Over these past few weeks I’ve started flying out of the line of sight. I changed the frequency of my spark to 2.4 hz to see if I can get more distance out of the spark and sure enough this works for me. I did have trouble on one flight however where I flew the spark well out of my field of vison, lost video feed AND lost GPS temporarily. The spark always returned to home when losing video feed but on this occasion losing the GPS made the drone begin to descend at its current altitude about 400 metres away from me in the middle of a cluster of houses. Luckily I regained GPS and flew it home using the video on my phone. My question is, why is GPS lost when flying further away? Also, if you lose the line of sight, lose GPS and lose video feed are you more or less buggered, as you have no means of flying the drone back home again?

In case this happens:
"you lose the line of sight, lose GPS and lose video feed "
You are literally f@#$ed

In  your case, you probably did not just lose the video feed, but the total RC to Bird connectivity.
Which let's it, without GPS, autoland  where it is.
(Failsafe)
So you know, where to look for your bird.
More or less, depending on the wind conditions, but you know where it was and how far and in which direction it could have driftet away.

But in case you lose the line of sight, lose GPS and "just" lose video feed , you still would have had a RC connection.
And the bird would have drifted with the wind, waiting for your control input on the remote, to steer it back home.
Which is difficult, not seeing the bird.

"The spark always returned to home when losing video feed"

Which means, you always lost RC connection, not just the video feed.
Or you pushed "RTH"

Thanks for replies. I think I’m not going to take anymore chances flying out of line of sight anymore. I got nearly 800 metres out of it today and I’m done experimenting with it.

Um. Not recommended. Out side of line of sight, you loose one of your major "in case something goes wrong" tools: Your eyes.

Hi, thanks for the inquiry. We highly recommend flying the drone in an open area wherein there are no interferences and maintain the VLOS while the drone is in the air to avoid any incident. The aircraft should be flying in an environment wherein there's a strong GPS signal as the RTH feature will not work if the GPS signal is insufficient, or GPS is not active. For further details about flying your drone, you may refer to the link below.

https://dl.djicdn.com/downloads/ ... delines_V1.2_EN.pdf

I find the visual line of sight term ambiguous, for instance you could fly 500 metres in daylight and lose the line of sight but fly 800 metres in pitch blackness and still maintain the visual line of sight due to sparks lights?
Any thoughts?

fans279a98ca Posted at 5-11 06:17
I find the visual line of sight term ambiguous, for instance you could fly 500 metres in daylight and lose the line of sight but fly 800 metres in pitch blackness and still maintain the visual line of sight due to sparks lights?
Any thoughts?

The term fixes the problem of people thinking with in visual range means they can fly behind buildings and trees because they can see that far.

Line of sight used to refer to ultra or super high frequency radio that could easily be blocked by objects between the transmitter and receiver.  UHF being blocked by the horizon (mountains) no matter how much power you put into it (1000 watts).  2.4 and 5.8ghz being blocked by buildings and somewhat by trees.

Photographers lose control of their drone when it goes into the lake because water blocks 2.4ghz and 5.8ghz.  If the Spark was controlled by a 72.160mhz signal (old RC channel), you could drive it around underwater.

fans279a98ca Posted at 5-11 06:17
I find the visual line of sight term ambiguous, for instance you could fly 500 metres in daylight and lose the line of sight but fly 800 metres in pitch blackness and still maintain the visual line of sight due to sparks lights?
Any thoughts?

There is no set distance for VLOS that applies to everyone all the time. My eyesight is undoubtedly worse than yours so my VLOS will be shorter than yours.

This is the Canadian government's definition of VLOS which takes effect soon. I'll bet it's basically the same across most of the world, but it's up to you to know the legal definition in the U.K.

"Visual-line-of-sight means keeping your device in sight at all times without visual aid (for example, binoculars or video feed). This means not flying into clouds or fog, or behind trees, buildings or other (even partial) obstructions."

Gunship9 Posted at 5-11 08:08
The term fixes the problem of people thinking with in visual range means they can fly behind buildings and trees because they can see that far.

Line of sight used to refer to ultra or super high frequency radio that could easily be blocked by objects between the transmitter and receiver.  UHF being blocked by the horizon (mountains) no matter how much power you put into it (1000 watts).  2.4 and 5.8ghz being blocked by buildings and somewhat by trees.

"If the Spark was controlled by a 72.160mhz signal (old RC channel), you could drive it around underwater."


Can we make that a feature request?

Did you switch the frequency while driving? If so then it is no wonder that everything has been interrupted, so Spark's software will restart on the other frequency and have to reconnect.