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Atmospheric Effects on Mavic & False Obstacle Avoidance

Draezn

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Joined
Oct 31, 2016
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41
Hello,

Been flying my mavic for two weeks now since I got her without issue while being careful at the same time (not pushing it too far, manual landing vs. RTH, etc). Love it! It certainly is a learning curve and it looks like there are a lot of new scenarios that can occur daily.

#1: My most recent flight was at high altitude, I launched at over 10,000 feet in a (dormant) volcano crater. Big playground with over 5 miles radius of open air and just some small obstacles on the floor. No gasses or vents emitting - perfectly clear, sunny day and above freezing in normal operating temperatures. Overall the flight went really well and the bird was responsive as expected. I was wondering how it would fly in lighter air. I noticed an effect I hadn't seen before when flying at sea level, and that was the 'jello platform' effect on the gimbal. Anytime I initially went forward with the bird the camera would shake quite a bit (with no wind present at all). I also noticed when I was trying to bring her down vertically it was rougher than normal (jerky descent with no wind) so I guess this was an atmospheric effect. Perhaps going a little lighter on the throttle stick would help?

#2: I took her out to a pre-set limit of 500m (I still am not comfortable flying further, I've been slowly easing up and sticking to line of sight). Flew out no problem, however on return it kept stopping due to detected obstacle in front. There was clearly no obstacle in front for miles, not in front nor below - it was in wide open air. However, behind me was a setting sun (bright) with a large wall since I was sitting below the crater rim. Is it possible that it would detect a large object like this in the distance and confuse it for something near sight? I'm wondering if anyone else has had this issue and if there is any recommended action. Of course, I turned off obstacle avoidance and my bird happily came home to me after that. But I fear that if I had some issue (ie: loss of signal) that the RTH may not work properly in a case like that due to the avoidance being on, an the bird would keep trying to come home (but fail) until battery is out.
 
Were you flying towards the sun on the way back and was the sun low? There are plenty of other posts with the same issue and it appears that sometimes the sun or its glare can trigger the obstacle avoidance, to get around that you can switch to sport mode (switch on right side of controller) which will disable OA, and then turn off sports mode when you feel it is no longer an issue. Sport mode is your friend to get out of any predicaments regarding OA or even flying into too much wind for normal mode to handle.

Also, not sure where you are but if in US if so you may want to stick to line of sight, it is a legal requirement.

I also thought that OA is off during RTH, I think that is why you have to set a safe RTH altitude.
 
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Yep exactly. Sun was low and lots of glare. Only other thing was a large black wall backdrop behind me as noted. Good point on the sport mode thanks!

I guess this is a good problem to have compared to the other way around.


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