I have seen a few posts about terribly limited transmission ranges, so I wanted to see if my quad suffered from the same issues. All three of my Phantom 3 quads performed well and as expected. Anyway, I took the P4P out yesterday just to break it in and little, but today I did a little distance testing in 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz. I only pushed it to 2 miles in 2.4 and the signal was still very strong. I got a few weak image transmission warnings around the 2 mile mark but increasing my elevation rectified that. I brought it all the way home before switching to 5.8, then took off in the same heading as before. I got well past the 1 mile mark before my 30% battery warning went up, so I brought her home again. Even at 5.8 and a mile out the trasmission signal was solid. I must say thought that I was in an area with very few homes and industrial complexes. I may not get anywhere near these results when flying in the more highly populated areas of the city. Either way, I am happy with the results so far. I have more batteries on order and will try longer ranges at some point.

One more note. I was flying above a flock of birds, manually tracking them as best I could, when they suddenly turned upwards towards my quad. At that moment my speed was at around 42.5 mph and the quad automatically slowed as the flock came near it. I am not sure obstacle avoidance will work with just a couple/few smaller birds in its path, but it defintely worked with a flock as dense as the one I saw today.

That brings up another point. I would believe the noise from a quad would scare birds into the opposite direction but this is the second time I have had birds fly almost INTO one my my drones. Last summer, I had a group of about 15 small birds actually follow and cirle around my P3P for about 2 minutes. Fortunately they did not get close enough to get hurt by the props before I could bring the thing down.

Birds are only scared off by noises when they are perched or on the ground.  They are the masters of the sky and typically have nothing to fear when flying.  You'll notice birds are ALOT more aggressive in flight.

You were in sport mode, didn't think OA worked in sport, may have been the wind, as for the birds coming to attack, maybe the noise way just annoying them..

I was not in sport mode. I am not ready to trust anything outside P mode just yet. I got 42.5-43 MPH in P mode much of the flight. Wind could have been a factor. BTW, I did not get the constant wind warnings I have read about. Perhaps the latest update(s) resolved that. Also, I don't believe the birds were attacking. They were constantly changing direction in flight regardless of where the quad was. They just happened to turn into the direction of the quad this time. You might be right about it not being OA though. The quad may have been braking for some other reason, I suppose.

Ob1415 Posted at 2017-1-20 08:54
Birds are only scared off by noises when they are perched or on the ground.  They are the masters of the sky and typically have nothing to fear when flying.  You'll notice birds are ALOT more aggressive in flight.

Ah. That makes sense. Thank you.