DroneFlying
Second Officer
Flight distance : 10774613 ft
United States
Offline
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Can someone please explain why it's important to be able to fly without a GPS, and instead in ATTI mode?
For most people it isn't.
As a couple of people have mentioned, some European countries apparently require demonstrating proficiency in ATTI mode to obtain a given certification / license. For example, I believe that's the case in the U.K. to get a PfCO (roughly equivalent to a 107 certification in the U.S.), though Hallmark or someone else can correct me if I'm wrong about this.
Others would like user-selectable ATTI to be able to fly indoors in places where GPS is spotty but not completely blocked, as having the Mavic spontaneously switch between ATTI and GPS can cause bad things to happen (e.g., unsolicited RTH). This is certainly another legitimate reason to want it, but the truth is that few people have access to indoor spaces large enough to safely fly in with or without ATTI mode. As Hallmark mentioned above, there are also outdoor situations -- such as flying into a gorge -- where you may lose GPS and wind up in ATTI mode. As with flying indoors, that's a legitimate scenario where a user-selectable ATTI mode would be useful, but again is one most people won't encounter.
Another reason that's often mentioned -- but that has little validity in my opinion -- is the theory that being experienced flying in ATTI may save the aircraft in certain situations. While I don't claim that would never be that case, I can say that I don't recall analyzing even a single crash where better ATTI mode skills would probably have saved the aircraft. Admittedly it's something of a chicken-and-egg situation: if the Mavic did have a user-selectable ATTI mode I probably would have seen such cases, but it doesn't and I haven't.
In any case, what's clear is that the omission of ATTI from the Mavic wasn't just a bug or an oversight by DJI, which obviously has the ability to allow the Mavic to fly in ATTI mode but has chosen not to for one reason or another. I suspect that it's because they fear it would result in more losses, but that's just speculation on my part. |
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