Charles Adams
Second Officer
Flight distance : 3821312 ft
United States
Offline
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I'm going to presume that you will take constructive critique gracefully, I likewise will try to convey my observations gracefully.
Though not directly related to the loss of craft, you appear to have breached the airspace of your neighbors. I'm not very familiar with Canadian drone regulations, though from what I gather they are far more strict (oppressive????) than U.S. regulations. I also don't know if you actually obtained permission from the property owners (maybe local regulations do not require it), but I would review the Canadian regulations and other local regulations to see if this is something that is permissible or not. In the US I do not fly into my neighbor's airspace without their permission. Other's in this forum have disagreed with me on what constitutes trespassing, and that's another topic in another post for another time. Specific to your flight, I recommend you look into it if you have not already done so.
Next observation (directly related to your flight), you appear to have had total control of the craft until a little more than a minute and a half into the flight. GPS issues caused you to go to ATTI mode. In ATTI mode, the craft doesn't have a location lock, and is unable to maintain it's position all by itself. The elements (winds) have direct influence on the craft, and the pilot has to use his/her pilot skills to maneuver the craft and oppose those elements. In your case, it looks like you no longer had LOS on the craft. That's an assumption I admit, but 280ft up and 437ft down range with two story structures between indicates that you lost line of sight on the craft early on. I do not purposely fly in a manner I know will cause me to lose line of site on my bird, because the only tool I have to guide my flight in case I go into ATTI mode is my eyes.
It appears that your craft drifted further away (due to winds) while in ATTI mode, and then GPS was restored about a minute later. In the following minute, it looks like you made different attempts to set home point. It appears that your efforts to set home point to the crafts location were successful, and that your efforts to set home point to the RC location failed.
Home point appears to at this point been set to craft location at 2 minutes 45 seconds, and at 3 minutes 50 seconds the craft attempt to return to the last recorded home point (which is in the backyard near the pool of that one home). From what I can see, this is the last known home point set for the rest of the flight.
I'm guessing that you lost RC connection towards the end, and that the spark would have tried to return to the last known home point provided it was able to re-establish GPS. If so, it may have made it to that home with the pool, and descended (either gracefully or out of power) in that yard with the pool.
I would check with that home owner and see if they located a drone in their back yard.
As far as what you could have done, there's a lot of advice to offer, but I'll wait to see if you desire that kind of critique and advice.
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