Holy Crap! That is one high altitude. I can already see clouds passing bye. It reminds me of a airplane flight before landing. Good thing nobody was harmed during this event. A real helicopter or a small plane could have been a disaster. Sorry for the crash. Also, just looking at the vid, I felt like your F550 was talking back and saying " help! help! I'm lost. At that height though, it looked like GPS hold was still rock solid steady.
High Altitude Disaster
- Thread starter Warlock
- Start date
ChrisViperM
Active Member
Sorry for your crash....that bird looks like it exploded, but amazingly there are still a few props looking OK, so it must have smashed the ground pretty level.
Could you give some more info about your LED set-up, since it looks really nice....?
Chris
Could you give some more info about your LED set-up, since it looks really nice....?
Chris
Ya especially when you live alone.
kloner
Aerial DP
Where i did it is a civilian 2500' floor to prevent drug smuggling through the colorado river valley and was measured through a on screen display flying fpv. I get them predator drones flying around me all the time down there keepin an aya on me, think they think i'm counter inteligence, major alien smuggling happens all around the area
400' is the ama max height. if you ever goto an ama field, the signs are usually everywhere, but even more important than going up is loitering there. It is suppose to be the standard nationwide, but is for community based ama as in "at organized clubs"
I don't think he was anywhere near thousands of feet by the size of the cars under it. Can't believe he was that far away and not fpv, no wonder the craft with lights looked like a bird
400' is the ama max height. if you ever goto an ama field, the signs are usually everywhere, but even more important than going up is loitering there. It is suppose to be the standard nationwide, but is for community based ama as in "at organized clubs"
I don't think he was anywhere near thousands of feet by the size of the cars under it. Can't believe he was that far away and not fpv, no wonder the craft with lights looked like a bird
Last edited by a moderator:
Some thoughts on this:
It appears the hexa came home, only didn't have enough battery to get down from whatever altitude it RTH'd to. I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to to some testing to see how long it takes to get down from the minimum of 60ft, including the hover time at that alt.
Second thing (in hindsight naturally): It did come home. Stopped in the hover, held position as best we can tell from the video. OK, so what could have happened then? Maybe try coming out of failsafe, the hexa will hold position if it did RTH, and lower the throttle. You would be looking straight up if you're at the RTH location. Maybe you can re-acquire it then.
The last thing is, in conjunction with the RTH hover to land timing test, I'm going to fly out a known distance, hit RTH and see how long it takes to come home. Adjusting for any wind, I would then know how much time I use to get on the ground at the RTH site, then plan accordingly. I think this is more important than knowing how long it takes to land from the RTH hover. Knowing how long it takes to RTH, you can at least start looking in a piece of sky that should have the hexa in it and then you can take control again and get down faster.
It appears the hexa came home, only didn't have enough battery to get down from whatever altitude it RTH'd to. I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to to some testing to see how long it takes to get down from the minimum of 60ft, including the hover time at that alt.
Second thing (in hindsight naturally): It did come home. Stopped in the hover, held position as best we can tell from the video. OK, so what could have happened then? Maybe try coming out of failsafe, the hexa will hold position if it did RTH, and lower the throttle. You would be looking straight up if you're at the RTH location. Maybe you can re-acquire it then.
The last thing is, in conjunction with the RTH hover to land timing test, I'm going to fly out a known distance, hit RTH and see how long it takes to come home. Adjusting for any wind, I would then know how much time I use to get on the ground at the RTH site, then plan accordingly. I think this is more important than knowing how long it takes to land from the RTH hover. Knowing how long it takes to RTH, you can at least start looking in a piece of sky that should have the hexa in it and then you can take control again and get down faster.
My first mistake was to let it get too high. I intentionally sent it up higher than I had ever before because this was the very first machine that I trusted to handle it, and wanted some good video. Idea being get up, turn slowly 360 degrees, and come down. The lower level clouds were right at 600 feet or so, it was morning and they were starting to burn off. I was at least 600 feet away as well. Crap to me it looks high at 100 feet when Im closer. I have my return to home set to intelligent mode. It uses the highest altitude I flew and the goes up another 20 meters.. 60 or so feet. That sent it through the low clouds from where I was standing. If I had lowered it to say 100 feet and hit rth, it would have climbed back up to where I was the highest, and then another 60 feet again. I can not understand why I let it get up so high. I was pretty scared when I suddenly noticed the hexa went above the low clouds, and all I can figure is I looked too long before realizing I was still climbing.
Put my faith in return to home, and if I had not gone bird watching I would have noticed that indeed it was over my head. But I was looking elseware, freaking out that to me it seemed it went into orbit. I expected it to come down with frost all over it. :cold: I'm trying to make a joke of it, but after reflection, it was not funny, and I am paying the price now. But it had plenty of time to land three times over. I switched off rth and on again a few times in desperation, tried to lower it my self very slowly, but since there was nothing to see it was pointless. Just panick is all. I removed the video since so many are up set that they might have been flying where I was right then, or maybe a helicopter would have come my way, or maybe the empty field where I was flying over became a parking lot while I was up, I dont know. Allways an expert with wonderous hindsight and indignation.
Point is, even the nay sayers can most likely believe I wont want to ever see anything like that again, way to much for me physically, mentally, and financially. I would not worry about how fast or slow rth lets you down to the ground. If you noticed, in the video it sat up there in a constant steady solid hover but for the times I was hitting the rth switch making it twitch. I must have confused the system and it just sat there waiting for me to get my s--t together. But it stayed there for 8 minutes!!! and no telling how much longer but the camera battery died. Speaking of the camera. I just had my Go Pro velcroed and tied up with two zip ties under the front landing gear. Pretty stable video if you ask me for being so crudly attached. it was not in the protective case either. I found it 20 feet from the main wreckage, and it sitll works!
>Is return to home suppose to be a regular part of flight or something for a worst case scenario?
Worst case.
While I wouldn't describe RTH as a gimmick, it certainly would earn its money if your XT crapped on you, the best use I've had with it is getting my noob-self re-oriented, then take back control.
Just this morning I flew behind some trees FPV. I have 5.8ghz equipment so the signal broke down pretty rapidly. I know 5.8 looses quality with obstacles, but how much tree density is too much? I was down low, hit RTH, de-goggled and waited for the hexa to come into view. Then took control again. Lesson learned the cheap way.
Worst case.
While I wouldn't describe RTH as a gimmick, it certainly would earn its money if your XT crapped on you, the best use I've had with it is getting my noob-self re-oriented, then take back control.
Just this morning I flew behind some trees FPV. I have 5.8ghz equipment so the signal broke down pretty rapidly. I know 5.8 looses quality with obstacles, but how much tree density is too much? I was down low, hit RTH, de-goggled and waited for the hexa to come into view. Then took control again. Lesson learned the cheap way.
Warlock:
No slamming going on here. Trying to learn from your flight and think of ways to get myself out of what you experienced.
>Put my faith in return to home, and if I had not gone bird watching I would have noticed that indeed it was over my head. But I was looking elseware, freaking out that to me it seemed it went into orbit. I expected it to come down with frost all over it.
You mention expecting it overhead and switching out of failsafe. To clarify, did you also switch your flight mode switch out of GPS to Manual and back after coming out of failsafe? That's my understanding of how to regain control and how I did it this morning.
No slamming going on here. Trying to learn from your flight and think of ways to get myself out of what you experienced.
>Put my faith in return to home, and if I had not gone bird watching I would have noticed that indeed it was over my head. But I was looking elseware, freaking out that to me it seemed it went into orbit. I expected it to come down with frost all over it.
You mention expecting it overhead and switching out of failsafe. To clarify, did you also switch your flight mode switch out of GPS to Manual and back after coming out of failsafe? That's my understanding of how to regain control and how I did it this morning.
No I didnt switch to atti I just turned off "I thought" RTH but while it was still in GPS mode. Could have saved the day, by just staying where I was, but I was sure that it was passing me up. I could have switched to atti and SLOWLY brought it down. I dont trust to try it in normal mode. I also turned off the transmitter a couple times in frantic desperation to get it to come back. This is why I believe my poor 550 was doing its best to over come my ignorance by just sitting there, but the battery has its limits. Sad too because I had at least 8 or 9 minutes to bring it down from above, as well if I had been looking up on my walk back, I just might have seen it up there the few clouds were gone already by then.
I was running a hot 8.400 mah lipo, it can handle some serious flight time. So everything that happened was all my fault, and I have learned a hard and expensive lesson behind it.
I was doing it just for fun before this. I had the hardest time trying it the first time, when you see how great it works, you want to do it again! If I had been at my normal levels of height, usually less than 100 feet I would still have my f-550.