Low battery which should I use Tripod or S ?

[cayrick]

You should already be on the ground before 10%.
But in a low battery situation, Sport and Tripod modes are not good choices.
Just like driving your car at 90 mph will give very poor miles/gallon, Sport Mode is not good for distance/battery.
And the drone uses battery just staying up in tha air, stay up longer (flying slower) and you also waste battery.
In a low battery returning flight, you need to find the sweet spot between burning battery fast and flying too slow.
You'll get the most miles/battery at a tiny bit less than full speed in P-GPS mode.
It's so close to full speed that you may as well use that.

A variation to this issue.Recently returning home Mavic 2 zoom in P mode I was flying into a headwind with what I thought was a safe battery level. I was at 700 ft. and at times the drone under full throttle was moving backwards. I dropped altitude 2 times but the speed was very low and my battery was dropping precipitously. I did get home with less than 14% juice left in the battery. After the fact I thought about why didn't I use S mode. What would you have done?

 

[Meta4]

A variation to this issue.Recently returning home Mavic 2 zoom in P mode I was flying into a headwind with what I thought was a safe battery level. I was at 700 ft. and at times the drone under full throttle was moving backwards. I dropped altitude 2 times but the speed was very low and my battery was dropping precipitously. I did get home with less than 14% juice left in the battery. After the fact I thought about why didn't I use S mode. What would you have done?

Sport mode would have burned battery faster without adding enough speed to help much
If you are 700 feet up your drone will be fighting winds much stronger than at surface level.
The solution is to get down to 100 feet or less.
A better solution is not to end up downwind with a headwind to fight coming home.

 

[WithTheBirds]

I read


I read an article some time ago on aerodynamic flow showing that a drone moving horizontally up to a certain point was more efficient than hovering due to some fluid dynamics. Has anyone experienced this in real world situations?

Everyone experiences this every time they fly. The phenomenon you read about would have been transitional lift. Hover is always less efficient than forward flight. If you ever flew a RC helicopter (or full size one) you would notice that when transitioning from hover to forward flight you reduce the collective- the air movement across the rotors when moving laterally creates additional lift- just like an aircraft wing.

 

[pjarvo18]

Am I the only one still stuck on Amish people flying drones? Maybe Mennonite would allow it but Amish only during Rumspinga.