Surviving a signal lost error...

[bhartwell]

Was out flying yesterday, getting some video of oaks and yellow velvet hills. This time of year, the hills along an area called Sunol literally look like they are covered in brushed yellow velvet, dotted with oak trees. It really a lovely site when you get the light just right.

In any case, on my first flight of the day I flew over a hill and down into a valley and started losing signal. Started increasing altitude so as to avoid the hill blocking my signal, but no luck. Finally, lost it altogether.

What was interesting was that during that short time, I would get a partial connection “I.e. weak signal error”, then it would alert it lost signal completely. This went on for a few minutes, during which time my phantom just seemed to hover. I couldn’t see it, as it was down the next valley, but I could hear it. It didn’t seem to be moving.

Hitting return to home on the controller did nothing, and as far as I could tell, there was no respond to stick changes. As I starting thinking through options, I decided to power down the controller, hoping that would kick in the Phantoms RTH or if not that, allow for a reconnect. It did just that, I powered down and the Phantom went into RTH mode. I heard it gain attitude and become louder as it got closer to me. Within a few mins it was in sight and heading my way. Once close enough, I was able to reconnect the with controller, cancel the RTH and everything was fine.

Was a bit nerve wracking as I wouldn’t have been to happy to have lost my phantom. I still wonder why it didn’t activate the RTH when the signal was first lost? Also, any thoughts on options to recover in this scenario. I wasn’t certain disconnecting was they way to go, but couldn’t think of a better option.

 

[MapMaker53]

I'm guessing you may have hit the RTH switch during the moments when it had too weak or no signal. In addition, the alternating lost signal and weak signal was just confusing the auto RTH mode, as in RTH? Nope. RTH? Nope... etc. until you completely turned off the controller and it was clear to the Phantom that there was absolutely zero controller signal. Just a guess.

 

[Meta4]

Was a bit nerve wracking as I wouldn’t have been to happy to have lost my phantom. I still wonder why it didn’t activate the RTH when the signal was first lost? Also, any thoughts on options to recover in this scenario. I wasn’t certain disconnecting was they way to go, but couldn’t think of a better option.

There are two signals - uplink (control signal to the Phantom) and downlink (video and telemetry) from the Phantom.
You have to lose all signal to initiate RTH, not just the downlink.
If you fly behind a mountain or concrete building, you would lose all signal but where line of sight is partially blocked by trees etc you can get a situation where you lose downlink and still maintain uplink.
In that situation you still have control and could have pushed the left stick to raise the drone above the cause of the problem.
Or as you found out, shutting down the controller causes a full loss of signal which initiates RTH.

 

[Chopstix Kid]

There are two signals - uplink (control signal to the Phantom) and downlink (video and telemetry) from the Phantom.
You have to lose all signal to initiate RTH, not just the downlink.
If you fly behind a mountain or concrete building, you would lose all signal but where line of sight is partially blocked by trees etc you can get a situation where you lose downlink and still maintain uplink.
In that situation you still have control and could have pushed the left stick to raise the drone above the cause of the problem.
Or as you found out, shutting down the controller causes a full loss of signal which initiates RTH.

OP indicated from what he could tell, no response to stick changes