Gimbal in high wind

spamgnome · Mar 5, 2019

Was flying today in a pretty stiff wind on the ground, and was at 200'. The MA flew fine even into the wind, BUT at full throttle, I noted that the horizon was quite tilted. I was flying sideways, btw. If I slowed down, things would settle down. My guess is that I hit the travel limit of the gimbal. If the wind was, say 15, and I was traveling 17, that means that the little guy was going 32 air speed...and tilted mightily to achieve that.
I'm pretty new to the MA and droning altogether. Does my thinking sound right?

spamgnome · Mar 6, 2019

Bumping my own thread

My hope was to get some feedback from the experts in the forum on whether this is "normal / expected" behavior, or if there is something defective with the drone.
I had a similar post on this same issue a few weeks ago, but hadn't seen the issue since...until now.

kjcbid54 · Mar 6, 2019

Completely normal.

MavicFlyer · Mar 6, 2019

spamgnome said:
Was flying today in a pretty stiff wind on the ground, and was at 200'. The MA flew fine even into the wind, BUT at full throttle, I noted that the horizon was quite tilted. I was flying sideways, btw. If I slowed down, things would settle down. My guess is that I hit the travel limit of the gimbal. If the wind was, say 15, and I was traveling 17, that means that the little guy was going 32 air speed...and tilted mightily to achieve that.
I'm pretty new to the MA and droning altogether. Does my thinking sound right?

First, let's make sure we've got the right terminology.

If the wind was 15, and you were traveling through the air (airspeed) at 17 (with the wind), your ground speed would be 32. If you were flying into the wind, your ground speed would only be 2.

How much the MA tilts in the direction of flight is a function of AIR speed, NOT GROUND speed.

The speeds you see on the controller and logs are ground speeds - If you're hovering in a wind, you have a non-zero airspeed into the wind, but a groundspeed of zero.

spamgnome · Mar 6, 2019

If wind is 15 and I'm flying into it while showing a GS of 17, then isn't that equivalent to an AS of 32? At least that's what I was trying to say.

MavicFlyer · Mar 6, 2019

spamgnome said:
If wind is 15 and I'm flying into it while showing a GS of 17, then isn't that equivalent to an AS of 32? At least that's what I was trying to say.

That's correct. Thirty-two is a pretty hefty airspeed for the MA, so the drone would be substantially tilted into the wind, and you may be getting warnings about obstacle avoidance being not available (the sensors have a limited elevation range, which may be exceeded).

spamgnome · Mar 6, 2019

Oh, there were plenty of warnings on sensors. What kind of surprised me was the fact that in calm, the GS is ~17...but in the strong wind...it remained roughly the same. Guessing the software automatically tries to maintain speed.
Oh...and a pitot.tube on the Air would be nice