Failsafe?

[boykintom]

Update to the F450 that we built. Got a call last night from my brother, "Guess what I lost?" He was in a small clearing among trees and had the quad straight up above the tree height when a gust of wind moved it out of his sight behind one of the trees. He hasn't seen it since! He wasn't sure of any failsafe settings on either the Naza or his rx, so he has no idea how far it may have gone. He is still looking, but isn't too hopeful at this point. He plans to buy another one if he can't find this one, and will add the GPS this time.

[thehatguy]

I think it flew over my house this morning.

Was heading South.

Seriously, I'm curious to find out if he ever recovers it.

John

[boykintom]

I'll keep everyone posted. Right now he's ordering another one.

[pinguin]

With GPS module, how do you track if? Suppose the quad get stuck on a tree, can't make it flying back.

Or put one of these.
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...idProduct=4282

[boykintom]

Good question, guess you need to be careful flying around trees, or at least stay above them. I wonder how loud the beeper is on this thing? In my brother's case, I think it might need to be on the order of a fire siren to find his missing F450!

[Tahoe Ed]

With the Naza the best you can hope for is that it will hover above a cow pasture until the battery dies and then lands. If you add GPS then you can Return To Home, RTH. You can order several types of locating devices. Some work over 100m and others at more than 1k. It depends on what you are willing to spend to replace or track your equipment. I lost one and thought I had a visual when it went down. I didn't and spent a day plodding around a very wet cow pasture. $600 down the drain. Two years ago and the loss is still a pain in the pocket book.

[boykintom]

I have a sad mental picture of the quad hovering over (in this case) the salt marsh, then slowing dropping towards the pluff mud and water as the battery ran down. Makes that RTH feature look pretty good.

[Romhu]

I am the brother. When I took off I had complete dead air. No breeze off the marsh at all. I wanted to do some AP of the marsh and river. I took the f450 up about 200 ft. panned left and right. It started to drift to the north so I started bringing it down. On the way down it drifted more north so I moved it back overhead and down. Arrested the northen movement but sothern movement was not that good. Paused descent about 100 ft. to move it off the trees. I could see the green LEDs and the white legs and was backing it toward me still coming down when the wind hit. It was like the Enterprise going into warp drive. I cut throttle within 15 sec. but nothing. Searched until after dark hoping to spot LEDs SOL.

Please tell me about the NAZA GPS. I love the f450, but wife now demands a leash.

[Jeff_Barrett]

That hurts.

I hope you find the model.

I'm assuming you checked all the tree tops to see if it's hung up in there?

I would recommend an inexpensive audible alarm for better tracking.

With regards to the NAZA GPS, it has a position hold mode, a failsafe (return to home) feature, course lock orientation, and home lock orientation features. If setup properly and you lose reception (or setup a switch) - you can program the model to return to home and land automatically, or maintain hover in the locked GPS coordinates.