Preventing your drone from landing...

[akdrone]

I'm very conservative with battery life, typically landing with 10min of battery life on my Mav 3 but I have 6 batteries so I just keep recharging them. My buddy also has 5 (?) batteries but he tends to stay "out there" till the last minute. On more than one occasion he has had to come back to the road instead of the car as he could not make it back. The other day I was reminded of his "technique" that I thought I'd share. After I returned my drone I heard his controller say (something like) "Return to home" and it initiated a return to home. A few minutes later I heard "landing" and knew his drone was not back yet. He cussed at it saying, "I still have 4 minutes left" (or something like that). He prevents a forced landing by keeping the left stick forward so as to tell it to go up (which it apparently doesn't) and the right stick up so it keeps on heading home. He landed with 2 minutes of flight time showing. This isn't my cup of tea but if you find yourself with a drone telling you it is going to land...push both sticks forward and see how much closer you can get to home.

 

[Cafguy]

Anyone waiting for their Battery to get below 10% before landing is an irresponsible pilot. Their Drone is doomed to crash and if they (and those around them) are lucky it will happen in a place with no people around. The Battery life telemetry shown on the controller is NOT a "gas gauge". My 2 cents......

 

[mavic3usa]

So annoying I know someone like that as well and to me, it's just silly to have your drone out to half a mile and the battery nearly empty, it's a unnecessary risk especially when you have a bunch of charged batteries sitting right there ready to use. I usually go home with fresh battery that I never got to use. I can understand if you are trying to get a particular shot, maybe you're on vacation far away from home and you gotta get as much as you can. Sometimes I believe the vast majority of the drone crash are due to pilot taking stupid risks but I understand everyone is not as overcautious as me. I often see people claim to take off with only 40% charged battery from last week and they wonder why they get a sudden forced landing a few minutes later.

 

[Rchawks]

I tend to be on the other side of the coin, and tend to leave 30% or a bit more in reserve. I always stay at 20% or more when landing as flight conditions can rapidly use up that battery reserve battery capacity. I have alot of batteries to switch out if neeeded.

 

[Nanny Ogg]

It seems to me that whatever the time remaining on a battery, it goes faster once it gets below 50%. This can lead to some to some unnecessary excitement if you have been flying down wind.

 

[akdrone]

with regard to "I can understand if you are trying to get a particular shot" ...that was and almost always is the case with my friend. In this instance there were Bison a few hundred yards away and he was shooting a mother and a calf and had no intention of stopping before he absolutely had to. We are invariably in a setting with exactly 0 people between us and our subject with no danger to anyone and the only issue being one of whether the drone gets back or not. I don't push the envelope like he does but he's never lost a drone to his willingness to fly down to one or two minutes so ... good for him. It's his risk and even he would not do so near people or in any situation that would involve any risk to others or even to wildlife.

 

[akdrone]

Anyone waiting for their Battery to get below 10% before landing is an irresponsible pilot. Their Drone is doomed to crash and if they (and those around them) are lucky it will happen in a place with no people around. The Battery life telemetry shown on the controller is NOT a "gas gauge". My 2 cents......

Around these parts (North Pole, Alaska) there's nobody around. Period. Just taking a risk, not putting anyone at risk. Worst case was a walk for a few hundred yards to pick up a broken drone if it landed badly.

 

[AeroJ]

(North Pole, Alaska)

Oh crikey - well then your friend risks even more in temperatures as adverse as that. I would expect a serious drop in flight time expectancy and overall performance in the mega-colds....

 

[akdrone]

Oh crikey - well then your friend risks even more in temperatures as adverse as that. I would expect a serious drop in flight time expectancy and overall performance in the mega-colds....

Tell me about it. We know we can get 15min out of a Mavic 3 at -40F... but that's just flying circles around us because even we are stupid enough to fly out and do filming at -40F LOL. (but we do at -20F without concern) LOL again.

 

[Max Headroom]

Anyone waiting for their Battery to get below 10% before landing is an irresponsible pilot.

I wonder how many of those irresponsible pilots will read the thread title (below) open the thread and be disappointed when the realise its not a how to guide

Preventing your drone from landing...​

 

[Rchawks]

I had a chance to get with some pics with the 6 vultures the other day as I started to land and when I seen where my battery level was I changed my mind and landed. It was tough to pass that opportunity by, but I did.

 

[Johnmcl7]

I'm curious, from reading the crash and fly away forum section I thought once the drone reached the critical battery stage it would always descend regardless of the user inputs, the descent trajectory can be changed by pushing on the sticks but it will always keep descending. Or is that what's being described?

 

[AeroJ]

Or is that what's being described?

That is what is being described. If you find yourself over water for example as you reach critical level, max up on the sticks can keep it almost level, and perhaps prevent descending into the water for a time, but that only works for so long - eventually it will descend despite that. But I have seen people keep theirs from descending for around 2 mins in videos where they specifically test this.

 

[Dale D]

I'm very conservative with battery life, typically landing with 10min of battery life on my Mav 3 but I have 6 batteries so I just keep recharging them. My buddy also has 5 (?) batteries but he tends to stay "out there" till the last minute. On more than one occasion he has had to come back to the road instead of the car as he could not make it back. The other day I was reminded of his "technique" that I thought I'd share. After I returned my drone I heard his controller say (something like) "Return to home" and it initiated a return to home. A few minutes later I heard "landing" and knew his drone was not back yet. He cussed at it saying, "I still have 4 minutes left" (or something like that). He prevents a forced landing by keeping the left stick forward so as to tell it to go up (which it apparently doesn't) and the right stick up so it keeps on heading home. He landed with 2 minutes of flight time showing. This isn't my cup of tea but if you find yourself with a drone telling you it is going to land...push both sticks forward and see how much closer you can get to home.

After reading through all of the comments thus far, here is my two cents. Most of my filming has to do with videos of either 3-4 minute videos for You Tube or Vimeo or for friends or the forum. Or, for major vacations which run about 20 minutes. Each of these films never contain more than less than 20-30 second clips edited together. I cannot recall ever filming for more than 3-5 minutes. There is simply no reason for my purposes of risking my very expensive M3 to get more footage. I just return to home and change the battery when it gets to around 30%.

Dale Davis

 

[JoelP]

Anyone waiting for their Battery to get below 10% before landing is an irresponsible pilot. Their Drone is doomed to crash and if they (and those around them) are lucky it will happen in a place with no people around. The Battery life telemetry shown on the controller is NOT a "gas gauge". My 2 cents......

While I agree with you, I have had the experience of facing an early landing when a battery degraded and was near its end of life. It went very quickly from 30% to 10% and I found myself in this situation. Now i make it a practice to check the health of my batteries regularly to see if the cells are all at the same voltage, or nearly so. That is the first indicator of a failing battery.

 

[KJC Imaging]

I'm very conservative with battery life, typically landing with 10min of battery life on my Mav 3 but I have 6 batteries so I just keep recharging them. My buddy also has 5 (?) batteries but he tends to stay "out there" till the last minute. On more than one occasion he has had to come back to the road instead of the car as he could not make it back. The other day I was reminded of his "technique" that I thought I'd share. After I returned my drone I heard his controller say (something like) "Return to home" and it initiated a return to home. A few minutes later I heard "landing" and knew his drone was not back yet. He cussed at it saying, "I still have 4 minutes left" (or something like that). He prevents a forced landing by keeping the left stick forward so as to tell it to go up (which it apparently doesn't) and the right stick up so it keeps on heading home. He landed with 2 minutes of flight time showing. This isn't my cup of tea but if you find yourself with a drone telling you it is going to land...push both sticks forward and see how much closer you can get to home.

Or just press the RTH/II button and fly normally. But this is an emergency situation.

 

[akdrone]

After reading through all of the comments thus far, here is my two cents. Most of my filming has to do with videos of either 3-4 minute videos for You Tube or Vimeo or for friends or the forum. Or, for major vacations which run about 20 minutes. Each of these films never contain more than less than 20-30 second clips edited together. I cannot recall ever filming for more than 3-5 minutes. There is simply no reason for my purposes of risking my very expensive M3 to get more footage. I just return to home and change the battery when it gets to around 30%.

Dale Davis

Exactly my approach. I shake my head and chuckle at my friend as he runs his battery down regularly. Each to their own.

 

[GadgetGuy]

The Mavic 3 can maintain flight for 2 minutes past 0% remaining, and the Autoland feature below 10% remaining can be turned off in the parameters, allowing for greater control below 10% without having to fight Autoland.

However, even under Autoland, the aircraft can still ascend with full up on the left stick. It is limited, but still possible. The descent rate can be controlled with left stick to taste.However, the best strategy is to gain altitude well before 10% to allow for the Autoland decent back to your location on a glide path while you fly straight back.

 

[akdrone]

great idea.

 

[GadgetGuy]

great idea.

I've been flying my batteries down to 5-10% since day one. Sometimes even to 2 minutes past 0%. LOL! Can't ever have enough flight time. Range anxiety abounds. Got to have some workarounds that make it safer and easier.