Every drone build is like a unique child , when you lose one it's not just the money it's the memory and nostalgic connection with it.😢 Been there done that!
Wow that explains it exactly! I have lost two full drones and action cameras, it hurts when I think about the build process and what I went through to get them in the air and then there’s the money🤦♂️gets the wife pissed at me that’s for sure!!!
I lost my first drone in a lake near my home about 100 meters out from the shoreline. Every time I go back for a walk that feeling of loss is as raw as it was on day one. As a long range pilot I expected to lose a drone every once in a while but it still hurt when it happened. A gps unit is a must for long range but not always helpful because it can serve as a “so close yet so far” reminder.
I lost a small drone one time. I took off from the top of a cliff edge. Did no flight prechecks. Didn't notice my drone was in pit mode. I flew 15 feet away over the edge and completely lost video. Tried to turn around and fly back, completely blind cause their was no time to remove my goggles. Bystanders said it went into a tree maybe. A friend and I came out the next day and searched for hours. We had to approach the cliff from the bottom and it was really tricky just getting to where we could search. I brought my mavic and flew up and down looking in the trees too. We had a MUCH smaller area to search than you and we still never found it. I really loved your video. It's rare to see someone post a long range where they lose their quad, and the flying a small quad not intended for long range with no gps were also new and interesting things to see done. Thank you for your post. Very cool vid.
Thanks for watching and commenting. Apreciate your story, that really sucks! There’s probably quite a few drones lying around I guess 😅 Maybe I should paint my frames in hi-vis yellow 🤔
Had a buddy triggered one and he said he watched a piece the size of a school bus fly over him and thought for sure he was going to die. Luckily he is still with us. Side note, small circles on your way out to test reception can help. Great video.
I'm a big fan of your videos and style of flying. You kind of inspired me to fly longrange ;) I sorry for your lost , I lost my chimera 7 in the pretty same way as you. But this not gonna stop us we will build new drones and fly even further ;)
@@scrubbasher6418 this wasn’t a Chimera that I lost but an Emax Babyhawk II HD. It didn’t have a GPS, failsafed because bad antenna angle and too weak transmitting strength. If you have a Chimera make sure GPS rescue is activated in Betaflight since it comes deactivated from the store.
@@ArcticriderFPV Ohh, Must have got confused. I think I have setup my Chimera ok as I have already had it go into FS and return home. Trouble was I didn't know how to regain control. Told you I was fairly new to this. I had to disarm when it got to a lower altitude and luckily it dropped in a bush and it didn't get a scratch. Ive worked it all out now.
Really appreciate the rc group link for the gps Of all my quads including a “LR” rig based on a Foxeer Aura 5 frame my Babyhawk 2 with full size Xfire is my go to for pretty much EVERYTHING! 😃👍✊
The Babyhawk 2 is a phenomenal drone. I've taken mine (analog version) down cliffs and across the ocean, though not nearly as far as you. I actually crashed it when I went a little too far around an abandoned nuclear site cooling tower, and lost the Crossfire connection. It fell 400+ feet down the cooling tower onto concrete, but after walking closer I regained signal and simply flew it back, the drop didn't even bend a prop.
Ahh that sucks man, you never know, one day you might get it back, i love my babyhawk even more after I lost it and then got it back 6 months later 😂 it worked perfectly as well. Great video 👍🏻
Thanks! Awesome to hear you got it back! I wish it had actually landed on top, it would be a lot bigger chance of finding it! Down below where it went, nobody ventures 😵😂
Great talk here. I FPV a 250-gram helicopter and I mount the radio TBS antenna along the tail boom, pointing toward myself the pilot. I have always reasoned to myself that when craft travels away, it should have the weakest signal.
Thank you. I mount mine vertical now, like a radio antenna. This way it will be at a good state 99% of the time. I don’t do too many flips and rolls with my long range rig.
Amazing footage and storytelling! Really felt the thrill of that long-range flight up the snowy mountain. It's unfortunate about the drone, but kudos to you for turning this into a learning experience for all of us. The view from your FPV goggles was breathtaking, even though it ended in loss. Keep exploring and sharing these adventures - they're a treat to watch! Stay resilient!
If you had a controller with GPS and Arducopter you could have had smart RTL which would have flown back the way you came so you would not hit anything. Bad luck, amazing footage from the DVR.
I lost one of my homebuilt LR4's a few week ago and it was rough as it was equipped with a Vista and a runcam 4k thumb pro. Same thing I didn't do my pre-flights and had a catastrophic failure. Since then I have equipped all my digital and analogs with compass, boro, and GPS. Cost now to replace these have nearly doubled. Good info man, thx.
I think what you're talking about is using the led pads to create a soft serial port and using the gps on that, the issue with soft serial is that it uses cpu time to process and it works, but I guess it's not ideal
Thanks for sharing. Learn from other peoples mistakes says my father. 😅 You could have activated stage one for 30 seconds for RX loss. Then it goes into angle mode and accelerates up until you might have signal again. That is if set up correct.
Yeah, it’s easy for me now to see all the options one had. But experience was not on my side! 😅 As you said others can learn, but I think I learned the most. Although I slip up from time to time, it mostly comes down to laziness. Thanks for watching and your input :)
@@ArcticriderFPV how do you like the 4" long range vs the babyhawk? I have a babyhawk 2. Right now I'm in the process of building a 4" long range. You have the chimera 4 right? Basically both have 1404 motors, just different props and matching frames. 4" bi blades should be most efficient for flight time. What 4" props are you using? Tried the new 3525 props?
@@chrisbee5481 I kind of prefer the Babyhawk 2 to be honest. It’s just overall more fun, I got a new one in the mail. Might use the babyhawk more for freestyle though. That or mount a gps on this one lol
Thanks for sharing, I’m sorry about your drone I know the sunken, frustrated, self blaming, emotional, anxious feeling you get when you loose a drone. But what exactly caused the drone to fall, was it because the antenna was facing away from you while returning?
Yeah the antenna pointed straight at me when turning around, that combined with the controller having too low sending strength made it lose signal and failsafe. No gps = no gps rescue = falls down
@@Oxtailgraavy2023 just get one withib your price range. Biggest difference is how fast they acquire satelites. I have a wifly gps mate anyways so it powers on my gps while I get set up before a flight
OUCH! That hurts. I lost my Larva X in the park 2 days ago, within 5 seconds of launch. It hurts because it's been a faithful park flyer for a couple of years now. I've been in the hobby about 6 years now and that's the 1st one I've lost. It hurts no matter the cost, but yours long gone at that elevation. You would almost be better served by stopping, and then just reversing backwards until you were sure you had decent link instead of making the turn around. I'm putting together a LR 7" which just got the finishing parts today. I made sure I used an R9 Slim+ (elrs convert) to have the diversity antennas, as I don't want to dump $400 on a hillside somewhere and feel like crap when I can't find it. You already know this, but we can't help but push the envelope. RTH works. I would use it. Sorry....I commented before you finished the video. I still have a hard time believing you flew a Babyhawk up that far. Awesome!
Thanks for watching! Yeah I was new to the game when I flew here. I have learned so much since, though I still make silly mistakes 😂 I hope I won’t lose any of my 7" Quads, they are closer to $1000++ with batteries, cameras etc! 🫣 It might have been stupid to fly that far with that quad but it was a helluva ride 😁🤘
Yes you can resource remap, or use softserial to have a gps on these 2 uart aio's. I usually put gps on uart1 anyway, and then use whatever else to have a receiver and then the vtx on softserial or resource remap. If you use crossfire you can access your vtx control through your receiver anyway though, so you don't actually need 3 uarts. I haven't tried it with this particular board but i've done it on like 3 or 4 other tinywhoop aio's. lol I can't believe you got this far with a babyhawk, that's crazy. Maybe you can build a drone to rescue it one day. lol Oh this was a while ago, and you tried, that's sad.
Yeah it was fun, and I would have gotten it back if I had my transmitter on the right mW too 🙈 Oh well, I haven’t given completely up on it yet. But not sure what is salvagable by now.
@@ArcticriderFPV ahh I figured it was Norway! It almost looked like skorve (telemark). It’s been too long since I’ve been to Norway! Thank you for the answer :)
Hey great vid! Question tho, how are you getting such good mbs at that range? I have dji goggles 2 and I just took my drone about two miles out and I was getting less than 10mbs and at risk for losing video
Good question, how many Watts are you transmitting video on your system? If going really long you probably need to go as high as possible, also always have Line of sight to the area you are flying to
do you have original short vtx antenna? mine has a 15 cm one and it is way better...sad lost but it worth it...( sorry 4 my bad english) i tought you didn t reach the cliff...you reached the kwad limit so far...10 mins of approach is a lot of time...😢
Thanks. 25 or 250mW, if I had had it on 500mW or 1W, or diversity antenna I would’ve been fine. Also the video antenna is placed better than the crossfire one.
@@ArcticriderFPV I have the Xfire diversity nano rx, it can be tricky to install the 2nd antenna, but u get better signal when u turning back :) on 500mw/1W u had been fine :P
@@Laarsm yeah I have a diversity with TBS immortal T antenna and true RC bardpole on my Chimera 7 😄 Yeah different antenna placement or more TX power! 😅 I have a vertical immortal T on my Chimera 4 👌
Yeah, but what would be really interesting would be to see link quality and rssi. Not too worried about video signal, as long as it is line of sight, it did drop a lot during the flight.
11:40 Nah the new ones go way beyond that now. Some need optional more aggressive angled props "high altitude" ones but max takeoff altitude on the new Air 3 drone is 6kms... kms not meters.
@@crisnmaryfam7344 No, what I am saying is they are limited in software to not go higher than 500 meters above take off area in altitude, at least in europe. Unless you use dronehacks ore something
@@ArcticriderFPV Yea that 500 limit is all but ignored completely here in the US. Unless you are in a metro area or big city type setting. I dont know anyone NOT running the "hacks" or Unlocks if you will.
@@crisnmaryfam7344 Yeah depends on model and firmware version. Newer are harder to ‘hack’. My mavic air 2 is unlocked now but wasn’t when this happened.
So do you think you would have made it back at all even without FS? I see your battery is already around 3.1V - 3.2V per cell at your furthest point, which in my opinion is only around 20% or maybe 30% of battery left. I don't really see you making it all the way back with that battery...
Hard to say, It’s mostly downhill, and li-ions can go down to 2.5v per cell, would push it beyond limits trying to get back. And if it had not gotten all the way back, it would at least be easier to find. But fair point.
@@ArcticriderFPV yes, but you still need a fair amount of power to keep the quad in the air and the voltage goes down very fast below 3.0. I actually just did an endurance test with li-ion on my 3.5 inch and as soon as you reach 3.0V I can tell you it drops rapidly (also with lower voltage the ESCs draw more amps). Maybe just keep it in mind, but I can also understand getting carried away in that landscape;)
Definitivt min Chimera 7 1300kv. Har en del videoer der jeg flyr med denne, smooth med full size GoPro på. Går mye fortere men flyr like lenge som Babyhawken med rette batteriene.
I’m gonna do a test this summer too see if/what the differences are. Haven’t ran into any issues on 50Mbps so far, my limiting factor is battery usage. Will try some flatter flights too and see what distance I get.
@@hood_30 sorry about your drone, I think visual searching is your best bet, if there is any bright colors on it maybe try using a powerful UV flashlight at night.
Thanks for sharing your experience, could you also share how to set up the nice looking OSD elements from the DVR? I lost my Flywoo Explorer O3 recently when I was flying too high and lose control signal. 4.4.1 GPS rescue did activated, however I have the altitude mode set to "FIXED_ALT" at 50m; while it was slowly descending to reach the set altitude before the "FLY HOME" phase kick it, I lost video signal and never saw it again 😢 It's a terrifying and helpless experience to watch your craft drift farther and farther, with the pack voltage dropping constantly, and you can only watch from your goggles while raising the controller hoping to get the connection back... Have learnt my lessons and ordered parts to rebuild from scratch this time, with phone number on it and "CURRENT_ALT" this time!
Sounds like a good plan! What transmitter protocol do you use? I always go with something better than my video signal, so I lose video first (unless I have forgot to turn up the power on it 😂) Watch my previous video where I show exactly how I add telemetry/osd elements to my videos :)
@@ArcticriderFPV I was using ELRS locked at 500mw and 150hz. Seems like the area I fly in has lots of interference as my LQ is dropping out but RSSI dBm is never near the threshold, so getting a BetaFPV SuperD RX and giving D250 mode a try for my next craft. Thanks for the video, I'll give it a watch!
It can be frustrating when starting, but Watch lots of RU-vid videos, practice a lot in the simulator, and take small steds when starting to fly out in the real world. There will be some mistakes and crashes but they all have valuable lessons to be taught.
Haha Yeah that’s great but I don’t think anyone would get close enough to get a signal, no one goes here, of course as long as it is still attached it might’ve given me a better chance up there searching, but hey, everything helps huh? 😅
@ArcticriderFPV hmm... you could fly a cell phone up to the area and it would register the ping on map. Pretty sure that would work. Have to test the theory.
I don’t think a metal detector will do me much good up on the mountain. It would be too heavy and it’s probably hidden deep between big rocks. Thanks for the tip though
I don’t think any of it would help really. Either battery would be dead before I could get up there, or in case of the air tag it would need people with iPhones to pass by it (hoping that it is still attached to the drone) and even then no one goes up there where it fell down! Best thing would have been to have a gps-rescue capable drone that would have returned when signal was lost.
Yeah no shit 😂 This was in my early FPV game, gotta start somewhere. Too tempting not to fly, couldn’t afford a new drone at the time, and didn’t think it was possible to cram a gps onto the flightcontroller. Sometimes we need to learn the hard way!
The crossfire receiver antenna on the drone was mounted so when I turned it pointed straight to me (weakest radio link/antenna null) and I had not turned up the signal strength on my controller enough so it lost transmitter signal, failsafe kicked in and it dropped. (Didn’t have GPS installed so no gps rescue).
i lost my diatone roma 5 hd just like you, at the mountaintop right after i turned to head back my drone fell down. Found out later that the tower at the mountaintop was one of Telenors fking tower. I drove my car to the the top and climbed like 10m down, but it got too steep, i could even hear my drone beeping like 10 more meter down, but didnt dear lose my life over it...that was my favourit drone😭
Ouch, being so close is almost worse than it being several kilometres away! That really sucks! You reckon it was the antennas signals that made your drone fall down? Also if you have DVR please post a video, it's good to learn from others´ mistake as well as my own.
