Litchi waypoint - is 1,9km far from RC safe?

[Mikey87]

Dear Spark Friends,

A friend of my have a vacation house in the middle of a forest. He is not much there so he asked me to make some pictures from his vacation house sometimes (so he can check it). My idea is to make a waypoint mission and let it fly automatic every time (once in a month maybe) and make some shots above the house and than return to start point. The house i give the POI option than. The only "problem" is the distance from the startpoint to the house - it is actually 1,9KM..... It is not possible to go further because a big fence around the forest. (you can only go inside if you have a key).

So my questions for now are:
- The important one: is it safe to make a mission like this because of the ac-rc distance?
- How about the connection between RC and AC, would it be connected or will it be loss? (no obstacles in line of sight!) And what happen if it lost his connection?
- How about battery life? When it is +/- 30% the official DJI go app return home - i saw in the options of litchi that the option of RTH is disabled :-/
- Any other important and good hints to prevent any lose of my sparkie?

BTW: i have flew once or two times with litchi and waypoint, it were tested missions (1km range and 300m distance between rc-ac max)
Thank you very much for any help!

 

[jribeiro]

Hi Mikey87,

I'm not an expert but I'll answer your questions:
1. Yes, it's safe. I've made a mission to a lighthouse 2,5 Km away.
2. It's difficult to say if it will be connected or not. Try to fly manually and you'll see. Anyway, with or without connection, it will complete the mission.
3. My option of Smart RTH is also off. In Litchi Help, it says "Enables/disables the Smart Return-To-Home (RTH) feature. When it is enabled, aircraft will request to go home when remaining battery is only enough for completing the go-home action." For that distance (1,9 Km) you should have more than enough battery.
4. You can plan your mission in VLM 2.3.0 (Virtual Litchi Mission), export it to Google Earth Pro and correct any parameters before the real flight. For better connection, you can use parabolics and connect RC to smartphone/tablet with an OTG cable. If you're running Android, Litchi v4.10 is compatible with OTG cable. And don't forget that to take photos your mission path mode must be straight lines!

J. Ribeiro

 

[DroneDoug]

Hi Mikey87,

I'm not an expert but I'll answer your questions:
1. Yes, it's safe. I've made a mission to a lighthouse 2,5 Km away.
2. It's difficult to say if it will be connected or not. Try to fly manually and you'll see. Anyway, with or without connection, it will complete the mission.
3. My option of Smart RTH is also off. In Litchi Help, it says "Enables/disables the Smart Return-To-Home (RTH) feature. When it is enabled, aircraft will request to go home when remaining battery is only enough for completing the go-home action." For that distance (1,9 Km) you should have more than enough battery.
4. You can plan your mission in VLM 2.3.0 (Virtual Litchi Mission), export it to Google Earth Pro and correct any parameters before the real flight. For better connection, you can use parabolics and connect RC to smartphone/tablet with an OTG cable. If you're running Android, Litchi v4.10 is compatible with OTG cable. And don't forget that to take photos your mission path mode must be straight lines!

J. Ribeiro

Be very cautious of the terrain elevation changes. It would suck to send the spark on a path into the trees somewhere that the elevation rises. Remember to choose elevation above ground level when designing your mission.

This guy explains how to save a mission that is aware of the elevation if you don't know.

This one goes into Google earth to design and exports to CSV then imports to litchi mission hub.

Good luck.

 

[pmshop]

Good luck and please note, you can only be 2km max between waypoints.

 

[zira11]

I'm new to litchi, (its still cold here to do long range mission) but i did 1.2km (total 2.4km)
my signal became bad at 600m , mission still go ok.

You need to choose a speed fast enough for the battery range ,

(my record without litchi was 1.7 km but i used sport mode to be able to come back with a safe reserve)

 

[pmshop]

I found out from litchi that DJI limits their WP speed to 33.6mph
Thought it would be faster with more advanced drones.
Even DJI's Ground Station Pro is locked in at 33.6mph max - even though the Mavic Air can go faster...