What Happens If I Switch to Fly mode Midair?

[Tamj]

I often find myself surrounded by trees whenever I go to fly. In a lot of cases I end up having to switch to Fly:Manual to take off and then I suddenly get a lot more satellite locks once I go higher than the trees.

OK. Makes sense. Tall and dense trees interfere with the stock GPS. Now, what happens if I were to switch back to the default Fly mode while I'm in the air then hit Return to Home?

Will the motors stop when it returns to the point in the air where I switched to Fly or will it actually still rely on the barometer descent rate to determine when to kill the motors?

 

[PdxSteve]

Home is where first GPS lock is obtained. If you take off in manual without a lock, fly 200 feet and switch to FLY and obtain a lock there, that is now home and if it RTH's, that's where it will go (200 feet from where you took off).

It will kill the motors when it detects it has landed. They will never stop in the air unless it is a hardware failure.

 

[Tamj]

Returning to home at 200 ft makes sense as that is what I would expect it to do.

So, if I understand correctly, even if it returns to home at 200ft (using your example), it will just hover there until I land it manually and only then when it's on the ground the motors will shut off, correct?

I am just triple checking because I'm afraid of it crashing. The manual basically recommends not doing this but it doesn't explain what would happen.

 

[PdxSteve]

No - RTH will go to home, land and shut motors off unless you hit FLY and override RTH.

 

[Tamj]

No - RTH will go to home, land and shut motors off.

In other words, nothing to worry about?

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

No, it will continue to descend until it lands. It will however be a very slow descent. It will descend at the normal vertical speed until 10ft above the home altitude. Then it descends much slower to the ground. If you lock a home altitude of 200ft, you'll have a very very slow descent down to the ground.

 

[PdxSteve]

Well, unless it obtained home lock over water or something lol.

You should be able to open the mapview in the app and see where it thinks "home" is. I imagine it won't show up if it never obtained a lock though. I also have not tried taking off without a lock to see if it showed on the map once it DID get a lock.

 

[Tamj]

Thank you all for your helpful responses. I can finally put my mind at ease knowing my Solo really is a smart and well thought out drone.