DD horizontal flight distance limited by DJI?

Flight - Discussion and Q&A
1

Had my first odd situation with the DD app today after many successful flights last year. I was surveying a hillfort archaeological site which covers a ridge over 800m in length. With some extra ground added around the margins of the flight map I reckon the total length of the flight plan was 850m max. The idea was to position myself centrally on the ridge and let the drone fly out to both sides 425m max from my takeoff point, therefore staying within the 500m distance limit in the UK. Unfortunately, to keep line of sight in both directions I could only take off from a location one third of the way along the ridge on the highest point. This meant that one side of the ridge flight was possibly 500m or just over.

When I set the flight to start the drone rose up 1m, hovered, then descended and landed again. The intevalometer had been triggered and the drone was taking pictures until I turned it back off.

Is it possible that the app calculated that that the flight length from take off point to start point was over the UK and DJI limit of 500m and aborted the flight ? If not, why would the drone behave like this ?

Thanks, Mark

2

@markwalters
I can not speak to the UK aspect; however, I have taken my units to greater distances via manual and DD control. I know there are some options/settings in the DJI app that may be set to limit your distances; however, I would imagine that you should be able to change those. I would also make sure that all of your equipment and apps are updated.

Good Luck

3

Everything was updated as normal to the latest version, DD app, DJI Go app, Phantom 4 and controller firmware, IPad Mini 4 iOS. I noticed afterwards that in the DJI app the option to manually set max distance was not selected, so presumably the max distance in that case defaults to 500m and this overrides the DD app and any longer mission flight distance ? Can anyone from DD support confirm or deny this ?

4

I’m just a DD user, my mission was over that the other day and it was fine. Had to swap batteries mind you :slight_smile: