Your highest altitude flown?

[lake_flyer]

I have my doubts when someone says they have flown their Phantom beyond 4,000 feet using stock equipment.

A P2 has a range of over 3Km with the stock Tx/Rx.
Theoretically, that is also the height limit straight over your head.

However, going up is not the challenge. Going down is! With 2m/sec max (I would go for 1.5 max because with 2m/s you still get VRS somewhere on the way down), It would take you between 1500-2500 seconds!!!!

Some people had to shut down the engines and go down in free fall to save juice.
Wouldn't recommend that.

The highest I flew is 500m, using Fatshark FPV with IOSD.
300 is allowed here.

Not much difference in the views with a Gopro, between 300m and 500m, it only takes more then 6 minutes to get down safely, nerve wrecking and totally not worth it.

 

[IflyinWY]

very well put.

 

[DevildogSoldier]

Last time I went to a grand, I RTH'd back down. It came down rather quickly at 1.8 m/s (about 4mph) without any noticeable VRS. And this was straight down, no horizontal velocity during decent. Does anyone know if it has the ability to detect and counter VRS while george is flying?

 

[Iain_P3]

On a fairly remote section of coastline, I took mine up to around 850m (2800ft), took less than 3 minutes to get up that high, and about 9 minutes to get down again. There was a cross wind, so no chance of any vortex problems, but getting down seemed to take forever especially as I kept joggling the throttle, was not sure if holding it down all the time would stop the motors. No real reason to fly that high again, you are up in Google earth territory and in fact, it is pretty boring. At the 400ft limit, at least you can see things but even that is not much real use. I've uploaded a clip to my Youtube channel - processed to 4 x speed otherwise it is pretty boring . Stopped and took a few photos on the way down and the video stopped there. No telemetry, I am not that sophisticated yet.

 

[DarylV]

There is no descent speed limit in manual mode. Throttle back to about 10% and keep the Phantom in motion laterally to avoid Vortex Ring State (VRS). When you are about 100 ft up, switch back to ATTI or GPS mode and land normally. In manual mode you could theoretically turn it upside down and fly down at high speed then recover at the last moment. Road Runner and Coyote come to mind. Also in theory, and not tested is to CSC power-down the Phantom and let it free-fall to a couple of hundred feet then CSC restart the Phantom and it should stabilize itself.

I wonder if this has actually been tested. Would be awesome to see!

 

[Hughie]

Yes the CSC has been done on youtube a couple of time that I know of. Usually done when pilot goes to high not realising that it costs a lot of battery to decend too.

 

[SteveMann]

Yes the CSC has been done on youtube a couple of time that I know of. Usually done when pilot goes to high not realising that it costs a lot of battery to decend too.

I would love to see one - can you find a link?

 

[Hughie]

I would love to see one - can you find a link?

Sorry Steve the best one, has been taken down. It was here

DJI Phantom Vision Falls From Sky 6000 Ft And Lives!! - YouTube

 

[DevildogSoldier]

Purposely takes it to 300m, CSC and tries to recover. Interesting results.

 

[Hughie]

Purposely takes it to 300m and tries to recover. Interesting results.

Vaguely remember from the link which is now private (which did have flytrex data on screen) that you need to spend around 100m AFTER the motors are fired up and the quad is level just trying to arrest the rate of decent. By the time this happens it is way too low. No metrics on the video, but I think that quad had seen more graceful landings

 

[Marlin009]

That didn't go well.

 

[DevildogSoldier]

My WAG (wild-a$$ guess):
Max thrust is what, 6m/s? Dropping (figuring terminal velocity) at about 60m/s...

Gonna take at least 10 seconds to overcome the decent rate. Better start at 700m up.

 

[Iain_P3]

I think you are right, not sure what terminal velocity of a Phantom is, but going to take a while a 6m/s to slow it down. Glad someone else decided to test it

 

[Marlin009]

Purposely takes it to 300m, CSC and tries to recover. Interesting results.

I didn't realize that was intentional. Now I'm ROFLMFAO.

 

[DevildogSoldier]

I think you are right, not sure what terminal velocity of a Phantom is, but going to take a while a 6m/s to slow it down. Glad someone else decided to test it

Near the surface of the earth, I use 9.81 m/s^2 (or 32.2ft/s^2) and disregarded drag.

 

[DevildogSoldier]

I didn't realize that was intentional. Now I'm ROFLMFAO.

Yes, I noticed I neglected to add that he'd CSC'd.

 

[Iain_P3]

9.81 m/s2 is normal gravitational acceleration. Terminal velocity is the maximum speed the falling Phantom will get to based on wind resistance, and weight, I would guess no more than 50mph - 22m/s. If I could remember my first year applied mechanics, I could work the exact wind resistance given the maximum upward velocity is 6m/s, but to be honest, I'm too lazy

 

[IflyinWY]

9.81 m/s2 is normal gravitational acceleration. Terminal velocity is the maximum speed the falling Phantom will get to based on wind resistance, and weight, I would guess no more than 50mph - 22m/s. If I could remember my first year applied mechanics, I could work the exact wind resistance given the maximum upward velocity is 6m/s, but to be honest, I'm too lazy

Ok, that made me laugh.
I've got to wonder about that wind resistance thing in relationship to an object designed to move "semi" efficiently through the air. I am referring to the Phantom. Mine weighs less than 1100 grams and only has a tiny camera and a blue beam airscrew antenna creating additional drag.


But low and behold, we are wandering OFF TOPIC.
Start a new thread folks, I'll be there.

How high have you flown?

 

[AerialCinemaGuy]

Except for restricted air space there is no law. So there is nothing to break.

Yah you're an idiot and ignorant and uninformed

 

[rrmccabe]

Yah you're an idiot and ignorant and uninformed

Care to inform me?

I just want to know what the law is? As far as I know the regulation is recommended 400'.