Air 2 Broke my only rule and flew with the wind out to sea.

[JackL]

I always let the flag you see at the end dictate where I fly, which is always into the wind head on, period.

For some reason on this one I decided to fly with the wind a little and got all kinds of carried away while chasing boats...
Returning directly into the steadily increasing wind and setting sun while the battery percent was dropping by the second was the most harrowing experience I have had to date! When I switched from sport to normal right off the dock and the drone stopped my heart definitely skipped a beat or three. When it said "critical battery, landing" about 200 ft away from the dock over the ocean I was sure the guy fishing was going to watch it imitate an ROV.

Thankfully through all that I had a 10% experience before and learned from you guys full stick up will keep it from autolanding in an inconvenient spot.

Here is the log for anyone interested.

DJI Flight Log Viewer | Phantom Help

Upload and view DJI Phantom, Mavic, and Spark flight logs online

www.phantomhelp.com

I will not be letting this happen again!

 

[TerryToast]

Thankfully through all that I had a 10% experience before and learned from you guys full stick up will keep it from autolanding in an inconvenient spot.

I am thankful to this forum where I learnt about “full stick up”. My MA2 would have been lost into the ocean/harbour a few times without that knowledge.

It’s easy for others to say “leave plenty of battery to get home”, but it can be very hard to judge when you don’t know the wind speed at your drone’s height & location.

To use an example, I’ve filmed whales 2km out to sea, good wind conditions at my location and I’ve commenced return home at 35% battery and
- TRIP A: Get back with 20%
- TRIP B: Get back with 5%

When I see the battery percentage start to plummet fast (1% every 10sec), then I know i’m in trouble.

 

[Meta4]

For some reason on this one I decided to fly with the wind a little and got all kinds of carried away while chasing boats...
Returning directly into the steadily increasing wind and setting sun while the battery percent was dropping by the second was the most harrowing experience I have had to date!

Flying out to sea with a tailwind can be OK if:
You are aware of the wind strength and what that means for your return flight and you don't go too far, and
you keep a generous safety margin and return with plenty of time.

You messed up on all of those and didn't start your return until the battery was at 35%.
You added to your problems by flying the whole time in battery-sapping Sport Mode.
And when only 100 ft from home, and battery was at 10%, you wasted more battery by climbing from 24 ft to 100 ft.

 

[Meta4]

It’s easy for others to say “leave plenty of battery to get home”, but it can be very hard to judge when you don’t know the wind speed at your drone’s height & location.

It's quite easy to get an idea of what your return speed would be like by testing by flying in the return direction before flying out to sea.

To use an example, I’ve filmed whales 2km out to sea, good wind conditions at my location and I’ve commenced return home at 35% battery and
- TRIP A: Get back with 20%
- TRIP B: Get back with 5%

If you are 2km offshore and know there's a headwind to fight, you are asking for trouble if you wait until 35% before turning back.
You need a healthy safety margin to to allow for poor wind/speed calculations or the unexpected.
In that kind of flying, there's no room for errors.
Just one mistake can easily mean losing the drone.

 

[MAvic_South_Oz]

Very lucky save with the dock, the look on the fishos face looking up, lol.
Lives to fly another day, lesson to remember for a long time.

 

[JackL]

I am thankful to this forum where I learnt about “full stick up”. My MA2 would have been lost into the ocean/harbour a few times without that knowledge.

It’s easy for others to say “leave plenty of battery to get home”, but it can be very hard to judge when you don’t know the wind speed at your drone’s height & location.

To use an example, I’ve filmed whales 2km out to sea, good wind conditions at my location and I’ve commenced return home at 35% battery and
- TRIP A: Get back with 20%
- TRIP B: Get back with 5%

When I see the battery percentage start to plummet fast (1% every 10sec), then I know i’m in trouble.

The end of the battery seems to go much quicker than the beginning I noticed on this flight.
I'm use to flying out into heavy wind so I thought I had the battery drain rates mostly worked out in my head. I was really wrong. A 100% battery will fly into wind like this for 2km and use about 20% in my experience. Not the case at the end of the battery!

Watching the percentage plummet like that is a seriously nerve wracking experience. Makes me want to tie up a few stand up paddle boards around out there to use as emergency landing pads in case a wind shift ever tries to take me out!

 

[JackL]

Flying out to sea with a tailwind can be OK if:
You are aware of the wind strength and what that means for your return flight and you don't go too far, and
you keep a generous safety margin and return with plenty of time.

You messed up on all of those and didn't start your return until the battery was at 35%.
You added to your problems by flying the whole time in battery-sapping Sport Mode.
And when only 100 ft from home, and battery was at 10%, you wasted more battery by climbing from 24 ft to 100 ft.

I made so many errors I really deserved to have to dive to recover it. I planned to stay close since the wind was gusting and shifting sharply from the approach of tropical storm Elsa...sadly I almost instantly lost the plot and didn't pay attention to my distance or anything but potential targets. The terror I experienced on the return will keep this from happening again!

Thankfully wind from this direction is very rare. I should have used it to explore the bay I can't normally get at because of the wind! Many lessons learned.

 

[JackL]

Very lucky save with the dock, the look on the fishos face looking up, lol.
Lives to fly another day, lesson to remember for a long time.

He was great!! He said I looked pretty intense towards the end, after being all happy and carefree. lol.

I will never forget this lesson!

 

[Hobo]

Newbie question: Please define: "full stick up"? Thanks.

 

[JackL]

Newbie question: Please define: "full stick up"? Thanks.

When you hit 10% battery and the drone wants to autoland with no way to cancel, you can keep it in the air by holding the ascent stick all the way up. Useful thing to know!!

I believe that is how I ended up at 124ft on my final approach since I didn't actually do that on purpose.

 

[Meta4]

Newbie question: Please define: "full stick up"? Thanks.

He means pushing the left stick up to the limit.
But it only works up to a point and won't hold your drone up when the battery can't deliver enough power.
It's better never to get into that situation.

 

[maggior]

Well you sure have an interesting drone story to tell for years to come. At least you got some amazing footage for your trouble. Nice music selection!! I used to listen to the Miami Vice soundtracks all of the time.

With the full stick up thing...at least that is intuitive. I think your natural reaction in that situation would to keep pushing the stick up in hope it would stop decending.

Lesson learned.

 

[JackL]

He means pushing the left stick up to the limit.
But it only works up to a point and won't hold your drone up when the battery can't deliver enough power.
It's better never to get into that situation.

Definitely a situation to avoid!! I would imagine with old batteries it could be even worse since it really could drop out of the sky from a cell failure when they are nearly exhausted. Landing with 30% feels so much better than 4%. I hope I didn't damage the battery.

It is good to know how it works though since it can prevent a seriously inconvenient (or dangerous) landing if you can keep your cool, which I was barely able to do. I put the drone away with 3 full batteries in my pocket after this...

 

[tlswift58]

I am thankful to this forum where I learnt about “full stick up”. My MA2 would have been lost into the ocean/harbour a few times without that knowledge.

It’s easy for others to say “leave plenty of battery to get home”, but it can be very hard to judge when you don’t know the wind speed at your drone’s height & location.

To use an example, I’ve filmed whales 2km out to sea, good wind conditions at my location and I’ve commenced return home at 35% battery and
- TRIP A: Get back with 20%
- TRIP B: Get back with 5%

When I see the battery percentage start to plummet fast (1% every 10sec), then I know i’m in trouble.

There is a cool app called UAVForecast that tells you wind speeds / gust in area you are in. While wind can change pretty rapidly, that is something every droner has to be very aware of. I set UAV for like 250 ft to just be kind of in the middle, but if you're flying higher / lower - set it accordingly. If the app says winds are gusting say over 25-30 mph - it tells me DO NOT FLY. Period dot end of story (it's the settings I made).

To say you don't know wind speeds where you fly - well may be don't fly there unless you do know. Or am I being too practical and safe?

 

[tlswift58]

The end of the battery seems to go much quicker than the beginning I noticed on this flight.
I'm use to flying out into heavy wind so I thought I had the battery drain rates mostly worked out in my head. I was really wrong. A 100% battery will fly into wind like this for 2km and use about 20% in my experience. Not the case at the end of the battery!

Watching the percentage plummet like that is a seriously nerve wracking experience. Makes me want to tie up a few stand up paddle boards around out there to use as emergency landing pads in case a wind shift ever tries to take me out!

Phantomrain has some products he'll sell you when you do this kind of thing.

 

[JackL]

Well you sure have an interesting drone story to tell for years to come. At least you got some amazing footage for your trouble. Nice music selection!! I used to listen to the Miami Vice soundtracks all of the time.

With the full stick up thing...at least that is intuitive. I think your natural reaction in that situation would to keep pushing the stick up in hope it would stop decending.

Lesson learned.

Thank you! The first time it happened I didn't realize I could maintain altitude with full up and landed in a pretty precarious spot since it announced autolanding and started going down. I don't think I pushed the stick up hard enough to notice it doing anything, and on top of it I was totally freaking out over the obstacles below me. Definitely a situation to avoid. Hopefully my experience will help someone else out of a tight spot!

 

[GFields]

thanks for sharing!

 

[360 Guy]

LUCKY this time.

 

[AZDave]

I live at the mouth of a canyon on a string of mountains with ridges that block the prevailing winds. As a result the winds where I fly are gusty and unpredictable in direction ... in fact, most winds are actually swirlers with no discernible rhyme or reason to their speed or their direction. Days with wind speeds supposedly in the teens can often (especially in the spring) have swirlers every 3 to 5 minutes with speeds in the 60 mph range. On really windy days I don't fly. On moderate days I stay close and well above ground to minimize the chance to get blown into a tree. On calm days I have more fun.

 

[JackL]

I live at the mouth of a canyon on a string of mountains with ridges that block the prevailing winds. As a result the winds where I fly are gusty and unpredictable in direction ... in fact, most winds are actually swirlers with no discernible rhyme or reason to their speed or their direction. Days with wind speeds supposedly in the teens can often (especially in the spring) have swirlers every 3 to 5 minutes with speeds in the 60 mph range. On really windy days I don't fly. On moderate days I stay close and well above ground to minimize the chance to get blown into a tree. On calm days I have more fun.

I sometimes take off from my balcony in the canyon formed by the buildings and do not enjoy swirlers and eddies in any way shape or form! The first time I was trying to get back in the opening with high wind was when I realized how much the drone actually jumps around in flight. Crazy amounts. The gimble hides a whole lot from you.

I absolutely prefer no wind.. So much more flight time!