locutus40
Member
here is how i fly and ive never had a fly away knock on wood... i make sure both rc controller and rc drone are fully charged.. i make sure before i fly all updates are done the day before..Took delivery of my mini last week after waiting a month for the fly more combo. My first ever drone and this was my first flight outdoors.
First day of good weather today when I had free time took it out to an local area with good open spaces. it was 9 Degrees C with winds of 9 mph and gusts of up to 22 mph on weather app predicted.
As this was my first drone & flight took off in C mode for the slower speeds good connection to satellites has around 16 i recall. took off hovered perfectly in front of me at 1.4m 9m away after a couple of minute and setting the rth height of 100m (this was was to high I know now) i should have probably set for 15-20m max but there was some tall trees behind me and off to the side so wanted to avoid them worst case scenario. flew into the wind as all videos advise
started moving forward hand the antennas at right angles to the signal was going to drone it got 25m away and gave a signal interference for a couple of seconds that cleared up ( i should have come back at this point) moved forward again at a height of 10m aprox got to 35m high wind warning and signal lost drone stopped at 42m and initiated the RTH feature as total signal loss and no amount of moving the controller was working (starting to panic )
This is where it all went wrong the drone went up to 100m (which I thought I had set it too but I think it may have been 120m) and started coming back to me directly slowly though this was great it started to hover above me and then after 5 seconds just kept on going away over the embankment behind me and flew over the village that was on the other side of that. after moving around and adjusting the antennas it was not getting signal back and could still hear it so I went after it and never saw it again I got a brief signal when I was wondering the streets of the village looking for it and managed to change it got a weak signal and it was at 119m and moving at 3.4 m/s and 597m away from starting point at this point it had 82% battery & 11 min 40 left looking at the data feed changed it too p mode thinking i can get it back to myself or even a field to land it. oh no this was the wrong moved and this dropped to 25% and a flight time of 4m 51secs and then after a total of less than 40 seconds connect to the drone with it starting to turn signal dropped out again and the drone never to be seen again.
i searched the best i could int he wooded area and no connection to the drone and cant find it.
I am now at the mercy of amazon & DJI customer services. as I do not believe that the drone should have dropped connect that distance from me in an wide open area no power lines or tress between myself and the drone.
not a great first experience into the world of drones
1. turn on rc controller
2.start app
3. start up drone..
4.let drone aquire sats min 10 15 is ideal
5.set compass calibration do the dance etc.
6.place back on ground for about 30 seconds just to make sure..
7look on map to make sure big H is where your at aka home point recorded if not you can set this manually in the settings menu
8. check all settings rth hight max hight etc
9.take off..
10 hover for 30 seconds to make sure camera downward one captures the grounds patterns for a precises landing
11. then take off fly about 500 feet away in all directions paying attention to video drop out if you have drop out or connection issues
12.then you go into the transmission settings and manually swap it do this again fly slowly away to the point you see drop out if you fly your normal patterns around a park etc and you see no drop outs or issues that channel is fine.. you can also buy a antenna booster they are 12 bucks see dji gave us 5 stinking channels why i dont know but i once saw that a camera from china a 5.8 fpv camera they now remove channels and your left with about 5 or 10 sucks fcc did it to us... so also make sure to fly 100 feet min in the air to avoid wifi building transmissions and power line emf zones emf is around 20 feet around a wire for homes .. so i fly 100 feet up to 140 and i have no issues what so ever once ill get a 1 second drop out i pause stop and wait and then continue on if it keeps doing it and ive been though all the channels i come home and fly another day.. also you have to land and to swap channels but leave the drone on.. also dji gave us enhanced wifi lol really its a joke enhanced wifi is just a fancy term dji uses they use 2 channels for video 2 for transmission out of 5 there is no freq hopping no diversity what so ever the spark was the same way... its kinda bad really every transmitter in the world thats rc now uses freq hopping diversity if its more advanced.. diversity just switches the antennas to what ever one is getting the best reception for this the mini would need 4 antennas .. the phantom pro 3 uses lightg bridge.. its the last of the models to use hardware thats expensive to hopp channels and to diverse its antennas thats why it has 4 antennas. thats why its crystal clear i know because i own one.. after the phantom 3 they went to software based freq hopping on the mavic pro and phantom pro4 aka to save money they call it light bridge 2.. so basically ita all a lie freq hopping and diversity can be done with software aka firmwear.. i can go buy a spektrum receiver that does freq hopping and its 10 years old all they did to implement it was firmware to 3.0version so this ohhh we need money and its expensive is a lie futabba with fsss hopping and diversity i can buy a transmitter for 150 bucks and reciever for 50 bucks and get really far out hmmmm also smoe companies use 433 mhz transmitters and receivers and they go 20km out with no issues so dji why are you cheeping out i think they just dont care or are trying to satisfy the fcc and faa on distance limits line of sight etc... but still the freq hop and diversity if a phantom pro 3 can do it and its from 2015 and it be rock solid and have 10 2.4 channels and only transmit on 2.4 video and rc btw they uses 2 channels on 2,4 for video and hop around for transmitter hence why its so solid,, so thats why you have fly aways the cheap wifi they use i mean its not wifi its 2.4 but the transmitter pumps out only 500 mw and the drone about 600 mw.. the spark transmitter is like 800 mw and the drone about the same this is why it gets so stinking hot they figured pump out more power to punch though instead of doing a firmware and giving us this hopping etc... there just lazy or dont care.. still i wont fly any drone a mile i go about 1500 feet too 2000 its an investment for me.. and you have to look at it as if i loose this its 500 dollars and could cause damage.. so just fly close and i heard that it comes back if reception is lost this is a lie again i once lost reception before the 300 fw for 10 minutes it sat 500 feet out i had to walk up to it to get it back... i never loose touch with my dx8 radio and my 10 year old recievers so something aint right with dji