent is faster than the manual descent with latest firmwares. An option the get her down faster would have been to set a new home point closer to you (Flip S2 flip times) and take her down with the RTH.

I made a post and video about a similar incident: http://www.phantompilots.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=17307

Glad everyone got home. I going to test descent in RTH vs. manual descent. I always thought manual was faster.
 
Hovtech said:
Glad everyone got home. I going to test descent in RTH vs. manual descent. I always thought manual was faster.

Please do and time it and check battery drainage! I am rather curious myself. RTH should be 4 m/s and manual 2 m/s I think.
 
I'm addicted to night flights. There is nothing like sending my bird up and no matter how high or far, you can still see it. The other great benefit is you can see and read your screen perfectly. I take her up to about 6-700 ft and go left, then when I think it has gone far enough turn 180 degrees and let it rip across the night sky. It looks so cool in the dark.

Last night it got 2000 ft away and lost signal (for some reason the signal does not go as far at night). It was in return home mode, but not coming back as I looked at the screen numbers. Oh, oh, battery down to 50% and it's just a dot in the night sky. When it's RTH it does not give itself a lot of forward speed so a strong wind was taking it away according to my readout. I have to reestablish control to give it full throttle back to me. The radar is soooo helpful at this point. Flicking S1 to try to reconnect as I also moved the extender up and down a bit. It would reconnect for 10 seconds, and then lose again. I could tell I was fighting a strong wind. Battery 45%, yikes I better get this bird home. By the grace of the drone gods I got a connection long enough to give it full throttle home and get a strong enough connection to get it back to safe distance for the connection. Battery 33% (never go up with less than a full battery. You don't know what winds you will encounter). When it landed I gave it a hug. Close call, but what a rush.

BTW, I live out in almost the country so I'm not bothering anyone. Cool videos though.


Hey there.. interesting story to say the least.. I enjoyed it.. Thanks.. But I will tell you as a pilot also, you must have those bright red LED lights on when you fly at night.. Im sure you did.. Also, you said it was drifting away, despite it's 22 mile per hour speed on P-Function Mode.. Switch to sport mode, now you have 47 MPH speed available to you.. But only if you have a connection.. Otherwise, it will not work. With the phantom 3, you can go so fast in automation mode w/Litchi app.. If you want to do that with phantom four, you have to change settings and turn of the sensors.. Which are useless at night anyway.. Always make sure your altitude is much higher than the highest thing you could ever imagine flying into. and then consider your height. The higher your are, the more likely it is that you will fall prey to the violent weather conditions in our atmosphere. Full scale JUMBO JETS have to deal with that.. So, your little quad copters certainly not gonna get out of it. The height limit of 400 feet in Sea level areas should not be so bad.. But some places are well above sea level and have lots of wind. Keep that in mind.. Don't lose your drone guys!!! BAd things happen when that happens.. Someone can get hurt... Allow yourself adequate protection by inspecting your equipment before giving it the green light to ever fly in the first place. An ounce of prevention is worth so much more than it's own weight in terms of safety and reliability. Second, study your quad copter.. Learn what it can do.. limitations.. Study the weather patterns where you fly.. For example, in tropical areas.. you can have perfect flying weather in one place and a rain storm just a half a mile away.. .So you can easy drift over that way if you don't know your area and how the weather behaves in your area.
 

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