OK, Newbie VPS RTH question

[ElPocho]

Yes, I did look but am still confused. It might be the beer, or just general stupidity.

I am going to be flying over the ocean in Baja this week. Not less than 50 feet over the water. I will be taking off from a cliff and flying straight out. I am turning OFF the downward VPS even though some people say it is not necessary.

If I turn off VPS, is RTH affected? Do I still log a home spot before taking off? If there is a thread on this I didn't see please let me know. Of course, if you have any other tips for my situation let me know as well. I'll owe you a beer!

 

[msinger]

If I turn off VPS, is RTH affected? Do I still log a home spot before taking off?

The Mavic will still set the home point on start up (if you have a good GPS connection) and it'll be able to return home if the home point was set and RTH is initiated during your flight. There are a lot of special scenarios that can pop up when RTH is initiated, so you should definitely check out the RTH section of the Mavic manual for more details on how that feature works.

 

[Qoncussion]

I am turning OFF the downward VPS even though some people say it is not necessary.

Good idea. I've made it a habit to do the same when flying over water. From the scattered reports, water confuses the downward vision sensors, making the Mavic think that it is rising up - so it counters that by descending. Apparently you only ever get to see this happen once, so I error on the side of caution.

While this has no effect on RTH, it can effect the speed at which the craft hits the ground when landing. You might want to get the craft over land, and re-enable the downward VPS before initiating a RTH.