JerryDavis
lvl.1
United States
Offline
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Thanks, Pat, very useful.
I've done some more testing:
(1) at Pacifica State Beach, with base station by San Pedro Creek mouth and drone taken to various distances. Occasionally didn't work (e.g. by Taco Bell), but ultimately worked the length of the beach ~1200 m. At pump outlet between Taco Bell and San Pedro Creek (168 m from the base station), the first test connected, but the second one did not until I picked up the drone to get it higher.
(2) Testing at home, with base station on back deck and drone taken to the other side of the house (to block connection). After connecting, I could walk down the street, clearly blocked from the base station by houses, yet it continued to show connection in the Preflight dialog; however after powering off and back on, was not connected, though the flight display might show it working. Possible diagnosis: the drone had a good GNSS connection, but the Preflight Check indicated that it was not talking to the base station.
I'm thinking the most likely solution is to set up the base station at a ground control point within the flight plan. It adds the need to lug that equipment out to the site (fortunately I always have multiple assistants on the project), but would provide the advantage of better accuracy anyway, and also the ability to change batteries in the base station if necessary.
But I'm wondering if the system was actually working anyway (with the RTK in the main display as white, not red), and if we can diagnose this from the log files. The *PPKNAV.nav, *PPKOBS.obs and *Timestamp.MRK files seem to have data (readable by a text editor) that might be useful, and I'm not seeing any obvious differences between log files from flights showing RTK connected in the preflight checklist and those showing it disconnected.
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