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Close call or not?

BrooklynFlyer

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How close is my beloved Mavic to hitting the antenna tower that enters the frame at 0:52?

You can see the tower on the return trip at 1:47-1:57.

The camera is very jerky at the farthest point, but it was the best Litchi could do given the range.


Side question:
Am I making a mistake in posting and asking about a video where the Mavic is flown over some people, cars, etc.

I welcome any and all comments.


Thanks
 
I wouldn't consider it a close call. However, this is one of the reasons that you should look at charts, plan missions, and be able to keep VLOS because Litchi and other autonomous software does not see towers. The sensors on the Mavic would not have helped you there either since it was actually flying sideways.
 
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Best guess on first instance, about 20 ft horizontal clearance and 10-15 ft vertical clearance. That would be enough to get my attention, too!
This is based on flying my local area which is almost uninhabited but dense with very tall trees - I'm recalling the image of the trees when observing from the ground so I could see the clearance.

The second instance I'd guess you had 60 ft horizontal clearance. And FWIW I think you did a pretty good job of staying away from being directly above masses of people (I confess I stopped viewing after the second instance, so hopefully nothing dumb was shown after that!) - hard to avoid either people or cars completely if flying in an inhabited area.

Were you flying manually or on a planned mission in Litchi? One of my first tries in Litchi was a planned orbit of my house out in the woods. I walked around it, checked Google Earth very carefully and checked elevations. When the autonomous mission was flown exactly as planned, one of the propellers was close enough to a very large Douglas fir branch to blow the light new-growth branches out of its own way - the CAS cameras were pointing at the house, away from the tree, so didn't see it - if it had hit the main branch 2 inches further in, it would have been quite costly. THAT showed even careful planning can be a bit off! Took my heartrate a couple minutes to settle down.

If you have a decent ground-track record from Litchi, you might be able to zoom in and get a much better idea of horizontal clearance if you can spot the structures in satellite view.
 
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This was an autonomous flight at about 100 feet up. This area is relatively flat, other than that tower.
Upon further review on the Litchi mission hub, zoomed in to 3D level, you can see the tower.
 
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