Flying below the home point elevation

Dronebow · Nov 14, 2016

Heading to Colorado Springs late December (and I hope that I will have my Mavic before then) and I want to fly the Royal Gorge which would likely mean the starting point being much higher than flying down closer to the river at the bottom. I've never done this with the P3 I used to have.

Just wondering if there are any things that you need to pay attention to or any issues doing that? I'm assuming there is no negative height limit or other issues with flying lower than the starting point?

Ed209 · Nov 14, 2016

I believe there is a negative height limit. I can't remember what it is though. But I do remember reading of this over at phantompilots.

GadgetGuy · Nov 15, 2016

There used to be a 200m descent limit at one time, in addition to the 500m ascent limit. However, the descent limit appears to have been removed, as a guy recently descended 1,930m from a mountain top to his villa at the base with a P4, and posted the one way flight on YouTube, and DJI reps Bladestrike and Tahoe Ed now claim to have no knowledge of a prior descent limit! Unfortunately, the 500m ascent limit still exists, which I ran into while flying up the side of a mountain. It would not let me fly my P4 up the last 200 feet to the top!

Pablo · Nov 15, 2016

GadgetGuy said:
There used to be a 200m descent limit at one time, in addition to the 500m ascent limit. However, the descent limit appears to have been removed, as a guy recently descended 2,900m from a mountain top to his villa at the base with a P4, and posted the one way flight on YouTube, and DJI reps Bladestrike and Tahoe Ed now claim to have no knowledge of a prior descent limit! Unfortunately, the 500m ascent limit still exists, which I ran into while flying up the side of a mountain. It would not let me fly my P4 up the last 200 feet to the top!

Wow I'd like to see that. Do you have a link?