Last weekend I was flying my P3S over a beautiful, remote and uninhabited frozen lake. Got some great shots of the rough boreal forest and rugged shoreline before shooting south over the lake at about 25 metres.
I was only 650 metres out when the signal dropped. I was watching the map but had inadvertently let the Phantom get out of direct line-of-sight. No problem: RTH will look after me. And it did.
But when the bird arrived back and landed next to me on the ice I noticed two of the props had a distinct green tint. Strange. There were also a few pine needles stuck in the joints of the camera gimbal. Hmmm.
It wasn't till I got home and uploaded the video that I realized how lucky I was. After losing signal the Phantom went into RTH mode, turned around, rose to my 30 metre preset height, and dutifully made a bee-line back to me... right through the tops of the trees on the end of a point of land between me and the quad. A metre or two to the left, a metre or two lower, and it would still be there. Incredibly lucky.
Also lucky: the SD card ran out of space within about two seconds of going through the trees. There are a few corrupt frames right before it got there, then the vid ends seconds later, but not before capturing the bushwhacking close-up.
No need to troll me with how dumb I was to use a 30 metre RTH height. I've got that. Won't happen again. Hope others learn from my mistake and get a laugh out of my close call:
I was only 650 metres out when the signal dropped. I was watching the map but had inadvertently let the Phantom get out of direct line-of-sight. No problem: RTH will look after me. And it did.
But when the bird arrived back and landed next to me on the ice I noticed two of the props had a distinct green tint. Strange. There were also a few pine needles stuck in the joints of the camera gimbal. Hmmm.
It wasn't till I got home and uploaded the video that I realized how lucky I was. After losing signal the Phantom went into RTH mode, turned around, rose to my 30 metre preset height, and dutifully made a bee-line back to me... right through the tops of the trees on the end of a point of land between me and the quad. A metre or two to the left, a metre or two lower, and it would still be there. Incredibly lucky.
Also lucky: the SD card ran out of space within about two seconds of going through the trees. There are a few corrupt frames right before it got there, then the vid ends seconds later, but not before capturing the bushwhacking close-up.
No need to troll me with how dumb I was to use a 30 metre RTH height. I've got that. Won't happen again. Hope others learn from my mistake and get a laugh out of my close call:
