RTH due to Remaining Battery power initiated too soon

srosen · Jun 4, 2017

If anyone can answer this, that would be great.

I was out 8765' with battery power at 54% and all of a sudden I get the message and RTH is initiated. I didn't stop the RTH because I wanted to see where battery power would be once it returned. According to Airdata, at 2434' battery power was 40%, at 484' it was at 30' because I finally cancelled it at around 500' and then flew a while. Actual battery power if I had just let it get to home would probably have been around 37%. My low battery warning is set to 25% and my critical battery is set to 17%.

Airdata link is attached

Airdata UAV - Flight Data Analysis for Drones

Jason Porembski · Jun 4, 2017

May have had a slight tail wind on the way back.

srosen · Jun 4, 2017

Wind was insignificant today

Jason Porembski · Jun 4, 2017

May be AGL but up in the air even a 5 MPH wind can help push the aircraft

tevek · Jun 4, 2017

The low battery RTH is very conservative and you can cancel it if need be. Fairly certain that battery calculates the power required to get to a point and then computes what is required to get back.
I had an event yesterday at quite a distance from HP, and decided to bring it back. It triggered at 65% and had to lower the altitude to get that sweet spot of 50 kph as on the return leg, it was obvious the wind had swung around slowing the trip to a crawl. I landed at 28% and was glad to see it again.