Battery Life

[bluesti]

Just wondering about the charge in my battery. As an example, let's say I'm 2 kilometres away and I get a "low battery" warning, what happens to my drone, will it go up, down, fly back to me or try and land. Or does the battery calculate what power it needs to rth whatever the distance? John

 

[Andrew01]

The manual claims that the aircraft constantly calculates the battery required to return to home automatically, which it will do around 25% by default but I've had it happen around 30 for longer distance flights over water. It will automatically go back to the launch point unless you hit pause and take over control.

 

[bluesti]

The manual claims that the aircraft constantly calculates the battery required to return to home automatically, which it will do around 25% by default but I've had it happen around 30 for longer distance flights over water. It will automatically go back to the launch point unless you hit pause and take over control.

Thanks Andrew. Why did I not think to also read the manual

 

[Andrzej]

It's good to observe both remaining capacity as well as remaining flight time, which is constantly calculated, for example I noticed while flying with max speed there was 8 minutes left, as soon as I relaxed the speed the remaining time increased to 15 minutes.
Additionally if you fly longer distance, always mind wind direction. Once I was close to heart attack while flying back over sea with maximum speed less than 30km/h thanks to strong head wind.

 

[quinn karter]

It's good to observe both remaining capacity as well as remaining flight time, which is constantly calculated, for example I noticed while flying with max speed there was 8 minutes left, as soon as I relaxed the speed the remaining time increased to 15 minutes.
Additionally if you fly longer distance, always mind wind direction. Once I was close to heart attack while flying back over sea with maximum speed less than 30km/h thanks to strong head wind.

He's right. Its all about your speed and wind direction. High speeds reduce your air time, headwinds create a relative need for speed, if you will. Its not about how fast your going relative to the ground , but how fast you're going relative to the wind. After some time, you'll get an idea of when to go home, or not, and how far and fast you can or should not go. Whatever you do, DONT JUST DEPEND ON THE DRONE'S ESTIMATES. think about the speed you need to go and the wind direction. To be safe, I try to fly into the wind and come back with a nice tail wind. I use a 40% - 60% battery rule. If the headwind is strong I will fly out against it until I hit 40%. The tail wind will normally bring me home. If I fly out with a tail wind, I turn around and go home at 60% battery. I need the extra batt power to push through the headwind on the way back. I'm also conservative now. I used to push my drones to 5% battery life or to the point they try to force land themselves. Now , I play it safe. I tend to go home early. I hate panicking when the drone wants to try landing itself or the RC says 1%. It scares the craft out of me. I've actually flown for over 1 minute when the RC said 0%!!. Those days are long gone for me. OH, BY THE WAY, CONSIDER THE EFFECTS OF HAVING ANY EXTRA WEIGHT ON THE DRONE.