5th Structured Training Flight: Never a Dull Moment!

[Chaosrider]

There was only one mission objective on this flight:

Fly to the canyon ridge on the other side, and look over the edge. Hit the RTH, and come home.

Failure!

But nothing got broken.

I went out toward the low point in the ridge line again, but I broke it off when I got to 800 ft distance, the farthest I've yet gone. I could still see it, even re-acquire it, but only because I put in a very specific place relative to the canyon rim and the sky, slightly above the ridge. I'm going to have to do the skin and strobe visibility enhancements (I have both in hand). I'm not going farther than 800 ft away until I get that done.

But the RTH was acting in ways that I didn't expect AGAIN. Is it correct that if you're running DJI Fly, the RTH button on the CONTOLLER doesn't work?

I just brought it back manually, and I had enough power left for a target of opportunity...a rock cluster farther up the canyon, and a good bit higher in the air. I was literally flying with the eagles! One, anyway. There's a pair of bald eagles that regularly patrols this canyon, and not knowing the depth, one of them was visually in the same part of the sky as Phoenix.

But then, the low fuel warning went off, and after figuring out I needed to hit the RTH key in the app, it started to come home. But the surprises weren't over! I was at about 250 ft above my home point, and when I hit RTH, the drone started going UP! I had previously set the RTH to the minimum, 60 ft, but when the update got done, it had erased that, and gone to some default, 383 ft IIRC.

I hadn't counted on that climb in my fuel reserve estimates. And on top of that, the descent rate during RTH is...stately. I tried to bring it down faster, but I don't think it made much difference.

I had the drone well in sight, so I cancelled RTH, and brought it home and back as fast as I could. The controller started screaming about extremely low power, but by then I had it back over the deck (high). I landed it without incident, but with *ZERO* power.

If I had known that I had to re-enter all of my settings after the update, I would have set the RTH to the minimum of 60 ft, and it would have been a non-issue.

Will the Mini-2 descend faster in "Sport" mode?

I'm going to read the manual again before my next flight, to find some answers to the questions that I didn't even know that I had, when I read the manual before my first flight.



TCS

 

[AVLJMA]

Yes, it will descend fast in sport mode.

 

[RGallant]

@Chaosrider thanks for post, glad your drone got down safe. But sounds like a checklist item post updates, verify your settings.

 

[old man mavic]

@Chaosrider with the MM and mini2 the RTH button has two functions a quick press stops the drone and a long press initiates RTH along with the RTH bleep ,on the earlier drones in the mavic line up there were separate buttons for those functions on the RC doing any sort of updates especially firmware updates, will often put a lot of the settings that have previously been set back to default ,this is something that you learn very early on in drone ownership ,but try to get into the habit when you go to a place to fly, to have a good look around at your surroundings for obstacles and then set your RTH height to accommodate those obstacles and while you are doing that just check what RTH setting you have in the event of RTH coming in such as loss of signal or low battery ,if you were flying under a tree canopy then you would not want the drone to go up into the branches ,just get into the habit of doing regular checks before you take off and your drone will live to a ripe old age

 

[Chaosrider]

@Chaosrider with the MM and mini2 the RTH button has two functions a quick press stops the drone and a long press initiates RTH along with the RTH bleep ,on the earlier drones in the mavic line up there were separate buttons for those functions on the RC doing any sort of updates especially firmware updates, will often put a lot of the settings that have previously been set back to default ,this is something that you learn very early on in drone ownership ,but try to get into the habit when you go to a place to fly, to have a good look around at your surroundings for obstacles and then set your RTH height to accommodate those obstacles and while you are doing that just check what RTH setting you have in the event of RTH coming in such as loss of signal or low battery ,if you were flying under a tree canopy then you would not want the drone to go up into the branches ,just get into the habit of doing regular checks before you take off and your drone will live to a ripe old age

Thank you sir!

At the time, during the flight, what made me nervous was the two red vertical bars on the RTH button. I didn't remember the RTH details, and that looked a lot like an emergency stop symbol to me. As in, turn off and fall from the sky! But that explains why tapping it didn't make any difference; it was already stationary at the time.

Microsoft updates used to be really bad about cancelling all of your settings. They've gotten a fair amount better at that in recent years.

So far, I've only flown from one place: my house. All of my long flights are into the open canyon, to the east. In these cases, there's never anything at all between the drone and it's home point; just open air. The 20 m minimum RTH height is fully sufficient for that application. I'll definitely re-evaluate that when I fly from somewhere else!

I haven't fully completed my re-read of the Mini-2 manual, but I haven't yet seen the part about re-setting the home point in flight. It wasn't in the RTH section, unless I missed it for a second time!

I have started a little "special" pre-flight checklist:

1) Turn phone to max bright
2) Set RTH to minimum
3) Unlock the 400 ft altitude restriction. As long as I'm just flying around the canyon from my house. I'm never going to get above 400 AGL for the drone, and I'll need higher elevations to survey the other side properly.
4) Start camera before liftoff.

I think my next flight is going to be nothing but RTH experimentation and training.

Again, thanks!

TCS

 

[Prop Wash]

Thanks for sharing the info. 'Pre-flight' is a good idea.

 

[SkiProiii]

Thank you sir!

At the time, during the flight, what made me nervous was the two red vertical bars on the RTH button. I didn't remember the RTH details, and that looked a lot like an emergency stop symbol to me. As in, turn off and fall from the sky! But that explains why tapping it didn't make any difference; it was already stationary at the time.

Microsoft updates used to be really bad about cancelling all of your settings. They've gotten a fair amount better at that in recent years.

So far, I've only flown from one place: my house. All of my long flights are into the open canyon, to the east. In these cases, there's never anything at all between the drone and it's home point; just open air. The 20 m minimum RTH height is fully sufficient for that application. I'll definitely re-evaluate that when I fly from somewhere else!

I haven't fully completed my re-read of the Mini-2 manual, but I haven't yet seen the part about re-setting the home point in flight. It wasn't in the RTH section, unless I missed it for a second time!

I have started a little "special" pre-flight checklist:

1) Turn phone to max bright
2) Set RTH to minimum
3) Unlock the 400 ft altitude restriction. As long as I'm just flying around the canyon from my house. I'm never going to get above 400 AGL for the drone, and I'll need higher elevations to survey the other side properly.
4) Start camera before liftoff.

I think my next flight is going to be nothing but RTH experimentation and training.

Again, thanks!

TCS

Glad to hear your drone made it back. Two other thoughts - when planning your flights, always fly into the wind so you have enough battery to get back (you have the tail wind flying with the wind back to the home point) and plan for landing around 20% battery. Depending on the winds of the day, it may change your flight plans. Wind apps really help with flight planning the days before or day of flights. There a number of YouTube pros that have videos of lost drones due to poor flight planning! If you have to fly out with the wind to get the shot, plan for it with an increased battery reserve when you start the return leg of the flight, and drop your altitude as much as practical on the return as there is usually higher wind velocity at higher altitudes. This is also good practice if you get a wind warning during flight too.

The li-po batteries don’t work optimally when fully drained due to the chemistry of the battery (they don’t like being fully charged or fully discharged). Fully discharging the batteries will harm the life cycle of the battery.

The new update seems to address the automatic discharge of the batteries to keep in the optimal range (there was an issue with the discharge of the battery if left in the drone or charger).

 

[Jamesz]

A step by approach to your flying, with simple goals for each mission as Chaosrider describes is a very wise plan. It's best to not routinely use RTH to return your drone, but fly back manually, especially in any low battery scenarios. So many crashes, unintended landings and 'fly aways' discussed on this forum are a result of use (misuse) of RTH, when you blindly hand over altitude and directional control to the drone. By all means practise RTH use to gain familiarity, then relegate it to a useful backup for a loss of signal event. Never use it in windy conditions!

 

[Chaosrider]

A step by approach to your flying, with simple goals for each mission as Chaosrider describes is a very wise plan. It's best to not routinely use RTH to return your drone, but fly back manually, especially in any low battery scenarios. So many crashes, unintended landings and 'fly aways' discussed on this forum are a result of use (misuse) of RTH, when you blindly hand over altitude and directional control to the drone. By all means practise RTH use to gain familiarity, then relegate it to a useful backup for a loss of signal event. Never use it in windy conditions!

I've pretty well sorted out how the RTH works since I last posted in this thread. Initially, I didn't understand the visibility implications of the RTH flightpath. I fly either from the driveway in front of my house, or the deck in back. I had the vague notion that RTH would produce a straight line return, but of course it doesn't. It climbs to the RTH altitude, flies at that elevation until it reaches the Home Point, and then descends.

This tended to move the drone out of VLOS with RTH, which was disconcerting. Part of that was that I just wasn't used to looking straight up to find things.

What I settled on doing was moving the RTH point right after takeoff. In the case of my rear flight deck, I move the drone 75 ft out from one corner of the deck, and set the Home point there. So if I'm on the other side of the canyon, and I hit RTH, I can see it as it descends. Doing that produces a much more comfortable viewing angle.

Once I understood the RTH flight path, I used it constantly for a while. Now, I'm about 50/50 returning from max range flights. Sometimes I use the RTH so that I can adjust the camera during the descent.

These are amazing little machines!



TCS