Not coming out!

General Drone Discussion
1

When you have wheezed and sweated your way up a hill to visit the abandoned tower you are obviously eager to fly your drone in and around it.

When it’s your first time flying the interior of a building you are also (understandably) nervous. But, take a deep breath, line the aircraft up with the hole in the brickwork and edge it forward. It goes through!

Stick your head and the controller into the hole. Note that the tower is open all the way up. And goes down ten feet from where you are. Give a little “up” stick and watch as the aircraft rises. Trust in the collision sensors doing their job.

Fly up. Fly down. Yaw in a complete circle. Feel a sense of achievement. Time to get the aircraft back outside. It approaches the hole. And stops. Collision avoidance

Try it backwards. It stops. No collision avoidance on the side - fly it sideways. Grat. it’s coming out. Until the front and rear sensors decide to stop it, just out of reach. Battery level 33 per cent. Wait until the battery drops to 10% and it will auto land? Good idea. Except it will land 10 feet down the shaft, with no way of getting to it.

It’s hovering there, mocking you. Battery level 31 per cent.

Battery level 30 per cent, the battery level alarm kicks in. Now you have to think with the alarm going off and a disembodied voice counting down the life of your poor little Mavic Air.

Very carefully line the aircraft up with the gap. Get it back as far as possible. Take a run-up. It stops just out of reach on inside the tower. More speed? Back it up again, line up carefully. Switch into sports mode, stick fully forward …

It screams out of the hole, you duck and remember just in time to pull back on the stick before the aircraft hits the trees. Extra speed worked, you fooled the sensors!

Then a fragment of the long-ago read manual comes to mind. Collision avoidance doesn’t work in Sports mode In fact you could have saved all this grief if you had just switched off collision avoidance when you first wanted to exit.

Who knew coming out would be so difficult?

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Sports mode, eyes closed

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Yes, that’s what I meant to write! Edited now :slight_smile:

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My thoughts exactly :grin:

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I worked up a sweat just reading this. Hope the video is worth it !!!

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Great write up, I was nervous just reading it! :+1:t2: :laughing:

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That’s the problem.

When I got home I downloaded the 20 odd gigs of data on my card. Plenty of video. All of the outside. I had been that nervous about my first time inside I forgot to record anything …

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@macspite ah man thats a real shame. I bet that would have been great footage too. At least next time you do it youll know how to get out and wont have another squeeky bum moment. Look forward to seeing it :+1:t2:

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:rofl::rofl:

Great story. Wish there was CCTV of you personally throughout this!

gKsJUddjnpPG0

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WELL GET BACK THERE AND DO IT AGAIN !!!

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Can’t. Used up my diesel allowance for the month :frowning:

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What a story! On the edge of my seat!

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Gotta say I was on the edge of my seat too - trying not to fall off it with laughing! Brilliant! Just the sort of thing I would do - including forgetting to turn the camera on.

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14

Is there no way to switch off collision avoidance on the app? That would have been my first port of call.

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If you read through the yards of waffle you will see that that is what I realised I should have done. Afterwards.

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Sorry, I don’t see it anywhere in your post? How about leaving by the top of the tower? You say it was ‘open’.

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All good ideas. But forgotten in the heat of the moment. Have you never had a realisation after the event of what should have been done?

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Yes, I sympathise completely, macspite! :slightly_smiling_face:
Sounds like your MA2? Not cheap to lose!

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Excellent :grinning: I pictured the whole thing whilst reading it. Very detailed and all very true :grinning:
Great peace :ok_hand:

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Well written, kept me on edge until end.