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Mavic Air Range - RTH strange behavior

TheodKondak

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Hey guys and gals. After some years i managed to buy my first drone. DJI Mavic Air. Right now i m back in my home city Kavala in Greece and I am running some tests to find the limits of Mavic Air as well as to train myself to become a pilot. I got a lot of stories to share with you, including attacks from seagulls, swallows, a helicopter, and probably some drone disabling device. For now though i will stick to some questions I can't answer myself.

1. Range. I use some range extenders bought from amazon for like 10 bucks in order to make sure i have a good stable connection with my drone. I've seen some videos with people flying Mavic Air for more than 3km before they get weak signal warnings. I only managed to get to 1000m or so before the aircraft disconnects (even with the extenders). Is there some kind of EU regulation that limits the signal strength in the EU? Note: i was very far away from any kind of WIFI interference. I was in the middle of nowhere in a peninsula, and I flew over the open sea.

2. At some point, I tried to follow some fishing boats about 700m away from where I was. At some point, the drone went out of sight, behind some rocks, so the signal got completely lost. The drone then tried to return home, only it took the wrong turn. It was not coming straight at the home point, instead, it was following back the route it had previously flown. Fortunately, I managed to regain control and bring it back manually. Check the video to see my flight log.

3. Sometimes when i turn on the remote, it does a strong beeping sound and it will not stop. Could this be because the phone is not well connected or not connected to the remote?
 
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3. Sometimes when i turn on the remote, it does a strong beeping sound and it will not stop. Could this be because the phone is not well connected or not connected to the remote?

Non-stop beeping may signal a need to recalibrate the RC joysticks.

Check out this thread: RC STICK ERROR
 
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" 1. "Smart RTH" flies directly to the Home Point based on preset altitude. 2. Failsafe RTH returns to Home Point flying back along flight route (FS RTH Overrides "Smart RTH"). 3. Low Battery RTH flies directly back to Home Point (Overrides FS RTH & Smart RTH). 4. Critical Battery Warning (Activates immediate landing.) Overrides all of the above. Seems to be the same for all the DJI Drones.

Search "CE"
 
Non-stop beeping may signal a need to recalibrate the RC joysticks.

Check out this thread: RC STICK ERROR

Thanks. I will do a calibration to see if this fixes the issue. When flying though, I don't see any error or strange behavior.


" 1. "Smart RTH" flies directly to the Home Point based on preset altitude. 2. Failsafe RTH returns to Home Point flying back along flight route (FS RTH Overrides "Smart RTH"). 3. Low Battery RTH flies directly back to Home Point (Overrides FS RTH & Smart RTH). 4. Critical Battery Warning (Activates immediate landing.) Overrides all of the above. Seems to be the same for all the DJI Drones.

Search "CE"

Ah so RTH has multiple versions and methods of working. That is very interesting.

Yesterday i tried the FCC hack and the quality of the signal simply skyrocketed. This makes flying much much safer
 
Yup FCC mode first, chuck the 10euro reflectors away, they are junk and placebo at best, with my testing actually hurt signal reliability considerably.
 
Yup FCC mode first, chuck the 10euro reflectors away, they are junk and placebo at best, with my testing actually hurt signal reliability considerably.
Well you need to know how to use them. The signal gets kinda directional with them, but in my test i've found that they give me some extra 300m.
 
Well you need to know how to use them. The signal gets kinda directional with them, but in my test i've found that they give me some extra 300m.
Fair enough, however I was flying couple weeks ago and kept getting spotty reception, though hey wonder if that aerial thing will help, popped it on, pointed directly in the direction of the craft, and went from spotty to Jo signal at all and craft returned home. Took it off, and hey presto instantly got signal back and finished the shot.

If they work for you that's great, but I'm not the only one that calls BS on them.
 
Fair enough, however I was flying couple weeks ago and kept getting spotty reception, though hey wonder if that aerial thing will help, popped it on, pointed directly in the direction of the craft, and went from spotty to Jo signal at all and craft returned home. Took it off, and hey presto instantly got signal back and finished the shot.

If they work for you that's great, but I'm not the only one that calls BS on them.

There are a lot of vendors for signal extenders. In the first sight, they all seem the same, but there might be a difference in the quality of the materials among vendors, who knows, but in theory, the antennas should really boost the signal when it comes to plain physics.
 
There are a lot of vendors for signal extenders. In the first sight, they all seem the same, but there might be a difference in the quality of the materials among vendors, who knows, but in theory, the antennas should really boost the signal when it comes to plain physics.
Agreed, and yes and no, they Will improve the signal strength output, however unless the drone (Ma in this case) has its face pointing towards the parabola then there will be none or little improvement of the signal From the drone, possibly less, as you won't get the reflection from it hitting your body collected by the rear of the antenna.

Also it will make the connection extremely directional. But hey, like I say, if it works for you that's great, for me, after testing now 3 sets, they add nothing except at close range where strength is better, but at distance just cause issues.
 
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Hello partida!

Search for "ce to fcc" trick, for real range extension and forget about reflectors.

But 1000m in Greece (ce mode) is a fair enough range.

Greetings from Rio Patras.
 
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