Sea Parrot
lvl.4
Flight distance : 89154 ft
Offline
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I used to fly light aircraft (Piper PA 28 Warrior) , and a lot of the training in flying an aircraft "for real" is being prepared for and dealing with "interesting situations" and emergencies... and how to prevent a situation turning into an emergency. It's experience and knowledge I'm applying to my drone flying.
So.... one of the things I'm doing is practising using the various "emergency" modes in a fully controlled situation, i.e. in a nice big large open field with no hazards so if it all goes wrong I won't crash.
I know exactly what my drone will do if I tap the RTH icon on the DJI GO 4 app, and I know what it will do if I press the RTH button on the controller.
I know what it will do if I then hit the pause button or select sports mode or select land whilst it's doing RTH.
I've deliberately let it use Low Battery RTH and watched it come home and on the helipad. I've also cancelled Low Battery RTH while it's on its way back, I let it's battery run to 10% and watched it land itself in the field, and saw how little control I had in that situation. All very simple things but actually doing them has been confidence building and good experience.
Something that has already saved me from a crash is that I practised how to abort an Intelligent Flight Mode such as Rocket or Helix - and on Saturday I was filming, I thought the drone had plenty of airspace behind it for a "Dronie"... but I hadn't! However I *always* rest my finger on the pause button as soon as I initiate an Intelligent Flight Mode, so when I saw it was all going to hell-in-a-handbasket I just pressed the pause button, the drone did an emergency stop, hovered in place and life remained good but if I hadn't practised I could easily have panicked and crashed the drone.
What makes this hobby so damned addictive is there is always something new to learn and try, whether it be flying, planning, photography, filming, learning, finding my own limits, finding the drone's limits,... and reading about other people's experiences on this on other forums, learning from them, and trying new things out. |
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