The good news is that you have the safest drone yet. I say this after crashing phantoms (more than once) and paying for those repairs. I now have a
M2P and am totally amazed by the obstacle avoidance. AND range.
Let me cover your issues from my POV:
- What I'm having a problem with is I don't trust the drone(really myself) to fly it high enough-150 feet, or far enough-maybe as much as a few hundred yards away from me. I am so afraid of 1) losing signal 2) losing sight 3) getting it back home without hitting a tree.
These things have a great signal range. Just check the indicators before take off (full battery, good GPS / satellite signal, and especially the remote-to-craft transmission signal strength). And once you're in the air and hovering at a safe place (and you will get to trust this hover), you can check those indicators time and time again. And don't fly behind buildings (don't let a building get between the aircraft and your remote).
- Also, I'm worried that using the RTH button will cause it to go up first (which might cause it to fly into a tree or something,
It will go STRAIGHT up. If you're not under a tree or bridge, don't worry about that.
Flying behind a building where you can't see if there's a tree or bridge above your craft? That's not something you should do.
- and not having it set to go high enough on return to avoid any obstacles.
Especially for your work, around buildings, this is a setting you check each time you fly (not a set-once-and-forget).
All of us should check several things about their aircraft before they take off. One of them is RTH height. Not just in your line of work -- all of us should check our surroundings -- but you especially should place this high on your list.
If you do, then that's another thing you don't have to worry about.
Pre-flight check-lists are your friend. They help you with the confidence you need to do your work.
- How should I setup my RTH function and also are all sensors on using the RTH function and if not, how to I make sure they get turned on? Thanks for any help as I need some confidence flying this thing! I'm trying to learn all of this by reading the manual, but there is a lot to understand!
There
is indeed a lot to understand, so read the manual, the refer back to it often.
The optical sensors do not all work in every mode. Read the manual, and also go out and test fly in a field or something to get to know which modes they work in. See the icon in the DJI GO 4 app and get to know which lines in the icon mean which sensors. (Green = on, Red = off.) Don't be alarmed by the message that not all sensors are active -- the message isn't clear, but it mostly just means that you're not in the right mode to have them ALL active.
Standard GPS flying does not get you the side sensors (and those icon lines will be red): you need to be in TRIPOD mode or one of the other Intelligent Flight modes that have slow, programmed flight patterns to get full protection.
The good news here is that you probably want those modes (especially TRIPOD mode) to take smoother video without jerky stick actions.
One of the things I did when I first go my
M2P was to go to an unoccupied tennis court, one with 12 foot fencing all around it. It had a nice smooth place to take off from, but also the fence to test the obstacle avoidance. When you're testing obstacle avoidance, of course you want to be careful not to ram into the fencing (go very slow at first)... but with care. I think you'll find that it will vibrate / beep the remote and then stop the craft in its track before hitting the fence.
That tennis court test did a lot to boost my confidence. But also note that you should not rely on the obstacle avoidance 100%. You should really consider this a safety feature only and use your EYES to never get into a place where you get that surprise remote vibration / beep.
Confidence comes with time. That time can be sped up by testing and practicing in a relatively safe space (rather than on the job).
RANGE: I have yet to lose range on this thing and have gotten it so far off that I could barely see it (much, much farther than you are likely to get in real estate work).
HOWEVER, the mistake that you can easily make in your kind of work is flying behind a building. But then, you checked your RTH height before taking off, right? Every time?
But you don't ever need to fly behind the building. If you find that you must film around that corner, stop the craft (hover), and move your body/remote so you can continue to fly around the building while still keeping a VLOS. You will edit out the paused parts (or you can stop recording and stitch them together) later in post-processing (another skill you should have in your work).
Chris
