I just wanted to share with my fellow Phantom Pilots what a GREAT day I had flying my P3P yesterday! Not the best video day (that was last week when I videoed a gorge and waterfalls) , but best overall day for testing and getting real comfortable with Max.
It was a beautiful sunny day with a little wind at times. I took a drive out in the country looking for a safe spot to fly as I wanted to try out my new Litchi app as well as learn more about my bird "Max". I came across a several sections of relatively flat uninhabited farm land below a large, long ridge. The fields were planted with mostly Wheat and Canola and it is a bumper crop so even if I had a hard landing, my bird had plenty of cushioning. I purposely chose this spot as it had a lot of interference within flying distance i.e.138kv power lines running below the ridge, cell towers, remote internet towers, and an FM tower. Yes I wanted to see how these items would affect my P3P, call me stupid but I'd rather learn when in an open safe area where I might get my P3P back in case anything happened. So I took my four fully charged batteries, binoculars and started with testing the Litchi app, getting a feel for how it works and what is different between it and the go app. Yes I read up on it before, but nothing is like testing the real thing Absolutely a great app that works as advertised! A great tool but you better know visually, exactly what’s in the path of your waypoints!!! Hence the binoculars
The highlights of what I learned on my outing where - I can easily get Max out 2.5km and the video feed still works, even with some known interference around. - Repeater towers (Microwave Internet Towers for Rural customers) which are only about 50ft. tall seem to affect Max the most, especially when he's at the same height as the microwave antennae itself. Going lower or higher resulted in a stronger signal. I did loose R/C connection a couple of times for 5-20 seconds, when parallel to the antennae (even when several hundred meters away). But not the Lightbridge (video) feed which I found strange but interesting. Of course it’s a little nerve wracking loosing the R/C connection for so long, but Max worked exactly as advertised and started home each time using DJI Go or Litchi. - FM tower didn't seem to affect anything although I never got closer than approx. 200m from any of the tower metal - 138kv transmission lines had no effect when flying beside them, about 100-200m away. But I'd NEVER try to fly too close to them as that area surrounding them is one BIG electro magnet.
-My P3P gimbal does not control the horizontal axis very well at all! Any wind and the picture is tilted. -The P3P is an awesome piece of engineering and a lot of fun to fly. It’s just too cool seeing everything from a totally new perspective. I’ve been a Photographer for a lot of years and can’t tell you how many times I wished I had the vantage point I can get now!
Drone on my fellow pilots !
MMM
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