HOW FAR IS TO FAR

[Viking233]

i have a Q500+ and I believe it is set up to only fly certain distance. I remember reading that in smart mode it will only fly out 300 feet. I don't fly in this mode at all. I have taught myself to fly in angle mode and am pretty good at navigating in thinking quick which way to turn in order to avoid a collision. I feel I've been able to master flight orientation pretty well when beyond a distance were you can't physically see front from rear.
I always have a fear of flying to far. I don't know how far is? I'm not sure in angle mode if there is a distance limit. Is it 400 feet? I think I can adjust it so it is longer then that or higher then 400 feet but maybe I will try that at some point. So I think my question is...
How far will you fly out before you know it's time to turn around. In other words, will you be flying and then all of a sudden loose your video like the same as you turned off a television. Going from a beautiful image to boom!!! Gone!. Or will the video gradually flicker and give you some type of warning that your close to the edge.?
And info in this regard would be appreciated along with recommendations for antenna options that would provide a better capability of extending video as well as distances.
I also believe it is good to stay in LOS with your typhoon but I do eventually want to be able to fly in recognizing first person view. Not to make a habit of this but to do it practicing so I can learn effective navigation skills. I realize this is a bundle of various questions so I appoligize for that.

 

[Ren57]

The Q500 comes with a factory firmware limit of 400ft in altitude. You can increase this in the GUI if you wish. But since in terms of the aviation law, 400ft should be the limit of how high you fly. This is because commercial manned aircraft will not fly below 500ft except when on the approach or take from an airport, so you always maintain a 100ft gap between the 2 and in theory should never fly into the path of a commercial manned aircraft. However, military aircraft can fly much lower as low as 100ft in some cases, so check that you're not flying in any military airspace before you fly!

As regards the distance you can fly out (don't know about anywhere else in the world) but here in the UK the legal limit is 500 metres (about 1500ft) and you should always have unaided line of sight with your drone.

As regards the video feed, it depends a lot on where you're flying. If you have objects around you (trees or buildings then you could lose the video feed sooner rather than later. If you're flying in a wide open area you'll keep your video feed much longer. I've seen YouTube video's of people flying their Q500's out as far as 3 miles and still getting a video signal. Obviously, it is illegal to fly so far out but that's what I've seen. At some point though you will lose your video signal, it will usually start breaking up and then disappear completely.

Can't answer your question about which antenna to use as I don't have that sort of information and I find the standard antenna that comes with the ST10+ to be more than adequate for what I want to use my Q500 for. However, I'm sure there are plenty of people on this forum that will be able to answer that question for you, or just simply type your question into Google......

Safe flying!

 

[Viking233]

I suppose an added question is... If flying and you are out to far and you
cannot see it visually but have an idea where it is and you instantly loose you video. At this point is the only option to switch to Return To Home?
Loosing video doesn't mean you lost GPS also. Is this correct?

 

[MirasQC]

How far to fly apart, so that the camera filming?

 

[Ren57]

No, losing the video signal will make no difference to the attitude of your drone. The GPS will still work just fine. But if you've flown out too far you will get 2 problems. First, if you've lost visual contact with your drone you may have a problem with orientation (you may not know which way it's pointing) at this point you will probably decide to look at your video screen on your ST10+ to see if you can get an idea of where your drone is at. If you still have a video signal there can be a problem with video lag if you're a long way out. So if you think that flying FPV is OK that can be a big problem as the video lag can be several seconds. The best thing to do, if you think you've flown out too far and are having trouble with orientation,is as you've already suggested, hit the home button and it should return to you.