Out of range. Good or bad idea?

phantomi · Sep 9, 2014

Lately I am letting the quad to go as far as posible and engaging the rth mode when in out of range so to film some areas near my home. I'm using googleearth to take distance and plan waypoints to visit. Any advice against this? I know that always is better to have the quad at sight or at least by fpv but that will limit me to no more than about 500 to 600m. Going as far as posible get me almost a km from home. I have a phantom 2 vision non +. My fear is that it will not RTH.

ProfessorStein · Sep 10, 2014

I tend to prefer to maintain control over the bird throughout it's entire flight. But that's just a personal preference.

Once you turn control over to RTH, you're at the whim of a circuit board that really doesn't have any context of where it is or how it needs to fly to stay out of trouble.

And, of course, as you say, there's always that 1 in 100 chance that RTH doesn't work properly and it fails to actually return home (perhaps you neglected to get a good GPS lock/home position lock before you took off).

ProfessorStein · Sep 10, 2014

Hold on... I just noticed you mentioned waypoints... if you're using waypoints, why would you need to use RTH? Waypointing does not need to maintain contact with the RC. You can, in essense, go as far as the range of your batteries will let you.

phantomi · Sep 10, 2014

ProfessorStein said:
Hold on... I just noticed you mentioned waypoints... if you're using waypoints, why would you need to use RTH? Waypointing does not need to maintain contact with the RC. You can, in essense, go as far as the range of your batteries will let you.

Thanks. No, I'm just using the word waypoint to mean destination of my flight as I can see it in googleearth. I have used waypoints in groundstation but it limit me also to a 500m radius.

HarryT · Sep 10, 2014

ProfessorStein said:
And, of course, as you say, there's always that 1 in 100 chance that RTH doesn't work properly and it fails to actually return home (perhaps you neglected to get a good GPS lock/home position lock before you took off).

I personally experienced this only last week. I took off with a good GPS lock (11 sats), lost my FPV signal and couldn't see the Phantom against the clouds, and so turned off the Tx to get it back. It started moving in completely the wrong direction! (Luckily the movement allowed me to see it against the clouds.) I quickly switched to ATTI mode and brought it safely back home.

I would regard RTH as an emergency safeguard, not a feature to be used as a matter of routine.

rrmccabe · Sep 10, 2014

I actually fly to RTH about 1/2 the time I fly. Where I live its a great location without a lot of houses to stretch things out.

I have had no issues with it. I also work pretty hard and understanding how everything works when it does. In my case its the V+.

HarryT · Sep 10, 2014

rrmccabe said:
I have had no issues with it. I also work pretty hard and understanding how everything works when it does. In my case its the V+.

I think I have a pretty decent understanding of how things are supposed to work, too, but I just can't explain the behaviour I saw. I took off with GPS lock; FPV showed "GPS" and 11 sats. Home point was correctly set on take-off. But when I switched off the Tx it headed off in a completely different direction to home. I can't explain that - can you?

rrmccabe · Sep 10, 2014

No I can't. Not saying its fool proof, just that I haven't had any issues.

I do know one thing though, I dont like the switching off the TX part. I would prefer to configure the switch in the software so I have failsafe on the switch and the ability to flip it back to GPS easily without worries of rebinding the TX.