lukaszj
lvl.2
Flight distance : 1302972 ft
United States
Offline
|
If in doubt, switching off the controller is a good way to ensure RTH is initiated.
This is why I did that based on my past experience. It was the first time RTH didn't work for me and the difference was an active track mode and this is why I suspect that there is a bug in software that makes the drone continue tracking the subject even after it disconnects.
Do you have any information to suspect that loss of signal won't initiate RTH in Active Track?
Since the drone was out of sight, you couldn't have observed it so this is just a guess?
If RTH was initiated and given the conditions (no wind, obstacles and sufficient power) the controller would be able to eventually reconnect but it didn't happen. So yes, this is an educated guess. I experienced disconnects many times in the past in much worse conditions (further out, wind, mountains, etc.) but the drone always came back within the range and reconnected. The only difference was that this time I had it in active track mode.
>The drone, controller and the battery were running the latest firmware, the compass was calibrated in a new location,
None of those would be at all relevant.
It is relevant for the drone to operate properly, especially a compass calibration after traveling from the US to French Polynesia.
RTH is very reliable.
It had been always reliable for me until the accident.
The usual reasons for a drone not returning are obstacles on the RTH path, strong wind and insufficient battery.
Obstacles are probably not relevant, but what do we know about the wind?
Was the battery freshly charged to start?
What was the battery level at the time of the incident?
No obstacles (ocean), no windy conditions at all and the battery was low (~30%) but it should be well sufficient to came back within the range (100 - 200 meters).
I would suspect that RTH is normally initiated after signal loss even when in Active Track.
That should be easily tested for someone with an M2.
I doubt it was the case but it would be nice if someone could test this.
How sure are you that the drone was still flying after loss of signal?
It could be that the disconnection was due to a loss of power?
I couldn't tell if it was still flying, I can only suspect that the drone continued tracking the subject (I believe Litchi missions suffer from this problem but I wasn't using Litchi). It couldn't be due to the loss of power as there was enough power left. The disconnect was caused by weak signal - I got a warning about weak signal as I attempted to rotate the drone around the subject and shortly after it disconnected. The question is why it didn't initiate RTH as it supposed to do.
I was able to get the previous flight's data on Airdata that occured minutes before the last one. The path of the last flight was similar (along the channel going left) but much shorter and the drone got disconnected in the middle of below picture when in active track.
weather
|
|