A test flight for a future flight. The weather wasnt ideal but we were in the area after the Ringarooma Show flight.
Ralph Falls is a spectacular, high vertical drop waterfall tucked way up in a steep, forested gully, high on a mountain. Although there is a lookout accessible by foot, it is a metal structure with very little space for a takeoff and being metal it might effect the compass calibration.
The alternative is to to fly from a road about 3.5km away and 500m lower.
This flight approached the falls to within 1.5km but the light was so difficult as I approached the most difficult part of the flight I could not see much detail on my Airpad 2. I also had difficulty adjusting the exposure factor while flying. I chickened out and returned to base to "fly another day". I had also set the max altitude to 350m and this wasnt enough to reach the base of the falls. I will have to set it to 500m. This flight was about 2km towards the falls.
Shortly after turning for home the DJI app crashed and I had no vision but control. My spotter, with some good stabilized binnoculars, could see the drone and with relief the app rebooted with vision and I came home safely.
This is the first "vision loss" since I changed from a Nexus 7 mk2 and a Samsung Tab S. Not quite sure why the app crashed as I have current updates. Maybe something to do with cache?

Glad to hear that you made it back in one piece. You survived to fly another day.

Ralph,

Beautiful flight and area! Very peaceful video. The crash thing just happens from time to time. The important thing is to not panic and try bringing the app back up as you did. I've been able to minimize app crashes to almost never by doing a factory reset of the pad. After the reset just enter your email address and set up your network and immediately go into your Playstore account and turn off automatic updates. I rarely do any updates, other than for the features and apps that I'm actually using. Turn off, uninstall or disable apps that you don't or won't use.

The problem with Android is it's constantly loading all sorts of trash and unnecessary updates. I have found if I do that, I get everything running very well and then I leave it all alone, I rarely have app crashes anymore.

I use Litchi as my primary app and rarely even open the DJI Go app. I've got a P3Pro, the bird is on v1.4.10, the controller is still on v1.3.2 and everything has been running flawlessly for over a month now. Apply the old saying, "If it works, don't fix it!" And don't let Android, Google or DJI "automatically" fix it either! All just my opinion, of course.

Will look forward to seeing the video when you make it to the falls!

Jerry

JtrJr-UAV Pilot Posted at 2015-11-9 01:16
Ralph,

Beautiful flight and area! Very peaceful video. The crash thing just happens from time to ti ...

Thanks for the response, how have you found the Litchi App? I'm looking for an app that will allow me to preplan a flight off line then load and fly. I suppose one big issue is altimeter accuracy from the map app in the software especially on a flight like this which has a vertical height difference of about 500m, dont want it flying into the ground.

I never did see the falls...unless it was at a distance on the left up high.   ???   Nice smooth work, by the way.

AG0N-Gary Posted at 2015-11-9 08:06
I never did see the falls...unless it was at a distance on the left up high.   ???   Nice smooth wor ...

Yes, you spotted them. As you can see a pretty challenging flight path as the valley gets narrower. No chance of recovery if it crashed in there. I turned back mainly because the sun wasnt shining on the valley up further and the bright sky was causing a darl picture on my Airpad 2. I tried to adjust the exposure manually but it didnt seem to respong until I tilted the camera down.
I will try again with better lighting.

jennings93@gmai Posted at 2015-11-8 14:40
Thanks for the response, how have you found the Litchi App? I'm looking for an app that will allow ...

Jen,

I love the Litchi app and very rarely fly with anything else. I do many very long and sometimes complex Ground Station runs. All of my GS runs are done preplanned and saved to a file for later execution. I can sometimes spend several hours planning and checking my routes, many will include dozens of waypoints. I haven't and probably never will, do a GS run "on-the-fly". Too many variables to screw up.

As with most apps there can be some fluctuation in altitude readings. Having used at least a half-dozen different apps, I wouldn't trust any of them for complete accuracy. I don't know if its a function of DJI or the developers but it never seems accurate to me. I always do test flights to establish altitude accuracy and do the math from there. When flying in a new area I'll usually do fairly high test runs of whatever I'm going to fly just to insure there are no unforeseen obstacles or significant terrain changes that I might encounter along the way. If any are found I can adjust for them accordingly on the next run. I may have "run 1" set and saved at 250', "run 2" at 200', "run 3" at 150' and so on. I have them all preplanned and saved on my pad before I even take off on the trip. It's very easy to adjust altitude, camera or craft angles or POI's while on site once the route has already been established and saved.

Might have been a bit more than you were looking for, sorry.

Jerry

JtrJr-UAV Pilot Posted at 2015-11-9 08:37
Jen,

I love the Litchi app and very rarely fly with anything else. I do many very long and someti ...

No thanks for that info, I agree with the thorough preplanning, especially in potentially difficult terrain.
Thanks again

Can you get any closer to Ralph Falls to start your flight? Might give you a bit of wriggle room.

Geebax Posted at 2015-11-9 17:02
Can you get any closer to Ralph Falls to start your flight? Might give you a bit of wriggle room.

Yes I'm going to talk to the farm owner so I can drive up the open ground to the base of the gulley. I just have to be careful to maintain line of sight for my spotter and video link.

jennings93@gmai Posted at 2015-11-11 08:08
Yes I'm going to talk to the farm owner so I can drive up the open ground to the base of the gulle ...

I took my P3P out for its first real job today to shoot an old wooden railway trestle bridge. I had tried a few methods to find out who owned the land, and finally identified a farm as being likely. So I drove to the farm and the owner gave me a gate key that let me drive right up to the end of the bridge along the old railway easement. Bonus, I could get right to the bridge, but it left me with nowhere to hide myself and the car. It was a very dull day and there were strong gusty winds (always are near Tullamarine in Victoria), but the P3P handled the gusts like a champion.

The footage is not as good as I would like, but I was very impressed with the performance of the aircraft.