Last weekend I went to fly my first mission with Litchi (latest version) on iPad 4 mini. I scouted the terrain, made some notes, prepared all via the hub on their website, saved the mission and once on site loaded the mission to the P4P. the altitude seemed all fine with enough headroom over the surrounding threes.
I knew the terrain was going uphill (aprox. 12 meters) and I took of flying at 40 meters above take off point.
Watching the Ipad screen I saw that I was loosing height, actually the terrain was rising. But the P4P did not climb as he supposed to according the mission. At certain point I lost connection (distance 900 meters, which was also the point where the P4P would do a 360° view of a monument and then return over the same path to the home point). I was ready to abort the mission but transmission was lost that second. Bummer.
Waiting for over 3 minutes I knew things went wrong. I took the car and drove to the monument. the P4P was crashed into a large three, the only one on the terrain, go figure. Because the P4P did not climb the clearance above the three was not enough and my P4P caught the three really in the top (2 meters would be enough). Normally I would have had over 10 meters clearance.
I'm really sad because I can not recover the P4P. It's way up and a branch sticks through the P4P landing gear. The three is to high and to slim to climb in, also the terrain is not suitable to take some lift and go from there.
I've been looking in Google Earth and when exporting the kml-file from there into Litchi I see the waypoints rising when terrain rises but I keep asking myself why my P4P did not climb according the mission. Is the app really taking relativity to ground into account ? I lost my faith in Litchi for the moment and will be flying controlling the craft myself for the time being.
I know some will react that I have to keep eye contact all times. I know this is mainly pilot error but i.m.h.o the app failed to I guess. It all looks nice on paper or on screen but I lost a lot of money in the progress. Hard lesson learnt. Ordered a new P4P ...
I knew the terrain was going uphill (aprox. 12 meters) and I took of flying at 40 meters above take off point.
Watching the Ipad screen I saw that I was loosing height, actually the terrain was rising. But the P4P did not climb as he supposed to according the mission. At certain point I lost connection (distance 900 meters, which was also the point where the P4P would do a 360° view of a monument and then return over the same path to the home point). I was ready to abort the mission but transmission was lost that second. Bummer.
Waiting for over 3 minutes I knew things went wrong. I took the car and drove to the monument. the P4P was crashed into a large three, the only one on the terrain, go figure. Because the P4P did not climb the clearance above the three was not enough and my P4P caught the three really in the top (2 meters would be enough). Normally I would have had over 10 meters clearance.
I'm really sad because I can not recover the P4P. It's way up and a branch sticks through the P4P landing gear. The three is to high and to slim to climb in, also the terrain is not suitable to take some lift and go from there.
I've been looking in Google Earth and when exporting the kml-file from there into Litchi I see the waypoints rising when terrain rises but I keep asking myself why my P4P did not climb according the mission. Is the app really taking relativity to ground into account ? I lost my faith in Litchi for the moment and will be flying controlling the craft myself for the time being.
I know some will react that I have to keep eye contact all times. I know this is mainly pilot error but i.m.h.o the app failed to I guess. It all looks nice on paper or on screen but I lost a lot of money in the progress. Hard lesson learnt. Ordered a new P4P ...