"Land, or start looking for your credit card!"

[Diether]

Completing a beautiful orbit over a ridge, with the Atlantic in the background, I kept to my own promise to always come in and land at 25%. So, I broke out of the orbit and hit the RTL button. The wind picked up, and Solo had to fly back against it, using precious battery reserves, within seconds a very audible 2.5 second long,repetitive warning signal was coming from Solo as it bravely fought its way back to me - 15% reserve. I switched to manual, not wanting to use any energy sapping stabilization to land. She touched down at 8% reserve, and Solex announced: "Reserves critically low. Land, or start looking for your credit card!"

 

[Bilge]

that is funny...the part "or start looking for your credit card"

what part of the country were you flying in.....??

 

[Diether]

that is funny...the part "or start looking for your credit card"

what part of the country were you flying in.....??

I'm in South Africa - close to Cape Point Nature Reserve.

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

Kelly maintains his sense of humor in his software development. His release notes are usually very entertaining to read too.

 

[Diether]

Kelly maintains his sense of humor in his software development. His release notes are usually very entertaining to read too.

Yes, Kelly's work for Solo is amazing! He said he "kinda forgot it was there" , haha...

 

[Ed.it.Ed]

[QUOTE="....... I switched to manual, not wanting to use any energy sapping stabilization to land. She touched down at 8% reserve... !"[/QUOTE]


My question is in regard to the above statement. When battery is getting critically low and the quad is still 400 ft overhead headed down to launch point , is flying in manual mode the most efficient use of the remaining battery? Should one be descending as fast as possible to ground or does that use even more battery? Should one turn off the camera? Any other tips would be appreciated. I realize of course it's best to avoid these situations but occasionally they will happen.

 

[RichWest]

I think the reference is going from a controlled speed under RTH versus "manually" taking control of the effort. RTH is slowed in software to be a controlled vertical descent to avoid VRS, 2-4ms I believe, as this is an autonomous flight mode. You can "manually" descend at a much greater rate either vertically or by descending at a slope to reduce VRS.

The word Manual seems to be a confusing term with regards to Solo, at least when used in conversations. This common confusion of terms is when people are describing landing manually, which does not mean they are in FLY-Manual mode. Why make flight harder than it is, FLY with GPS assistance should be the primary flight mode.

There is little if any power difference between FLY-Manual and FLY (stabilized) modes.