I flew from my home in south Seattle this past Sunday to Tucson, Arizona where I'll be spending the rest of the winter. Brought my Spark with me. I always had decent satellite strength in Seattle to the point where it only took a minute or 2 at most to get the GPS connected, ready to fly signal. And, I always had good connectivity. Here in NW Tucson it's a different story. Got the Spark out for the first time today and it took 2 - 3 minutes to get the GPS connected signal. I glanced at the satellite bar chart and I was only connected to 9 satellites and all of them were weak. I was still GPS connected so I went ahead and launched but I kept it at about 2-3M just to see what would happen. Sure enough, after about a minute the voice told me I was now in ATTI mode, i.e. I had lost my GPS connectivity meaning I would have no RTH function if I went real high. At this point I lost my courage and landed. I was down to 50% battery anyway. Did I do the right thing or should I have been brave and forged full speed ahead? As a beginner, I read all of the unintended fly-away posts and I just didn't want to be in that position. Was I too cautious?
Weak Satellite Signals
- Thread starter skipper20
- Start date
Your still have your aircraft so you certainly did the right thing!
Experience has taught me to "err" on the side of caution. You had very good instincts for a new pilot.
Many fly-away stories start with ignored pop up warnings and end as tales of misery. Better to land early and live to fly another day
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