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Partial loss of connection

alanj49

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I was flying my MA2 on Wednesday in some mist with fairly good visibility of a couple of hundred yards and the feed from the camera vanished from the iPhone, but the control of the drone was there albeit very sluggish. The drone hovered and it took a lot of downward pushes on the controller joystick to get it to land, and it landed very slowly. The drone had flown no further that 15 yards from me before the video connection dropped, and as with landing it came back to me very slowly. I suspect that RTH did not work as there was some connectivity with the drone.
I am not sure if it was as a result of the mist, or a suggestion that it may have been the cable to the iPhone, but that is quite new and has had no rough treatment or tight bends when coiled.
Could anyone throw any light on this issue please before I fly it again.
Many thanks in advance
 
The mist in it self will not cause any problems with the AC-RC connection. Usually the first to go when experience connectivity problems are the live stream ... very often the uplink to the AC is maintained slightly longer, that's why you still could control it even if the live stream was black. And as long the uplink works you can command RTH.

Fog can, if dense enough though ... create that landing behavior you had. The VPS sensors on the belly sense it underneath & mistake it for the ground or an obstacle. This can manifest it self in 2 unpleasant behaviors that can be somewhat scary ...

Either the VPS sensor think's it's solid ground beneath & will start to land if you keep the throttle pushed down longer than 3sec. & if unlucky it will actually also switch the motors off even though still airborne.

Or the VPS sensors treat it like a obstacle and refuse to descend ... instead it will only try to ascend away from it which leads to a infinite ascend you can't stop.

It's not advisable to fly in fog ...
 
Many thanks for the reply, the mist close up was not very thick at all, but I can understand from what you say what would make control response sluggish. Does that also apply to lateral movement as well as vertical movement?
I feel somewhat better about flying it again now. I would not normally fly in those conditions, hence the question about what to me were strange circumstances, but on that day we were searching for a lost dog that had been missing for 3 days. After the sluggish responses that drone was packed up.
 
...Does that also apply to lateral movement as well as vertical movement? ...
No, the sensors on the belly is looking down ... so what I described regarding the fogs possible influence on the AC behavior is only vertical from that sensor ... but then again, other obstacle avoidance sensors, horizontally directed can give break commands due to the same reasons I described earlier.
 
I have just calibrated the sensors, and they calibrated fine. so it probably was the weather conditions. I will test fly it in clear weather and check it all out.
Many thanks for your assistance in this.
 
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