Mini 2 SE Signal Loss

[kodak_jack]

I've had my new to me mini 2 SE for about a month. About a week ago I had a situation where I lost video and control signals without warning. I was about 1300 feet away and flying parallel, but a good 500 feet back, from a road. It was an alternative path around a public park I had already flown at and I was well above the trees in the area. I was facing the drone's path. Without any signal disturbance that I could see from the video, it just gave me a loss of signal warning and I didn't have any video and had no idea if I had any control of the drone - it wasn't visible that I could find. After about a minute of panicking, the Return to Home that I had pushed seemed to take control and it returned as it should have. FWIW, I was in Georgia last year and my son had the exact same thing happen to his. It's as if it has a built in delay before it starts coming back. Anybody else have his happen? For me, it was a different path I wanted to try, but for my son, it was a path he had flown many times before.

 

[Felix le Chat]

RTH does have a delay before activation. Then the first thing the drone does is stop dead and hover (first three to five seconds) then it climbs to the pre-set RTH altitude (another five or ten seconds, then it turns to orient itself for a line-of-least-resistance flight back to the set home point (another few seconds).

 

[GadgetGuy]

I've had my new to me mini 2 SE for about a month. About a week ago I had a situation where I lost video and control signals without warning. I was about 1300 feet away and flying parallel, but a good 500 feet back, from a road. It was an alternative path around a public park I had already flown at and I was well above the trees in the area. I was facing the drone's path. Without any signal disturbance that I could see from the video, it just gave me a loss of signal warning and I didn't have any video and had no idea if I had any control of the drone - it wasn't visible that I could find. After about a minute of panicking, the Return to Home that I had pushed seemed to take control and it returned as it should have. FWIW, I was in Georgia last year and my son had the exact same thing happen to his. It's as if it has a built in delay before it starts coming back. Anybody else have his happen? For me, it was a different path I wanted to try, but for my son, it was a path he had flown many times before.

If you were flying BVLOS and could not see the drone because of intervening obstructions to your LOS, you will lose signal, even at close range. You need to maintain a clear line of sight to the drone at all times, and also be pointing the antennas in that direction for best signal. The default loss of signal setting is to RTH. You cannot initiate RTH while you have no signal. The loss of signal RTH caused the drone to return back to you, not your pressing RTH, which can actually cancel the loss of signal RTH, once signal is restored, after the obstruction has been flown over.

 

[AeroJ]

Yeah, came back here to say what Gadget Guy pointed out. You shouldn't have had to have triggered RTH yourself, and possibly couldn't have done anyway. And when doing RTH on signal loss, there is a notable pause while the drone waits to see if signal is going to be re-established before it ascends and flies back home.

 

[kodak_jack]

Yeah, came back here to say what Gadget Guy pointed out. You shouldn't have had to have triggered RTH yourself, and possibly couldn't have done anyway. And when doing RTH on signal loss, there is a notable pause while the drone waits to see if signal is going to be re-established before it ascends and flies back home.

That’s essentially the delay I saw. It did not immediately trigger a return to home. It tells you what it is doing when returning and I didn’t hear or see anything in the meantime - scary when it happens.

 

[kodak_jack]

If you were flying BVLOS and could not see the drone because of intervening obstructions to your LOS, you will lose signal, even at close range. You need to maintain a clear line of sight to the drone at all times, and also be pointing the antennas in that direction for best signal. The default loss of signal setting is to RTH. You cannot initiate RTH while you have no signal. The loss of signal RTH caused the drone to return back to you, not your pressing RTH, which can actually cancel the loss of signal RTH, once signal is restored, after the obstruction has been flown over.

The drone is tiny when up above trees. When you’re panicking, you’re looking at the screen. Complete line of sight at a distance is nice, but unrealistic.

 

[AeroJ]

That’s essentially the delay I saw. It did not immediately trigger a return to home. It tells you what it is doing when returning and I didn’t hear or see anything in the meantime - scary when it happens.

Yes of course if there is full signal / VTX loss the UAV can't report to the controller that it is 'in progress' waiting to see if a signal is re-gained, so we are left hanging in the 'gap of uncertainty' while we trust our tech and wait until the signal recovers such that the drone can tell us what it is doing again. The more this happens (and the UAV survives) the more we get used to it of course, so we worry less, but the no-coms, no-idea-where-it-is-in-the-sky anxiety never fully goes away until it's back on its landing pad !

 

[GadgetGuy]

The drone is tiny when up above trees. When you’re panicking, you’re looking at the screen. Complete line of sight at a distance is nice, but unrealistic.

What you are missing is that the signal was completely blocked, so you couldn’t possibly have seen the drone, no matter how close. The blocked signal is what led to the loss of signal RTH.

You can still maintain clear Line of Sight (LOS) at 10 miles away, which is all that is necessary for signal control. Visual Line of Sight (VLOS) is not necessary for Line of Sight (LOS), but using your lack of VLOS to excuse complete signal loss from loss of LOS is reckless! It means you have no idea where your aircraft is!