Rider51
lvl.1
United States
Offline
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Excellent share by Stephen. Where people run into trouble is if they are say on a small hill, and there are trees and power lines nearby, so they set RTH at 200', figuring that's plenty of height. Then, they fly around, say, a nearby rocky hill that's 350' above where they are standing. They lose sight of the drone, maybe get poor signal, because the drone is partly blocked by the 350' hill, get confused, hit RTH, and RTH runs the risk of running into the hill as it makes a beeline back to you, 200' above where your height is.
I think actual pilots (like, airline pilots), or just having that mindset, get tripped up by this adjusted mean height, versus actual altitude, because everything in aviation is by altitude. As a pilot you learn to just adjust that in your mind. Your airport and runway are at 2,200' elevation. You take off fly around the town and neighboring hills and countryside at 7,500' altitude, then come back around and land at 2,200'. Those are the only numbers you are dealing with. You don't even have to be an airline pilot or go to aviation school to think like this, which can be a source of confusion when flying a drone and seeing this number on RTH.
It wouldn't surprise me if in X years, drone technology gets that sophisticated though, giving you options, interpreting for you, as an extra level of safety. Drones will also get so smart, RTH will simply avoid all obstacles, regardless of their height, and safely return to you. I can actually see this possibly in most drones by 2025 or so at the rate we're going. |
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