Amount of electrical activity in my area yesterday

JohnL · Sep 24, 2016

Saw some thunderstorms almost unprecedented pass through my area of Catalunya yesterday. Every little colored dot you see on the attached png is an electrical discharge (air to air or air to ground). Considered sending my Typhoon H up to take video and sorta make it a suicide mission, but the wife took my ST16 away. LOL!

Edit: "Suicide mission" means I'm tired of the problems with my TH and have reached the point where I don't care if it's taken out by lightning. More t-storms on the way!

vr-pilot · Sep 24, 2016

JohnL said:
Saw some thunderstorms almost unprecedented pass through my area of Catalunya yesterday. Every little colored dot you see on the attached png is an electrical discharge (air to air or air to ground). Considered sending my Typhoon H up to take video and sorta make it a suicide mission, but the wife took my ST16 away. LOL!

Wow, if you manage to get inside the extreme updrafts (e.g. 5,000 to 10,000 ft/min = 90 to 180 km/h) you could maybe travel to Ibiza drifting with a cell with engines in idle.

To descend again you could chose the fast way and fly to the cell's center and fall as an ice cube from 40,0000 ft to 10,000 hoping to unfreeze before touchdown!
Unrealistic? For drones maybe but e.g. some soaring plane pilots went through this... (Unfortunately the ice cube version wearing a frozen parachute)

JohnL · Sep 24, 2016

@vr-pilot Understood. Used to hold a Privet Pilot's license and have over 50 hours soaring time. I'm so pissed off at my TH that I'm just LOOKING for an opportunity to send it to "the beyond." In this case however, I find myself wondering "How on earth will I recover the microSD card with all the great video?"

vr-pilot · Sep 24, 2016

JohnL said:
@vr-pilot Understood. Used to hold a Privet Pilot's license and have over 50 hours soaring time. I'm so pissed off at my TH that I'm just LOOKING for an opportunity to send it to "the beyond." In this case however, I find myself wondering "How on earth will I recover the microSD card with all the great video?"

I also had a PPL (single engine, for 10 years) including C172 floating plane and did some soaring

Bad to hear that you have such an evil experience with the YTH. I like it actually as I did not have any devastating issues (so far!).
It did nicely return home on RC connection loss with the old RTH routine by descending from 60 to meters 20 meters above the smart circle. It was exciting as the descend started 80 meters away in between some high trees. I knew it would be tight, but RC re-connected just in time so I let it do its thing (with one finger ready to acivate Angle Mode).
Once it flipped over during a Wizard landing in Smart Mode: I moved my arm and so the YTH decided to do so, too. Due to soft gras no damage but Yuneec knows why it does recommend T/Os and LDGs in Angle Mode...
Long WIFI camera connection time and then disconnection due to landing gear operation sucks with EU firmware. But hey, besides that it always did what I told it to do, regardless if it was wise or not.
BTW: by mid of October I will visit a friend in Alicante showing him the YTH PRO RS. Last year I showed him the P3P of which I have already the third replacement...
Drones can be unforgiving but that is what makes them a challenge in the end ;-)

EDIT: regarding the SD card footage recovery I would say that the frozen camera has a good chance of surviving the impact, at least you will need some tools to remove the card from the gimbal chunk...

banned user · Sep 24, 2016

JohnL said:
Saw some thunderstorms almost unprecedented pass through my area of Catalunya yesterday. Every little colored dot you see on the attached png is an electrical discharge (air to air or air to ground). Considered sending my Typhoon H up to take video and sorta make it a suicide mission, but the wife took my ST16 away. LOL!

Edit: "Suicide mission" means I'm tired of the problems with my TH and have reached the point where I don't care if it's taken out by lightning. More t-storms on the way!

Ha that made me laugh...I did the same with my P2, sent it out fishing for sea trout, it was a 50/50 if I caught one that it wouldn't pull the P out to sea...at that time I done with the thing.