RTH general question(s)

[saudio]

Can someone tell me exactly what happens when an out-of-range RTH occurs? The reason I'm asking is that I read a thread where someone said they had to reboot the remote and app to regain control of a Mavic after RTH had kicked in.

Here is what I THINK is supposed to happen if you get a disconnect. The Mavic goes into RTH mode, ascends to RTH altitude and heads for the home point. As soon as the Mavic is at a high enough altitude or is close enough to the remote, the connection will be reestablished and then the pilot can cancel RTH and take over manual control by hitting the RTH button.

Is this correct? The pilot should not have have to reboot or do anything other than waiting until the video link and remote link are reestablished?

 

[rockydog]

You're correct in what you think.

 

[msinger]

That's all correct assuming the home point was marked and you're using the default DJI GO settings.

 

[ElGuapo]

Can someone tell me exactly what happens when an out-of-range RTH occurs? The reason I'm asking is that I read a thread where someone said they had to reboot the remote and app to regain control of a Mavic after RTH had kicked in.

Here is what I THINK is supposed to happen if you get a disconnect. The Mavic goes into RTH mode, ascends to RTH altitude and heads for the home point. As soon as the Mavic is at a high enough altitude or is close enough to the remote, the connection will be reestablished and then the pilot can cancel RTH and take over manual control by hitting the RTH button.

Is this correct? The pilot should not have have to reboot or do anything other than waiting until the video link and remote link are reestablished?

That's correct, during smart RTH the pilots should not have to reboot or do anything other than waiting, doing so may cause your drone to crash.

I was following a thread on the Phantom 4 forum, ( I also have a P4) during Smart RTH the Phantom was returning home, the aircraft had a safe altitude to clear all obstacles. During this process (blackout seconds) the Pilot panicked and pulled down the left lever causing the Phantom to lower its altitude, he did not have video feed in his device but the remote control had just regained connection to the aircraft. When the Phantom descended crashed into a big tree and landed in the water. That's a hard lesson to learn, after reviewing the flight logs it was discovered the Phantom was well above the tree but the pilot accidentally lowered it.

 

[saudio]

That's correct, during smart RTH the pilots should not have to reboot or do anything other than waiting, doing so may cause your drone to crash.

I was following a thread on the Phantom 4 forum, ( I also have a P4) during Smart RTH the Phantom was returning home, the aircraft had a safe altitude to clear all obstacles. During this process (blackout seconds) the Pilot panicked and pulled down the left lever causing the Phantom to lower its altitude, he did not have video feed in his device but the remote control had just regained connection to the aircraft. When the Phantom descended crashed into a big tree and landed in the water. That's a hard lesson to learn, after reviewing the flight logs it was discovered the Phantom was well above the tree but the pilot accidentally lowered it.

That's interesting. Would you not have to cancel RTH before the control would begin to work again?

 

[saudio]

Thanks for the replies, very helpful. I have a long distance run planned and I wanted to be prepared in case RTH is involved.

 

[f3honda4me]

That's correct, during smart RTH the pilots should not have to reboot or do anything other than waiting, doing so may cause your drone to crash.

I was following a thread on the Phantom 4 forum, ( I also have a P4) during Smart RTH the Phantom was returning home, the aircraft had a safe altitude to clear all obstacles. During this process (blackout seconds) the Pilot panicked and pulled down the left lever causing the Phantom to lower its altitude, he did not have video feed in his device but the remote control had just regained connection to the aircraft. When the Phantom descended crashed into a big tree and landed in the water. That's a hard lesson to learn, after reviewing the flight logs it was discovered the Phantom was well above the tree but the pilot accidentally lowered it.

Rebooting controller during RTH will not cause a crash...

 

[ElGuapo]

That's interesting. Would you not have to cancel RTH before the control would begin to work again?

That's correct, but in this case at the time when he pulled the stick down he did not video feed at the mobile device. There's a lot of information sent from the aircraft to the mobile device so takes a few seconds to show up.
It is understandable, the guy panicked during the black period when there was no feed so he started pushing buttons in the RC.

Another thing to learn here is there is a difference between NO VIDEO FEED and RC DISCONNECT. A few times I have completely lost video feed however the RC still connected to the aircraft.

I have cancelled RTH many times in the past in my years as an experienced Phantom pilot without any glitch, the minute I cancel RTH I regained control of the AC.

 

[flatland]

If you're above the RTH altitude, will it descend to that altitude? Or, stay at the current altitude and just fly home? The reason I ask is that I've had times where RTH altitude was set to 100 or 200 feet and I was flying at just under 400 feet. I'm pretty sure I remember it flying back to home at the same altitude and then descending. Anyone know?

 

[msinger]

If you're above the RTH altitude, will it descend to that altitude? Or, stay at the current altitude and just fly home?

It'll return home at the current altitude.

 

[JLane]

Is this correct? The pilot should not have have to reboot or do anything other than waiting until the video link and remote link are reestablished?

Without knowing exactly what happened, I can only speculate that it's possible the pilot did the reboot because he believed the issue was not simply an out-of-range problem. Perhaps the aircraft was well within what he believed to be a usable range, perhaps even within visual line-of-sight, and he thought that the the RC and/or phone was the cause of the issue.

 

[UrbanPhotoSniper]

What's the speed of RTH. I pressed the button the first time the other day and the Mavic flys very slow. Is that how it's supposed to be?