I  had an opportutnity to eperience fail safe return today.

I was flying above ridge of a mountain peak with trees around. P3P was over one kilometer away on the other side  when I got weak signal error message.  At  moment like that I usually  do a slow turn to get  back but today I did it rapidly and I lost signal completely.  I'm not goint to lye - I was very nervous, looking in the direction and listening  for any signs of approaching aircraft.   While later that seems like "eternity",  I saw P3P coming back and hoovering above. I've got back controls but I let it land by itself.
Must say, I breath easier each time I go back safe.

Make sure that your RTH height is a safe height (not too low).

I'm glad you had a safe return.

P4TRI0T Posted at 2015-5-24 21:15
I'm glad you had a safe return.

In my neighborhood (a very old area here in my hometown) there are gobs and gobs of palm trees and oak trees. I live about three (3) blocks from a very large lake and I have to take my Phantom up almost 100 feet before I can get a good view of the lake.

Yet I see video after video of people flying over areas like my own. Once I get a block or so away from my house, the Phantom would no longer be visible. In my heart, I *know* many of these videos are shot by people who can see their camera view and see their Phantom on a map, but cannot possibly be maintaining line of sight with their craft.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not bashing people about the "rules." I just think if you get your craft a reasonable distance away from you in wooded or populated areas (near buildings, etc.) you're living on borrowed time.

Even with a "return altitude" programmed into the RTH feature, I guess I'm too chicken to rely on the thing being somewhat foolproof, flying up to 125 feet or so and then finding a "grid" of roughly 200 feet by 200 feet that would give it room to settle back down close to my house.

If it deviated very much at all on the way over or on the way down, there's a bunch of trees greedily awaiting to swat my Phantom.

My first Phantom, a P2V+ performed a heart-stopping RTH and landed on the roof of my house. It lived to fly another day, thankfully.