Turbulence Indicator?

[ChuckD]

This is really a suggestion for Yuneec, but it's always good to throw this stuff out in a public forum for comments. I'd like to get a warning on my ST10 (or other controller) if the Q500 is struggling to maintain position, due to excessive wind conditions.

Recently we had a windy day here, and at the end of the day it 'seemed' to calm down, so I went out for a flight. Near the ground everything was fine, but once I got about 300 feet in the air, all **** broke loose. Also given the fact that I bumped myself into Turtle mode, I couldn't even manually fly back to home; the bird just slowly kept drifting away. Watching the video later, it was unable to stabilize itself when pointed into the wind (constantly kept overcorrecting left and right).

It would have been great if the controller warned me about this condition ahead of time. Had I not flipped the RTH switch (resulting in the bird taking a more aggressive approach home), I would have never made it back due to the Turtle setting (still new to this).

Wind speed does increase as you gain altitude, but I'm not sure how bad the difference can be. It seemed about 8 Mph on the ground, but I'd estimate it was easily 20+ at 300 feet or so. Of course I have no way of knowing that for sure, but it's just a guess.

Thoughts? Good/bad idea?

 

[NRRTRAINS]

hi
a very good idea but try to remember we are flying $1500 quads , to have that much technology would cost big bucks , before that maybe a radar type of sensing device would nice , to go around obstacles like when in RTH mode . the radar sensing device would cost just as much .
fly safe

 

[ChuckD]

Seems like the quad would know that it was working hard to stay level, so I'd think they could implement this without any extra hardware at all. It would be nice to know things were getting rough before I wind up in a full blown fly-away.

 

[LuvMyTJ]

You could try using UAV Weather Forecast or something similar. You can input the altitude you want for wind. It may not be perfect but it helps.
Isn't there a horizon indicator like the ST24? DJI also includes a horizon gauge which lets you see the angle the quad is at so you can tell how much resistance there is.

 

[ChuckD]

I do use that program, but you're right, it's just an estimate of conditions at different altitudes using the wind profile power law. It's a good guess, but I would have sworn that I had started in almost no wind. Perhaps carrying a pocket wind meter might be smart.

It's interesting that right now, the local wind speed is 14Mph, and the UAV Forecast program says it's 27 at 400 feet. Anybody in non-US countries that can go higher than 400 feet would see 34Mph at 1000 feet. Seems like a guaranteed flyaway if we tried that altitude or higher, especially if you bumped your controller into turtle mode.

 

[NRRTRAINS]

thank you for that program . great