Way to control where UAV goes for battery change

Thanks for the quick reply.

Good tips. I think the easiest route will be to make the home point somewhere down near the longer legs so that the battery change will occur in an area where it is easier to keep an eye on the craft. After takeoff, will have to head up the hill to keep an eye on the initial section, but once I have eyes on, it will be downhill walking from then on. 

I'll avoid the linear option as the aircraft would be out of sight quite a bit of the time unless I made multiple trips up and down the road. Between the elevation change, vegetation and turn of the road, maintaining visual contact, from a single location, with the aircraft will be difficult.

Am I correct in understanding that hitting the RTH button will record the current position, AND initiate a return to home of the aircraft, and after landing the craft will fly back to the "abandonment point". Assume this is similar to when the craft "returns to home" for battery replacement and then resumes flight at the point it was at prior to returning to home point. 

Again, Thanks

Dave

You could also use the Movable Home Point feature which will track the iOS device's location so when you hit RTH it will come back to the last updated home point. 

https://support.dronesmadeeasy.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005925743-Movable-Home-Point

Zane,

Does the moveable home point work with the automated return to home feature when battery voltage gets low?

My only experience with multiple battery flights has been with the craft returning to the original home point for battery exchange and then, following re-uploading of flight plan, craft returning to point where first part of the mission ended, and continuing on from there. 

Dave

Yep. It won't help the take off elevation issue though.

thanks

Dave

Zane,

Seems like taking off near the start of the mission, following the aircraft down the road as the mission progresses and with the moveable home point feature on, I should be in about the position shown on the screen shot when battery needs to be changed. 

With terrain awareness on, it does not appear that the new lower home point will be an issue for the second half of the flight, the longer legs. It does not seem that even returning to the higher elevation area at the start of the flight would be an issue as the Terrain Awareness, recognizes the increasing elevation and matches the aircraft AGL flight level to be consistent with the rising landscape. 

Realize that without Terrain Awareness on the aircraft would climb to 60 meters above the take off ground surface elevation (60 meters AGL) which would allow it to clear the high terrain on the west end of the mission, but being only a little over 20 meters AGL.

Am I reading the mission map and profile correctly?

Thanks,

Dave

The only reason having the same elevation take off point matters is if you will be using that location to correct the image's GPS based altitude reading to use the barometric numbers via a Ground Reference image (with Maps Made Easy processing).

Zane,

Thanks, great info.

Differing take off elevations are not an issue for me as I put out and survey GCPs prior to flights, then process data in-house with GCP X,Y,Z data to build accurate model. 

Looking closely at the profile, wondering what the light "orangeish" line is. See screen shot. It appears to be approx 60 meters above the Takeoff Level line which is the flight altitude set for this mission.

Thanks for all your answers.

Dave

That is the touch point line. If you click on the plot it will show you that elevation all the way across. 

Got it, did not realize it was interactive.

Cheers,

Dave