Geebax
Captain
Australia
Offline
|
The home point was not recorded until some time after the aircraft got airborne, it was only seeing 11 satellites for most of its time on the ground. The probable reason for this could be rainforest canopy blocking the view of the satellites. This is why launching from an open area is good practice, and also waiting for the aircraft to get a GPS fix. Once the aircraft it in the air, it sees 17 satellites. But in any event, the aircraft climbed straight away to 1642 feet, the maximum altitude, and who knows what wind strength there was that high up.
Eventually the aircraft loses the signal and it decides the battery is too low, so it heads home, at that altitude. It sensed an obstacle several times, most likely the sun, and this caused it to stop and make changes to its path, and finally when it got where it thought home was, it had to descend from around 1400 feet. During the descent, it looks as if the aircraft was being blown off course by high altitude winds, which the aircraft was trying to fight. I think thisd is why it appeared to go past the home point. Descending took nearly 3 minutes, and at the start of descent the battery was at 24%, but as it got down to the last part of its descent, the battery was at 14%, and the flight record stops there, with the aircraft still 66 feet or 29 feet in the air, depending upon whether you believe the IMU or the VPS system. In the last part of the descent, the winds at the lower altitude may have been a bit calmer and it tries to head back to the correct home point, but eventually the battery gets too low and the motors shut down.
|
|