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Inspire saves itself from taking the plunge despite my best efforts.

Joined
Mar 29, 2016
Messages
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Location
Orlando
There's a lot of criticisms of this machine and its software and I'm sure much of it is deserving when you combine technology with the Chinese penchant for quality control but I'll share an experience where everything worked as it should even while I was attempting to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Monday, July 4. Sanford, Florida. My friend is the manager of the hotel that shares the small peninsula jutting into Lake Monroe with the municipal parking lot/ boat ramp that will serve as the launch pad for the city's fireworks which are one of the nicer displays in Greater Orlando. I couldn't be more excited to have ringside access to a birdseye view of the event. The plan is to hover over the roof of the hotel between 100-200 ft and record it from a few hundred yards away. It would've made great video I'm sure. But mother nature had other plans and 20 min before they were to start there was a downpour which slowed to enough of a drizzle to allow the show to go on but keep me grounded. Oh well, there's always next year...

During the day, as boats were starting to set up along with a little extra holiday bustle along the picturesque lakewalk would be good to stretch the legs on the drone and the Litchi app. So I draw out a mission along the peninsula and lake walk and it all performs as advertised.

I have to say I've been a little disappointed though as I've developed more confidence in the aircraft and begin to fly it further away that video signal begins to break up right after 3200 ft or so. My monitor is an ipad air 2 w 16 gig. Now with a large expanse of water I want to see if that has any effect on transmission. Knowing how long it takes me to get that far, and barely a light breeze, I really dont have any qualms about flying it out w 56% battery on a 48. I take off, switch to atti to conserve gas and punch it heading straight out. before it gets to 2500' the program mentions something about governing motor speed which I thought was odd, and had not heard of heretofore but I keep pressing although now have throttled back a bit. Then the warning comes up again, along with a low battery warning which really has me stymied because it was at IIRC 37% and my LBW is set to 25%. I didn't realize at the time that it was calculating and overcompensating for the return flight in RTH mode. Now I'm getting a bit concerned as along with the warnings I seem to have lost control of the aircraft having missed the que that it was automatically RTHing. Still unaware of that event, and trying to get control of my craft so I can beeline it back to terra firma, I attempt to override it twice (it was only doing 22 mph on return, I wanted that to be a little faster,) but was inadvertantly hitting cancel which I took to mean cancel RTH, not cancel the cancel RTH. Anyway after a nervous few seconds, its back over land only now I've got an emergency battery warning even though there was 16% showing and hovering over the home point. I cant remember how I took control back from RTH but did and managed a bit of a hairy landing as the controller was still in ATTI and an onshore breeze had picked up.

Whew! I sure do appreciate some of the "idiot proofing" that DJI has built into their machines, though I'm not sure it wouldnt've been an uneventful flight without them. However, from now on, distance flights begin with a full battery regardless. And, after all the excitement I never did find out how far it got out, and wasn't in the mood to give it another go that day.
 

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