Gotta say it was one hell of a weekend I had. I made a personal best in LR and did a 1.1km (2.2 total) and all that without a patch antenna. 

Hope you enjoy!

Cheers

Very nice, good job.

(23-Oct-2020, 01:45 AM)Droneranger Wrote: Very nice, good job.

Thank you man!

The problem was I ordered a new patch antenna on Friday and I thought ok it will arrive on Saturday because I ordered with Saturday delivery, and we went flying on Sunday. But there came up some kind of a problem in the postal office and they lost the package so it wasn't delivered on Saturday in the end but first on Monday.
Then after I saw what does my FPV buddy use for an Omni antenna I ordered also the same one for me. 

So this is it, a few photos from Sunday and the photos of the new antennas. Hopefully I will have far more range with them. 
Regarding the drone its a 5" with a 4S 1500mAh Graphene battery. Motors are T-Motor F40II 2600KV.
P.s. I was running the TBS Unify HV on 600mW with this antenna on the drone . And 100mW on the Crossfire Full TX module with an TBS Diamond antenna.

Very beautiful video and great place. Congrats

A newbie question: how do you determine beforehand the farthest you could fly without losing your precious gear?

(23-Oct-2020, 08:39 AM)rjalex Wrote: Very beautiful video and great place. Congrats

A newbie question: how do you determine beforehand the farthest you could fly without losing your precious gear?

Thank you! It really is peaceful and calming. It was cold though (about 6°C during the whole day) but it was totally worth it. 

Well I'm also just started with LR flights, usually up until now was trying with freestyle so I'm a newbie too.
Regarding the question I think I read somewhere that 100mW on Crossfire should be enough for up to 2km if the antenna placement is correct, plus I used a GPS module.
Was reading my RSSI (Link Quality from Crossfire) value during the whole flight and it stayed quite stable all the time on 99.
So I was really just limited with the video signal because I was using old omni antennas. The orange one is from Foxeer and is I think maybe even 3 years old.
Next step would be for me I think to enable GPS Rescue mode, but I think for that I will need to switch to a newer version of Betaflight, witch makes me a bit uncomfortable because of the filtering in the PID section. Now I run the old 3.5.5 and I like it how it works, the tune is nice (not perfect but doable) and its simple for me to set it up.
I guess its a try and error type of thing, but I guess the most important part is to have a GPS module because once I turned back to fly back to me from that second mountain peak it was very scary to see where should I return, so I just kept pointing with the small arrow on the OSD back to us and I made it. 
Plus its very good to have a spotter or two of them, one on the googles and one that is just listening where you are if you are close, and to help you with tips if anything goes wrong.

This weekend was even better!
It was a BLAST!

I went there 2 days (made 420km) and it was on the first day full of fog and clouds, but then on sunday it was epic! Sunny and bright! The only thing was when the sun went away it was very cold! 16h on feet in these 48 hours. Very very nice weekend, and also the best flight I have ever made! Hope you will enjoy! 



I also did a new record and its now 1,5km (almost a Mile) and I have seen I still have battery for maybe 1,8km. It was 900m high. This video I will leave for some next time.

Very very cool. Of course any wind you encounter up above could change your autonomy, right?
Looked for Hohmud, Switzerland on Google maps but could not find it. What area is this?

(27-Oct-2020, 08:01 PM)rjalex Wrote: Very very cool. Of course any wind you encounter up above could change your autonomy, right?
Looked for Hohmud, Switzerland on Google maps but could not find it. What area is this?

Oh I'm glad you liked it! 
Sorry for the typo, its not Hohmud, its Hohmad. My bad.
It is near the small place called Blumenstein.

Yep my favourite sort of videos especially when you get to the top and look over and just see snow covered mountains for ever

I just have to travel to that part of the world one day.

I am new at this game and a major computer geek so since starting have always gone the latest and greatest in firmware etc and I reckon you will like the latest 4.2.3 of Betaflight. You can always make a backup and roll back if you don't like it.

I am also very very new in the whole GPS thing and it seriously gives you complete confidence. I am having transmitter issues so failsafe now and again and GPS rescue has returned my quad twice. I love it and can't express how incredible the feeling is seeing my $800 quad which I have lost complete control over return home and land. It is awesome

Found it on maps. Il looks like a very wild area free of much human artifacts. Very nice!!!

Getz01
Welcome. I share your excitement of extending you personal goals. It is very exciting and nerve racking to try something new but also very satisfying once it is accomplished. You have visited/flown in a place most of us can only dream about but we are happy for you.

I would encourage you to get GPS rescue working (it has saved me the loss of a quad 4 different occasions :3 video loss and 1 failsafe). Me (and others on this forum) were/are hesitant to switch to Betaflight 4.x.x. I was very happy with BF 3.5.5 and I had Gps rescue working great. Over the past winter I decided to try BF 4.1 on a quad. I Went to Joshua Bardwells video and updated the RPM filters and I am happy to say that for me, BF 4.1 flies as well as 3.5.5.  

Have you ever considered INAV? You can program a 'mission' to fly to GPS location, altitude, and speed. Then also program it to fly back and softly land. It is worth looking into. One thing to mention, Inav is a little more difficult to get operational than BF but it is worth a try.   i recently built a quad on a 6" frame using INAV. During testing i have flown it a total distance 11.2 km in 12 minutes with enough battery to fly at least another 1.5-2 km.

I this winter I plan to upgrade one of my quads to BF 4.2

Happy Flying
Roger74

 

Just flying and sailing on the wind like the bird we can never be. Just excellent.

Thank you guys for the feedback. I'm very glad that you liked the last video.

@Roger - Thanks for the input, I have talked to my friend during the saturday and sunday flying sessions (we were both together for 16h in 48h so we had a ton of time to talk together about everything). He has also recommended the BF 4.2 Version just because I can't yet enable the GPS Rescue mode on 3.5.5. I mean I can enable it, but I can't handle a switch to it. The reason is I have only 8 AUX channels right? The first 4 as usual for quad movement, and then one for RSSI, one for buzzer, one for arming and the last one for flight mode (I still like to land my quad with LOS sometimes when its really muddy and wet on the ground on a soft dry blanket).
So that's the main reason that I think I would gain an AUX channel in newer BF because as my friend told me I don't need an AUX switch anymore for the RSSI to showup on the OSD.
Well that is cool really!
P.s. Now that I have seen Joshua's video about the RPM filtering I really want to jump right now straight into it. Gonna make a dump file and save all my settings and get right to setting up a newer version 4.2.X

Thanks once again all! Keep this thread in your eyes, I'm gonna make a new video during the week from the saturday session, that was all foggy and cloudy and looks also nice. 

New weekend, new spot (no video yet), but I wanted to tell you guys I took like 3 days to fully prepare and config my drone to BF 4.2.4 and I had the chance to fly it yesterday.
I had a beautiful time there, the place is amazing (even better than the one from last weekend). I made great footage, the only problem is - the video has small fine vibrations.
So I used the PIDs from the BF4.2.4. defaults, then I saw a few Joshua's videos about what is needed to tweak. Then I tweaked them, and also my friend gave me a few hints how and what not to forget. I have also took the tuning notes from BF 4.2. into mind and put in the settings in the CLI of the cinematic preset.
I used everything, and the quad flies great, but in the videos are these fine vibrations are really obvious. 
So RPM filtering, great and all, the stick feel is great, but my videos are now not so great. I can try to do some post-production settings and try to flush it out, but I think its not gonna be great in the end. I am thinking to revert back to 3.5.5 because I had the one great thing in it and that were the PIDs that worked. 
I can still try to work with the old BF with the "new" method of setting up modes so that I have one "free" AUX channel for the GPS rescue mode.
Also I thought to try and copy the GPS settings from the dump of BF4.2.4 into 3.5.5 with manually inputting all the lines and to see if the command lines come automatic and if it will work.
Basically yesterday I had great range and there was sun all day long and really the perfect conditions for flying (and filming), and for me the only thing why I did the change was setting up gps rescue on a switch. 

Hope you guys don't mind I talk about these things here as I know this is the video section, but in my opinion this should be said here while it is all "chitchat" about the same drone from the videos above.

And so I present you this weekends adventure!
Every weekend it gets only better.