Wish I had not asked now.

[umanbean]

But not sure I will bother asking anything again,

Nah... please don't hesitate to start threads if you have questions. Just too easy to scroll right past a tome that you're not interested in... I do

 

[hiflyer201]

I think we have all had heart stopping moments with this hobby.
Sometimes it’s just a drone acting like a drone

 

[Jamesz]

It was a sensible question and one that was well answered. Drone aerials are very sensitive to orientation. Keep the flats facing the drone at all times and you should rarely experience disconnects.

 

[Terry63]

This afternoon whilst playing with the video settings on my drone, Ie: shutter speed and frame rates.
Hovering at about 70 to 80 feet up directly above my head in my back garden/yard, I flew the drone back behind me only about 15 to 20 feet and completely lost signal between the drone and the controller, the screen went grey and connection was lost.
I rapidly spun around (heart thumping) to look up and there it was still at 70 to 80 foot up and 15 to 20 foot away, as I spun around so the drone was now in front of me again and the signal came almost instantly and control was gained.

Later while enjoying a beer, I was puzzled as to why this should happen with the drone in such close proximity, here are some thoughts,
I put this to you just as a thought and will be more than happy to have others thoughts on this.

My drone a Mini 2 with the standard controller, both controller and drone were about 75% charged. I am using the latest DJI Fly App 1. 4.12, I have a Lenovo M10 Gen 2 tablet as my screen.

I have read on here that the ideal for signal strength is 'Line of Sight' or VLOS for the best transmission and distance, now the transmitter and receiver ariel on my controller with a phone in the place is completely visible and uncovered at all times whether the drone is in front or behind you, because the top of the ariel is above the phone, with a 10inch tablet with a metal extension bracket in place, the top of the areil is at least 3 inches below the top edge of the tablet, effectively shielding the ariel, another thing to consider is the back of the tablet is metal, could this metal back be acting as a partial shield? Now throw in possible interference from the tablets Wi Fi signal into the mix could this be what caused my signal loss until I turned around 180 degrees and the ariel is now visible to the drone.

Occasionally I get a video disconnect with my Mavic Pro. While I think the metal tablet blocking the signal is a reasonable conclusion. I would also entertain the idea that it could have been a disconnect between the controller and the tablet or phone. This has always been the case for me. I keep my safety settings for signal loss set for RTH. Even though I lose my video feed I still have control over the done. If for some reason I can't regain visual contact I manually initiate a RTH. In your case you may have turned around so quickly that the drone may not have lost signal long enough to trigger a RTH. Do an experiment trying to set up the same conditions as far as the relative angle of the tablet/phone and antenna(s) and the drone. But set them in a position where the drone is resting on something which won't block radio waves. Move things around and see if you get loss of signal. If you do not lose signal check the condition of the USB cable. I found that a quality USB cable with ends that fit snugly made a difference for me.

 

[lissforester]

Occasionally I get a video disconnect with my Mavic Pro. While I think the metal tablet blocking the signal is a reasonable conclusion. I would also entertain the idea that it could have been a disconnect between the controller and the tablet or phone. This has always been the case for me. I keep my safety settings for signal loss set for RTH. Even though I lose my video feed I still have control over the done. If for some reason I can't regain visual contact I manually initiate a RTH. In your case you may have turned around so quickly that the drone may not have lost signal long enough to trigger a RTH. Do an experiment trying to set up the same conditions as far as the relative angle of the tablet/phone and antenna(s) and the drone. But set them in a position where the drone is resting on something which won't block radio waves. Move things around and see if you get loss of signal. If you do not lose signal check the condition of the USB cable. I found that a quality USB cable with ends that fit snugly made a difference for me.

Hi Terry63,
I did just the thing you suggested and set up the same scenario in a local playing/football field on Sunday afternoon,
In 'Cine Mode' I took the drone up to 80 feet and turned my back on it with the flats on the top of the antennae vertical and I flew the drone 385 feet away from my back and still retained full Ocusync signal and had 22 satellites, I decided not to fly any further away because to be honest I did not have VLOS as my back was turned. The antennae were being shielded by the metal case of the tablet.

The conclusion I have come to it was as a couple of members have said it was either a disconnect between the controller and the tablet, caused by either a lose connection or dust/poor contact. Or just my Mini 2 trying to scare the cr-p out of me.
I have my drone settings set up to RTH if everything goes pear shaped. RTH at 150 feet.
I have been amazed at the little beast, the technology built into it that tries its hardest to save itself is unbelievable.

All my filming thus far has been in 1080p because of my computer, although I have a fast ROG Strix B550 motherboard and an AMD Ryzen 5600 CPU, 2 X M.2 drives and a couple of Samsung SSDs, plus16Gig 3200 ram, my graphics card bottlenecks and causes 4K viedo to stutter and pause and sometime completely stall.
Graphics card are stupid money at the moment because of world wide chip shortage and other reasons that to be honest I don't really understand, All I do know is that when I started building this computer the graphics card I wanted was the Nvidia RTX Quardo and cost around £600 Sterling that same card now is £1,700 so until they come down again in price I will stick with the card I have which is a Passive 2 gig Nvdiia, not much better than an office type card really.
Thanks for you reply and every day above the ground is a good one in more ways than one.

 

[CalOldBlue]

One thing not touched on, maybe someone with better knowledge of signal attenuation can comment on... how much signal is lost by having to travel through the human body?

In your initial situation, it feels like the signal would have had to pass through your torso or head to reach the drone... the time it worked, would that also have been true?

 

[Terry63]

Thanks for the report Lissforester it's nice to hear that something I said proved Helpful.

One thing not touched on, maybe someone with better knowledge of signal attenuation can comment on... how much signal is lost by having to travel through the human body?

In your initial situation, it feels like the signal would have had to pass through your torso or head to reach the drone... the time it worked, would that also have been true?

In my experience the amount of signal loss going through the human body is negligible. Flying around in my yard I can circle my house or fly over it with no registered loss of signal (of course there must be some actual loss of signal but I don't lose a single bar in my telemetry). My house has 6 inch thick steel reinforced concrete walls and a sheet metal roof. My DJI FPV drone has O3 technology which is the next step up from Occusync 2 I think. But I get similar results with my Mavic Pro. DJI's Occusync system is Incredible compared to a regular RC transmitter or at least the ones that were considered state of the art 4 or 5 years ago.