Getting rid of the "High altitude. Fly with caution' warning sticker

[rotohead]

OK, I see lot's of .DAT files but no .TXT files. What am I doing wrong?

 

[bsmorgan]

I'm in Colorado Springs at an altitude of 6800 ft (2050 m) and I get this warning. Since the air is thinner, the drone has to work harder to stay aloft and the runtime on the battery will be less than it would be at sea level. If I was a visitor instead of a resident, the warning might be a good thing to have.

 

[rotohead]

OK, I found the .txt files but they are a bunch of symbols and it won't let me copy/paste them.

 

[rotohead]

I'm in Colorado Springs at an altitude of 6800 ft (2050 m) and I get this warning. Since the air is thinner, the drone has to work harder to stay aloft and the runtime on the battery will be less than it would be at sea level. If I was a visitor instead of a resident, the warning might be a good thing to have.

Why does the warning not show when I use the standard battery?

 

[Capt KO]

Have you tried tapping on the warning to delete it? That’s all I do when it shows at high altitude.
Batteries have firmware that updates along with the drone and can be updated at the same time. A firmware refresh with the + battery installed will probably get rid of the warning.

 

[bsmorgan]

OK, I found the .txt files but they are a bunch of symbols and it won't let me copy/paste them.

The .txt files are encrypted. There's a couple of places to "upload" the .txt file and get data back you can use. See Fail safe RTH.

 

[bsmorgan]

Why does the warning not show when I use the standard battery?

I can't answer that. It shows for me with the standard battery.

 

[rotohead]

Have you tried tapping on the warning to delete it? That’s all I do when it shows at high altitude.

I have tried that during past flights and it never goes away. Which brings up another issue. Much of the time when I touch this screen to swipe down or initiate some action I have to do it numerous times to get it to respond. Esp the swipe down menus. I end up changing the gimbal and white balance and exposure before I get that menu to show up. Maybe that's the real problem to begin with.

 

[Wild Drone Pilot]

It's AGL (Above Ground Level) not altitude!

altitude = the height of an object or point in relation to sea level OR ground level!

 

[rotohead]

I'll contact DJI support Monday but i'm becoming convinced this is meant to warn when flying the heavier battery and is intentional. I can dismiss the initial warning msg but it just goes to the top of the screen.

 

[Chaosrider]

Why does the warning not show when I use the standard battery?

That part is very weird.

One possible explanation would be that the warning is triggered not just by pressure altitude, by pressure altitude combined with weight, as a way to address the endurance question. Perhaps, it knows which battery is being used, and the "endurance warning" function of the high altitude warning gets triggered not just by the altitude, but by when it knows it's heavy.

Logically, this makes sense, but I have no idea if that's the way it actually works!

Do you see the warning as soon as everything is powered up, or do you not see it until you're in the air? My Mini-1 gives the warning as soon as it's powered up, prior to liftoff.

An OP made the good point that the warning could be useful for people who don't normally fly from a high elevation, but it sure would be nice to be able to turn it off. Still, if you're not regularly monitoring your battery power % and time remaining indicators, you're not paying attention. In that sense, it's a kind of baboon-proofing.

 

[rotohead]

That part is very weird.

One possible explanation would be that the warning is triggered not just by pressure altitude, by pressure altitude combined with weight, as a way to address the endurance question. Perhaps, it knows which battery is being used, and the "endurance warning" function of the high altitude warning gets triggered not just by the altitude, but by when it knows it's heavy.

Logically, this makes sense, but I have no idea if that's the way it actually works!

Do you see the warning as soon as everything is powered up, or do you not see it until you're in the air? My Mini-1 gives the warning as soon as it's powered up, prior to liftoff.

An OP made the good point that the warning could be useful for people who don't normally fly from a high elevation, but it sure would be nice to be able to turn it off. Still, if you're not regularly monitoring your battery power % and time remaining indicators, you're not paying attention. In that sense, it's a kind of baboon-proofing.

That all makes sense. Mine shows the second it's powered up and props still. It's just a very irritating thing and unnecessary if it can't be dismissed.

 

[MAvic_South_Oz]

It's not a max flight ceiling issue.

Above some MSL altitude, it complains. And never stops complaining.

I thought it was just a Mini-1 issue, but obviously not.

Thank goodness for my two perfect older drones in Go4.
That would drive me crazy now, bad enough the odd high wind warnings popping up now and then, screen clutter, when it’s perfectly ok to fly.

 

[Chaosrider]

That all makes sense. Mine shows the second it's powered up and props still. It's just a very irritating thing and unnecessary if it can't be dismissed.

I suspect this bothers pilots of full-sized aircraft much more than it bothers anybody else! And just as a random guess, I suspect the number of drone pilots who are also full-sized pilots is tiny, maybe 5% max.

A lot of the nannyisms that DJI uses are just a form of baboon-proofing. And non-USA countries must have concluded that they have a higher concentration of baboons than the USA does...

;-)

One of the reasons that DJI is the overwhelmingly dominant drone maker on the planet is that they build aircraft that are "heavy regulation" friendly. What they should do is design firmware that has a simple USA/non-USA toggle, and when the USA flag is set, it should only impose restrictions that the US government requires.

Will they ever do that? Dunno. Probably not until they get serious competition from some other company that does do that, which at the moment, they don't have.

 

[Chaosrider]

Thank goodness for my two perfect older drones in Go4.
That would drive me crazy now, bad enough the odd high wind warnings popping up now and then, screen clutter, when it’s perfectly ok to fly.

I get the high wind warnings most with the Mini-1, a little less with the Mini-SE, and only sometimes with the Mini-2s. At first I always brought the drones home when I got that message, until I determined that they were excessively conservative.

The high wind warning includes a notification that you can't RTH, and that you'll have to bring the bird home manually. I'm going to do a formal test of that, because sometimes the RTH does work.

I had my Mini-1 out for one of it's early test runs after I bought it (used). It was windier than usual, but that was part of the test, and I got the high wind warning a lot.

At some point, surprisingly, it had a loss of signal RTH! The video on the phone was gone. But it knew enough to come home on its own, I have the aircraft video!

I had been flying lower than usual to reduce the winds a bit, and that's probably the cause of the signal loss RTH. But when it decided to come home, the first thing it did was to climb up to its RTH altitude.

Bad plan! It was at the altitude it was to avoid the wind, but it started climbing up into the monster. When it got there, it started to come home, but in an odd orientation...it was pointed about 90º counter-clockwise from its direction of movement. Why? Because it could fight the wind better in that orientation, for some reason? Still a mystery.

When the signal came back on the phone, I cancelled RTH, dropped down, and flew it home manually.

So the high wind warning says that RTH is disabled, but if you then combine that with a loss of signal, it does indeed RTH home.

 

[SteveMouzon]

I know about the 400' limit. This warning is on from the minute the drone is ready to fly and on a a 2ft hover.

This happens to me a lot, except at about 30ft up. But then it goes away in 1-3 minutes... I assume it has something to do with getting a GPS lock or something.

 

[MAvic_South_Oz]

But when it decided to come home, the first thing it did was to climb up to its RTH altitude.

Bad plan! It was at the altitude it was to avoid the wind, but it started climbing up into the monster. When it got there, it started to come home, but in an odd orientation...it was pointed about 90º counter-clockwise from its direction of movement. Why? Because it could fight the wind better in that orientation, for some reason? Still a mystery.

Yes, sounds like a pre flight check could have seen RTH set lower possibly ?
Always a good idea to look around the intended flight area, determine if a much lower setting is ok.

I fly a lot from cliff tops near the ocean, or even from a beach it applies if out over the water, I can set my RTH alt to 20', 30', whatever is needed to have that little safety margin.

I only really need it for failsafe RTH, not too fussed about using it on normal returns, just fly it.

I did fly my M1P once is what I'd call very strong winds, was over inland New South Wales and I really wanted this footage of a drought affected area . . . and I noticed on it's return it was turned slightly as I flew it back, was really getting blown slightly 45o to me and I had to come home in a bit of an arc.
Was an easy retrieval if I had to land in this huge bare paddock and go fetch it.

Anyway, always good to know what your aircraft will do in a safer place than you might normally fly.

 

[rotohead]

Before this thread dies off I want to to thank members for the help on this issue. There are tons of sites on issues like this type but few that limit to the subject and content as this one does. I'm glad I joined and will contribute in the future. Thanks to all for the help.

 

[Cymru]

I've operated at about 6000ft MSL with the mini 3 and not seen that warning on takeoff with standard battery.
There is baro drift though as there is with all DJI drones.
At a guess id say its a firmware issue with the big battery and will be fixed as such.

 

[rotohead]

Just finished one of the more difficult customer service phone calls of my life but I was able to communicate the issue to DJI and they have opened a case# and will be looking into this issue. They tell me this is the first time they have heard about this and it is NOT the way it's suppose to work. The key is having that Code 30311 shown in the pre-flight menu. They said they would get back to me in the next couple days for either more info or a possible firmware fix. I'll post when I get more info.