Why did my Air 2 S decide not to come home to Papa?

[MAvic_South_Oz]

I set the RTN max alt to 1600 feet.

Get used to calling it RTH (return to home), that's what it is . . . RTN might sort of make sense as short for return, but it is not referred to in the drone community for anything.

No matter what RTH is working, be it manually started by you the pilot, drone calculated low battery, or failsafe (which is when all signal links are lost between the drone and controller), it will always go to the set height you put in before flight.
Note, if you are HIGHER than RTH set altitude, when it kicks in, it will stay at the height it is at, it won't descend, obviously for if you have flown up a hill and gained altitude.
In that sort of scenario, you can move the throttle stick down to bring the drone down keeping in safe wind speeds as you come back.

1600 feet that is far too high for anytime in the air, RTH or for normal manual flight.
Besides being well over the 400' max altitude above ground level for legal drone flight, the wind up there can be, and often is, far higher than lower down.
This is one reason MANY pilots have lost their drones, even at lower altitudes.

The manual won't tell you (I think) that RTH should be set for EACH flight, depending on several factors.
The main one, is set it to the height of things around you the drone might bump into, plus a little extra safety margin, say + 30'.
So it trees around are say 50', set RTH for the flight to 80', or 100', and you can get quicker RTH happening, plus you stay down in more reasonable winds.

Of course RTH has more important parameters you do in a pre flight check, distance you plan to fly, duration of flight, how to maximise battery for the flight, but again, usually the lowest safe RTH you can set is best for all that too.

RTH is but one of the critical things to get to know well, and in itself is a fairly big skill set to master, when you read how it performs / what it does what way, at what distance from home point, and so on.

Hit the videos, they really are great, and read up here lots . . . the manual is cold and specific, it doesn't know what's best for a flight, just tells you the tools available.

 

[Meta4]

al

ok so can we review how one can prevent an issue with GPS flyaway for Air2s?

There's no such thing as GPS flyaway and it's hard to understand what you are thinking of.

1) incorrect altitude setting.

What's the question?
Don't set your RTH height to a crazy level.
Set an appropriate height for where you are flying, one that will ensure you clear any obstacles in the vicinity.

2) lost GPS signal. ( How often does that occur and how can that be avoided?

If the drone has an unobstructed wiew of the sky, it shouldn't ever happen.

 

[Meta4]

So I presume the drone uses a barometer.

Yes

I launch the drone from the parking lot or the lawn area, it goes up 10 feet so now I am 25 feet above sea level. But as I approach the shoreline I really have trouble knowing what my true elevation is. am I getting an accurate reading from the barometer? IE, the Fly App is not telling me what the elevation is from home, but from wherever the drone is currently?

No .. the indicated height on your screen is the height relative to where you launched.

What might be a good elevation to image surfers from on or near the shoreline in non-turbulent conditions or conditions that are not very turbulent?

There is no answer to your question.
The drone is not very good for catching surfers in action, because its wideangle lens makes everything look further away.
To get good images you would have to be much too close to the surfers and the waves.
If you were doing it, you would have to judge the height yourself from the screen image and understand that the drone is closer to everything than it appears.
In your case, it would probably be a quick way to lose the drone.

 

[slup]

...issue with GPS flyaway for Air2s?

... this max RTN altitude could be used as an exploit

I know I do need to learn... A lot to learn.

Ohhh really????? I did not catch that...

I just read about failsafe RTH.

...I set the RTN max alt to 1600 feet.

I flew my drone within the vicinity of the mountain base, and activated RTN...The drone climbed to 1600 feet and after I canceled it

Something again ascary happened.

For a very long handful of seconds I LOST ALL CONTACT with said drone.

From what I read you seems to be VERY new & ignorant to all this, you haven't any knowledge about the craft functions or the regulations.

You need to stop flying & instead start studying & learn it all in small steps ... not trying out stunts flying up on 1600ft. Continue as you've started & you will lose this craft also & maybe cause damage in the process.

.. Right now you sound like a menace in the airspace.

Couldn't agree more ... exactly my thought also.

 

[AusFlyer]

It may have a distance of 11 km but you have to be able to maintain eye contact all the time. In this case I doubt whether you maintained eye contact all the time and those who brag they flew 10 km away surely won’t. You were quite lucky that you did not bring down a real aircraft.

 

[DavidBlezard]

Would love to know what I did wrong and I am sure it was a few things. I flew when it was dark with the lights on and never lost visual contact but mistakenly flew the drone away from home to about 2 miles away and so I just made a RTN command. WTF the drone then just shot up from its maximum of 180 feet (which seems low thought it was supposed to be about 400 foot maximum) and it shot up to 1200 feet !!!!!!!

I am looking at this happening not believing this. What algorithm would have this Air2S climb to 1200 feet?

Then it just hovered. At this point I have 60% battery.

I clicj RTN again. Nothing happens. I have line of sight though. I see the distance and height and try to move it home manually after bringing it way down, but it just hovers, maybe moving .2 mph. So I enter RTN and again she shoots up to this time like 1600 feet.

I am getting really nervous now.

I can see this drone, why is she not coming home?

Finally after some time I get the dreaded battery alarm but now I have regained some control and I am able to get her to approach home manually but slowly, too slowly. I decide to go Pro mode for speed and in a minute she force lands, this being like a dance where I bring her up a but and towards home but finally she is just not staying up and I am steering her into a parking lot.

I never want this to happen again.

I do not want my drone climbing to 1800 feet.

I want her to come home when I call her!

Other people have posted about your logs. Great work.
I use app AirMap for knowing the max altitude and controlled space flight Authorization via LAANC.
If you are in the USA you need to Register your UAS. A good site to get some info and link to register is FAA Drone Registration


Please take some time to learn the rules for safe flying and have fun

 

[JetM]

It look like you wasn't aware of the regulations where you flew ... & that together with your excessive RTH height severely slowed down your crafts horizontal speed.

You Flew here ... have marked the HP & where the first RTH was initiated (red cross)

(Click on all pics below to make them larger)
View attachment 139201

Looking into the same area in the DJI Fly Safe material in your AC showed that this was an altitude zone limited to 60m (196ft).
View attachment 139202

So ... as you had the RTH height set to 1214ft (370m) you breached the altitude zone when the RTH was initiated.

All was shown in your message stream in your app ... have here highlighted the important messages.
View attachment 139203

Here below all relevant telemetry from the flight ... you didn't once try to descend down into legal airspace which had given back the full heading speed. Instead you stayed up above 196ft, consumed down your battery until the threshold for the forced low battery auto landing. Have placed the chart marker at 301,7sec where the first instance of RTH was initiated & your AC ascended up to the RTH height.

(Values in the legend below the chart from where the chart marker is at 301,7sec. Blue background=GPS mode, Pink=RTH, Yellow=Sport & Green=Low battery auto landing)
View attachment 139204

Not to pile on here but YIKES!!!!...I'm very familiar with that flight area and the Gillespie airport...The VAST majority of planes that fly out of this Gillespie airport are very small (e.g., single engine Cesna prop planes with an occasional small corporate jet and helicopters). It's a very busy airport in a metropolitan area. Not sure what the hours are of the airport. Could you imagine what damage could have been done had one of these aircraft had run into the Air 2S???? Very scary!!!

 

[skycam509]

Scanning through these replies, I didn't notice anyone mentioning what appears obvious to me - the controller was set to metric and you were thinking feet. That's why what you thought should be 400 feet was actually 1200+ feet or 400 meters.

Don't feel too bad. It happened to NASA when they forgot to convert some calculations from English units to metric, and crashed a $125 million orbiter into Mars. At least yours didn't crash!

 

[FlyBuddy]

Would love to know what I did wrong and I am sure it was a few things. I flew when it was dark with the lights on and never lost visual contact but mistakenly flew the drone away from home to about 2 miles away and so I just made a RTN command. WTF the drone then just shot up from its maximum of 180 feet (which seems low thought it was supposed to be about 400 foot maximum) and it shot up to 1200 feet !!!!!!!

I am looking at this happening not believing this. What algorithm would have this Air2S climb to 1200 feet?

Then it just hovered. At this point I have 60% battery.

I clicj RTN again. Nothing happens. I have line of sight though. I see the distance and height and try to move it home manually after bringing it way down, but it just hovers, maybe moving .2 mph. So I enter RTN and again she shoots up to this time like 1600 feet.

I am getting really nervous now.

I can see this drone, why is she not coming home?

Finally after some time I get the dreaded battery alarm but now I have regained some control and I am able to get her to approach home manually but slowly, too slowly. I decide to go Pro mode for speed and in a minute she force lands, this being like a dance where I bring her up a but and towards home but finally she is just not staying up and I am steering her into a parking lot.

I never want this to happen again.

I do not want my drone climbing to 1800 feet.

I want her to come home when I call her!

I live near this airport. Here's a little known fact. According to the chart supplement, the airport is Class D from 7:00 AM to 9:00 PM. Other times it's Class G. That's shown in the Airspace note as Zulu time of 1500-500Z. So it's legal to fly that area from 9 at night to 7 in the morning. Of course proper lighting is needed if flying at night. This is what I don't like about DJI's geofencing. It doesn't take into account little details like this. I've included a copy of the chart supplement.

 

[Meta4]

A good site to get some info and link to register is XXXX

No .. that isn't a good site.
It's one of a number of scam sites that is designed to catch the unwary and charge them more than the FAA charges for drone registration.
The proper site to go to is the FAA's website at FAADroneZone

 

[Kentucky Ranger]

so is the key to this whole lost control issue that had I brought her down to 180' I would have regained control and brought her home?

I understand I had the RTN set too high (which of course now I lowered) But it makes no sense that it would ascend so high inspite of local regulations.

And why did she not come home? Because she was too high?

So this will not happen again if in my area I keep max to 180' ?


I have a lot ta learn.

No matter what, you’re only allowed to fly up to 400 feet, no more.
In the restricted airspace you were in, only allows a max altitude of 100 feet, and that’s also only with permission.
I’d say, when the drone went to your set altitude of 1,200 feet, it caused it to lose its mind.
Now that you know, don’t do that again…

 

[mavicn00b]

Neglectful parent, your drone wants a new daddy

 

[PompousWindbag]

What happened seems fairly obvious to me, but I could be wrong. You have your readings set to meters, not feet, and thought you were setting maximum height of 400 feet but it was actually 400 meters which are 1,310 feet.

 

[sar104]

What happened seems fairly obvious to me, but I could be wrong. You have your readings set to meters, not feet, and thought you were setting maximum height of 400 feet but it was actually 400 meters which are 1,310 feet.

The maximum altitude was set to 500 m, and the RTH altitude to 370 m.

 

[falicityman_7]

Would love to know what I did wrong and I am sure it was a few things. I flew when it was dark with the lights on and never lost visual contact but mistakenly flew the drone away from home to about 2 miles away and so I just made a RTN command. WTF the drone then just shot up from its maximum of 180 feet (which seems low thought it was supposed to be about 400 foot maximum) and it shot up to 1200 feet !!!!!!!

I am looking at this happening not believing this. What algorithm would have this Air2S climb to 1200 feet?

Then it just hovered. At this point I have 60% battery.

I clicj RTN again. Nothing happens. I have line of sight though. I see the distance and height and try to move it home manually after bringing it way down, but it just hovers, maybe moving .2 mph. So I enter RTN and again she shoots up to this time like 1600 feet.

I am getting really nervous now.

I can see this drone, why is she not coming home?

Finally after some time I get the dreaded battery alarm but now I have regained some control and I am able to get her to approach home manually but slowly, too slowly. I decide to go Pro mode for speed and in a minute she force lands, this being like a dance where I bring her up a but and towards home but finally she is just not staying up and I am steering her into a parking lot.

I never want this to happen again.

I do not want my drone climbing to 1800 feet.

I want her to come home when I call her.

!

I believe that strong micro wave transmissions are in the area when these thing happen, this never happened to me yet but there are always a possibility.

 

[slup]

I believe that strong micro wave transmissions are in the area when these thing happen...

That had absolutely nothing to do with this incident, unless ... Strong micro wave transmissions makes a drone pilot

-dial in a RTH height of 1214ft
-not knowing anything at all about the regulations in the area where they fly
-refuse to obey the warnings given on the app screen
-stay up on nonlegal height until the battery is totally drained.

No ... this was only due to ignorance regarding the drone functionality & the airspace regulations.

You have it all here --> in post #9

 

[PompousWindbag]

The maximum altitude was set to 500 m, and the RTH altitude to 370 m.

If you're flying in the U.S. at least, that's blatantly illegal for both settings. 1,640' is what 500m is, and to my knowledge, about 1,240' OVER the permitted limit. No wonder you're having issues?

 

[sar104]

If you're flying in the U.S. at least, that's blatantly illegal for both settings. 1,640' is what 500m is, and to my knowledge, about 1,240' OVER the permitted limit. No wonder you're having issues?

I think you have me confused with the OP - I was merely pointing out that the maximum flight altitude was set to 500 m, not 400 m, which makes it less likely that it was confusion between imperial and metric units.

Also - it's not illegal to set those parameters that high, and it's not necessarily illegal to fly over 400 ft above the takeoff point, provided that the aircraft remains at less than 400 ft AGL.

 

[MAvic_South_Oz]

Well, the OP has likely learned something, or maybe numerous things, from the thread.
Very lucky they got their drone back for a second life.

Maybe cut them a break now, as this is what the forum is for, to help educate new pilots and keep the skies safe.
No good to continue beating them down as it drives new pilots away and stops them posting / learning.

 

[MA2 317]

No good to continue beating them down as it drives new pilots away and stops them posting / learning.

Yep.

Be better, not bitter.


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