Air 3 RTH question

DirtyDrone · Aug 18, 2023

Max altitude is set to 393 feet.

I just attempted to recreate the issue, it did not climb to max altitude this time, it simply stopped, climbed to 262’ and then started to return to home. It held the 262’ during the RTH.

I am thinking it’s a SW bug, as the issue appears to be inconsistent. Also, in the safety menu, when I go to return home option screen, while in-flight, it will kinda “bug-out” and bounce from “optimal” to “preset” once or twice without touching the screen.

I’ll attempt a screen recording to help explain.

mavic3usa · Aug 18, 2023

DirtyDrone said:
Max altitude is set to 393 feet.

I just attempted to recreate the issue, it did not climb to max altitude this time, it simply stopped, climbed to 262’ and then started to return to home. It held the 262’ during the RTH.

I am thinking it’s a SW bug, as the issue appears to be not consistent. also, in the safety menu, when I go to return home option screen while in-flight, it will kinda “bug-out” and bounce from “optimal” to “preset” once’s or twice without touching the screen.

I’ll attempt a screen recording to help explain.

That's interesting. So if you did not set max altitude and left it unlimited, you think, in the instance, your drone may have "flown away" so to speak? That's not good. Let us know what you find.

DirtyDrone · Aug 18, 2023

mavic3usa said:
That's interesting. So if you did not set max altitude and left it unlimited, you think, in the instance, your drone may have "flown away" so to speak? That's not good. Let us know what you find.

Yes, it appears that it only stopped climbing altitude when it hit its max setting.

DirtyDrone · Aug 20, 2023

So, it took a few flights to get the RTH issue to occur, it also seems to be more likely when RTH is triggered from a good distance from home. Full disclosure, I was a ”few” feet from home on this flight but I had my wife (not very happily) follow on an adjacent road and the flight was over only farm fields.

if you pay attention to when I go into the menu to show the settings for return to Home, you can see that initially it is on optimized, although I have it set on preset and then kind of revert back to preset from optimized, but I didn’t hold on that part of the screen for long enough to show it bounce back to preset.

davedrone 178 · Aug 20, 2023

Bottom line is, when RTH is triggered by you or the drone, you can't manually lower the Air 3 to lessen the wind if necessary. Not even at night when obstacle avoidance isn't working. You need to cancel RTH to lower the drone's altitude. With my Mavic 3, you CAN lower the drone during RTH AT NIGHT but not during the day when OA is deployed. Don't ask me why the drones behave differently.

DirtyDrone · Aug 20, 2023

davedrone 178 said:
Bottom line is, when RTH is triggered by you or the drone, you can't manually lower the Air 3 to lessen the wind if necessary. Not even at night when obstacle avoidance isn't working. You need to cancel RTH to lower the drone's altitude. With my Mavic 3, you CAN lower the drone during RTH AT NIGHT but not during the day when OA is deployed. Don't ask me why the drones behave differently.

Right, I’m with ya, but how does this relate to my issue?

Although, your statement supports my video as I cannot influence the altitude with the sticks!

DirtyDrone · Aug 20, 2023

davedrone 178 said:
Bottom line is, when RTH is triggered by you or the drone, you can't manually lower the Air 3 to lessen the wind if necessary. Not even at night when obstacle avoidance isn't working. You need to cancel RTH to lower the drone's altitude. With my Mavic 3, you CAN lower the drone during RTH AT NIGHT but not during the day when OA is deployed. Don't ask me why the drones behave differently.

Also, it is odd that some rigs respond to RTH stick input and some don't, maybe it’s simply a SW bug.

Droning on and on... · Aug 21, 2023

Did you guys see this in the manual, under the "preset" RTH mode?

When the aircraft is further than 50 m from the home point when RTH begins, the aircraft will plan the RTH path, fly to an open area while avoiding obstacles, ascend to the RTH Altitude, and return to home using the best path.

This is new for DJI drones... earlier models would simply ascend to the RTH altitude wherever they were, overhead obstacles be d*mned (couldn't see them anyway).

360 spherical obstacle sensing gives new capability. It's excited DJI took the initiative and used it.

This moving to a clear space before ascending may explain some of the unexpected behavior during RTH surprising veteran DJI owners.

GadgetGuy · Aug 21, 2023

Droning on and on... said:
Did you guys see this in the manual, under the "preset" RTH mode?

When the aircraft is further than 50 m from the home point when RTH begins, the aircraft will plan the RTH path, fly to an open area while avoiding obstacles, ascend to the RTH Altitude, and return to home using the best path.

This is new for DJI drones... earlier models would simply ascend to the RTH altitude wherever they were, overhead obstacles be d*mned (couldn't see them anyway).

360 spherical obstacle sensing gives new capability. It's excited DJI took the initiative and used it.

This moving to a clear space before ascending may explain some of the unexpected behavior during RTH surprising veteran DJI owners.

Certainly makes it safer now to fly under long overpasses or bridges at high speed, hoping to get through, before signal loss RTH kicks in!