Altitude loss in circular orbit?

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anyone else experience altitude loss when flying a large orbit?

Orbits are in the range of 50m or 100m radius.

I have flown a few Tower orbits and have seen the Solo lose altitude in a few of them.

Note that Tower does properly show the altitude as it is descending, so it is not the case that the Solo thinks it is at the right height.
 
It shouldn't descend in either a Solo orbit smart shot or an Arducopter circle mode unless you lower the throttle stick to descend, or you are going too fast.
 
or you are going too fast.

P2P, you might be onto something here.

I've seen this on three different Solos.

It was pretty windy in at least two of the cases.

This last one was a (Tower app) circle of 100m radius.

CIRCLE_RATE is set to 20 deg/s.

That is 18 seconds to do a full circle.

Circumference = 2 pi R = 628 meters​

628m/18s = 22.4m/s <---This would be the speed Solo would try to maintain. This is far above what I've seen Solo can do in Loiter or Auto flights.

on the Tower app display, the horizontal speed hs was steady at about 12.5m/s, while vertical speed vs held around 0m/s until it took the dip.

perhaps the flight controller was trying to go way too fast and Solo got its butt kicked by the down draft of the wind?
 
That's why it was descending. That is way faster than it can do without sacrificing altitude.
 
take a look at this guy's video

he did a couple orbits, and the same thing happened--altitude loss while going around

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take a look at this guy's video

he did a couple orbits, and the same thing happened--altitude loss while going around

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For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
Prop guards? Ugh. Esp. outdoors.
 

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