What happens when signal is lost?

[stepupmk]

I am curious about what would happen if you were to fly the drone so far that it loses signal with the station. Will it start coming back to where it came from until it regains connection or?

 

[Russell Smith]

I am curious about what would happen if you were to fly the drone so far that it loses signal with the station. Will it start coming back to where it came from until it regains connection or?

the same as if you flipped your control switch to the home position.

 

[DoomMeister]

the same as if you flipped your control switch to the home position.

To add to this it depends on what your RTL setting is also. The H Plus/H520/H520e/H3 all have a choice for RTL to be the Takeoff location or the position of the ST16S/E when RTL is activated.

 

[Steve Carr]

You should be aware of how the Return to Home (RTH) functions.
Anytime the aircraft looses control signal, it will pause in flight, then increase altitude to the preset RTH altitude that you set on the controller. The aircraft then rotates to face the home coordinates, raise the landing gear and flies back toward the home point.
This is IMPORTANT: If it regains signal from the controller, it will stop and hover until you provide input on the sticks. If you don't have video signal you may not realize it has gone into hover. If you do nothing it will hover until the battery gets low and then it will auto-land right where it is.
The best practice would be to always select Home Mode in this situation and wait until you have visual contact. Then switch to Angle mode and land manually.

I have seen many reasons for the aircraft to loose signal.
1. A sudden strong RF signal which interferes with the 2.4 GHz control signal.
2. Flying behind a large structure or trees.
3. Sudden change in weather such as fog, snow or rain which blocks the RF signal.
4. Flying too far away at a low altitude.
5. Running the battery too low on the controller.

You must anticipate conditions which might trigger RTH. I saw a pilot fly low under tall trees that were a great distance away. He wanted a "Forest shot". He was watching the camera view. When the aircraft got too far into the tree cover it lost control signal, then executed an RTH which sent it straight up into the tall upper limbs of a tree. Nearly destroyed the drone and camera.
Another guy flew behind a 200' tall building but he had the RTH set at 100'. You can guess what happened.

 

[stonr_dronr]

I just had that happen today with three different drones yesterday. Mavic mini, yuneec h520 and h920 all within 1/4 to 1/2 mile away. I hadn't set the rth/rtl which ever one, altitude on any of them. 3 in a row. They all made it home. That would have been $4000.00 gone if they didn't make it back. Thank someone for rtl it works.

 

[WTFDproject]

I just had that happen today with three different drones yesterday. Mavic mini, yuneec h520 and h920 all within 1/4 to 1/2 mile away. I hadn't set the rth/rtl which ever one, altitude on any of them. 3 in a row. They all made it home. That would have been $4000.00 gone if they didn't make it back. Thank someone for rtl it works.

Don't know about the Mavic mini. And other folks have had better distance with Yuneec products. My experience (lots of trees here) says 1/4 to 1/2 mile would be beyond range. The video is a decent gauge. If the video starts freezing and/or dropping out, you are nearing the end of control range for that environment.