Here's the rundown of what happened...
I'm happy that I didn't lose my drone but have no faith in the return to home feature now. I'll be extra cautious to come home early now, which shortens the length of time I can stay out.
If I had hit a tree and lost my drone, would DJI have replaced it based on the above scenario?
- Setup the phantom and did my pre-flight check in the middle of a parking lot.
- Got the home point set notification and the green ready to fly indicator (had at least 12 satellites linked up)
- Zoomed in on the map to verify my home point was correct before takeoff
- Flew the phantom around until I got the fly home warning which I rejected
- Started to fly back home manually and got to about 1000 feet from my home point (altitude of 800 feet), decided to take a few pictured before bringing the phantom in.
- Auto return to home kicked in (no option to cancel) Distance was 1000 feet from home, altitude around 800 feet.
- Drone might have flown a few hundred feet on it's own "returning to home" before it hovered and started to descend. (I'm not clear on if it just descended immediately or flew a little bit first, I was starting to worry and trying to figure out what was happening)
- Drone continued to descend and was still 1000 feet from home.
- I started worrying but hoping that it would fly to home once it descended to fly home height, which was set for 100 meters.
- Drone kept descending past fly home height and I lost all signal as it descended under the tree line all around me.
- I drove to where the drone had lost signal and found it sitting unharmed on the edge of land that had just been cleared for new home construction. Trees were in the spot only a month ago which you can see from the attached satellite image.
I'm happy that I didn't lose my drone but have no faith in the return to home feature now. I'll be extra cautious to come home early now, which shortens the length of time I can stay out.
If I had hit a tree and lost my drone, would DJI have replaced it based on the above scenario?