Huge GPS problem!!!

[4wd]

Taking off from balconies... another reason why drone laws are getting stricter.... It's like the electric scooter laws in shanghai and Beijing.. they outlawing them there.. guess drones will follow ...

Nothing inherently unsafe about it.
With the Mavic you could start indoors and fly out the window without any particular issue.

 

[dam]

Nothing inherently unsafe about it.
With the Mavic you could start indoors and fly out the window without any particular issue.

I was referring to the laws... flying near people etc.. so an apartment building balcony houses people etc..

 

[HFI]

Well, although the manual seems to be a bit better than much of the Chinglish I've read before, it is still not easy to follow. One problem is that the terms "altitude" and "height" seem to be used interchangeably.

Strictly speaking, "height" should represent the number of meters/feet above ground level from the launch site. Seeing a negative height after jumping off the balcony makes sense in that case. I am guessing that the "clearance" shown in the DJI Go app is the distance that the downward sensors detect between them and the ground or an obstacle.

There is a "maximum altitude" of 5 meters when the GPS signal is poor. So maybe since he dove off the balcony and everything is reading a negative height, it defaults to the "clearance" as the maximum and uses it. Just guessing.

"Altitude" really has no useful application in the true sense of the word as the height above mean sea level. Because the remote operator is normally on the ground (we hope) height above ground level has the most meaning. Only the service ceiling needs to be stated as an altitude (for those living in say, Denver for example).

 

[HFI]

Nothing inherently unsafe about it.
With the Mavic you could start indoors and fly out the window without any particular issue.

Really? In the case shown here it was an indoor balcony and the "pilot" had no idea whether people were under him (as we later see him directly overflying people). Very "professional."

 

[devinrhall]

i believe people trust in gps so much they don't learn how to fly manually without gps help...first of all if you cannot fly manually in atti you should not own a drone of this caliber because if you lose gps and you cant fly manually in atti that's risking a lot of issues that could come from it...gps is a supplement...you need to learn to fly...they need to use sport mode and learn to fly that thing...luckily i learned on racers so flying this mavic will be like driving a cadillac


Sent from my iPhone using MavicPilots

 

[junyong]

A hypothetic situation.. similar scenario like the YouTube clip where it forces itself to find 26 feet in ATTI. Lets say I am standing on higher ground and I decide to fly in GPS+VPS in a narrow area in between some rock faces that is 50m below my take off point (-50 altitude). The mavic then loses all GPS in the narrow rock faces. Does the MAVIC then force descend all the way down until the VPS can find 26ft?? And if I the valley is 200m deep, will the Mavic go to -190 meters and stay there?? Does this mean I will have to fly around in the narrow rock faces until I can get GPS to ascend out of the narrow space?? What if I loses control signal?? It would be stuck right as there is no GPS to RTH.

Now if I was smart enough and decide to switch to Sports mode to turn off VPS+OA, would this will give me 50m height relative to the last known VPS height reading or last known height relative to the take off point.

Sorry if it is unclear..

So on a side note, thinking about this... The foil trick to blind the GPS and force ATTI will still work but will be limited to 50m height in sports mode.

This is a great scenario-- one that's very similar to something that I just recently experienced at the base of a huge waterfall (Bijagual) in Costa Rica. I was several hundred feet below the waterfall's highest points which makes the bottom somewhat inside of a ravine which prevented my Mavic from achieving sufficient GPS lock (maybe 4 satellites?). So being fairly adept at flying in "atti" mode I took off anyway and started flying around and because I didn't have GPS, it gave me a warning that I couldn't fly above 5m I believe. It was my first time seeing this warning and remembered being annoyed. So I flew around anyway knowing I probably wouldn't ever get GPS flying this low where I was. But then the craziest thing started to happen. I went past some large boulders following the flow of the waterfall down to the stream below and the Mavic started dropping altitude without my input (apparently trying to find 5m again). I almost panicked before I realized what was happening and I only kept it from dropping lower by holding the throttle stick up. But I found myself stuck, unable to bring the Mavic back up to where I was because of this max altitude feature. I didn't realize at the time Sport Mode would have helped but I solved the problem by going into the menu and turning off downward vision and that enabled me to fly high enough to recover. It actually let me fly high enough to get full GPS lock as well, but I should note that without downward vision and GPS, it is in full-on "atti" mode and becomes very squirrely to handle. I would not recommended it for amateur pilots at all.

That said, this is a real problem that DJI should address for sure. In these scenarios, 90-100% throttle stick position should give the Mavic a small lift (say 10%) so that the user can override the system and recover.

 

[dewster]

I've seen people launch from roof tops without issue. They had clear view of the sky and good satellite read outs.

I experimented with launching from the roof of my car and received magnetic interference warning. I imagine being around so much metal would affect his flight too. V

 

[Magvheurck]

Hi these transparent spot appears in mi shots. Someone know anything about that?