Morning all
Is it normal that some days your drone might connect to more satellites than others and or depending on time of day perhaps - weather maybe thought I’d ask - as some days I have more than others ……
Cheers
Morning Richard,
Yes this is perfectly normal, satellites that you see will depend on how many are visible above the horizon and serviceable at a particular time. Weather can be a factor but only if it is particularly bad, space weather can also affect, for example, you may see less if there is high solar activity reported.
Hope this helps
Jordan
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@jordans thanks for that - since the hot weather it’s been a tad less but again hard to put exact figures on it etc etc but does go up & down ….
Thankyoi
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Anything over 6 will be plenty, and modern multi-constilation chips should be up in double figures most the time (for example the Mini 3 has been reporting about 18-24 satellites on most flights). The other thing that will effect it is solar weather, so keep an eye on the Kp index, when it’s over 4 you might start to see slightly degraded GNSS performance.
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@Bobbysmile
Ahhhhh I didn’t know about that ( Kp index ) I’ll check on air data etc - only reason I mentioned this ( with MA2 ) I usually get I think around 17-23 ish but on my last flight I noticed only 15 - then on YouTube I noticed a guy with the new mini 3 with 31 sats 
lol I’ve never seen that many locked on before ……
Thanks
Just read up on the KP ahhh to do with magnetic storm - never knew that !
The MA2 and Mini3 use different sets of satellites.
MA2 : GPS + GLONASS, only.
Mini3 - GPS + Galileo + BeiDou
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@OzoneVibe
Well I’ve learnt somthing new today thanks for that - I thought satellites were literally just up there and we all use them the same … very interesting would never have known - Thankyou
No - not in the slightest. Ocusync is DJI tech only for drone to RC communication.
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Ok - the only reason I asked that was because I think the MA2 being ocusync 2 ( 2 sets of diff satellites )
New mini 3 possibly ocusync 3 ( 3 diff sets of sats ) that was my theory behind it but I was wrong 
But if you don’t ask then you won’t know !
Thanks for the tuition appreciated
DJI use Ublox chips, and I actually wrote my thesis on how you used to (hard to find ones with the old firmware now) be able to bodge them to do RTK, and I’ve actually got a few RTK Ublox chips sat around.
Had the temptation in the back of my mind to pick up the cheapest old mini or mavic I can find on ebay and see how it behaves if you swap out to a higher tier chip (they share the same package size and pinout), only thing is you’d have to get the radio corrections to it as well
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Wowwww that’s technical for me 
I don’t think I’m doing enough research & reading - after the last couple of posts ! I’d like to say less flying bit more research 
in my case it’s a case of both - I need to get out more !
FairPlay to a lot of you members on here tho ( seriously ) for taking up the time to understand & do your research very well - rather than just fly - it’s great we have knowledge on here it really is !
I’d be doomed to say the least 
The whole high KP Index stuff is less based in fact and more an urban myth.
It’s true that solar weather affects GPS satellites, it also affects all satellites, whether they are communication satellites, imaging satellites, in fact anything in orbit with an active electrical system. In very high instances of solar activity it will affect terrestrial electrical grids in the same way. In these situations the satellite ground control stations would command the satellite power systems into a semi sleep mode, or in some cases orient the satellite so that the most sensitive systems would be shielded from the solar stream.
With respect to GPS accuracy and timing high solar activity has little effect, certainly not enough to cause issues to the basic systems employed on our hobby drones. There were a couple of studies carried out at a Norwegian observatory in the Arctic Circle investigating the possible negative effects of high Solar activity on the position reporting and timing of , ground based receivers. They detected positional and timing changes but little in the way that could not be corrected by standard error correction as used in the majority of ground based satellite positioning systems.
Whenever I saw references to drone flyaways caused by high Kp indices I used to ask the poster the source of this info, and every time the answer was they’d read it somewhere on the internet. I suspect it was from the DJI forum itself as the myth was perpetuated about the same time the Phantom 1 was released, and those experiencing flyaways didn’t want to admit to their own ineptness.
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That! 110%!
I think this is the key point here, increased disturbance to the ionosphere 100% will impact GNSS, however the vast majority of modern GNSS is dual frequency which has pretty much mitigated the impacts of this.
Older single frequency units are still more likely to see some degredation in precision. Anything corrected via a base station is pretty much immune to these effects as you’ll be working off observed atmospheric corrections instead of modeled corrections
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You can download apps to your phone that will track the sats
GPS test is one
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… is my preferred alternative. Some cool features and tools, too … even the free version.
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One thing that wasn’t mentioned in relation to the original question … if you are in a clearing surrounded by dense, tall, wet, trees … getting any fix can be problematic.
I’ve just taken off and grabbed a new home point when above the trees. 
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