I agree that would make sense or at least fly back at the highest height of the flight. All my mapping is done at 40 metres and it seems crazy when the drone shoots upto 80metres to return to change a battery. Also interesting that the return to home at the end of the mission is flow at 40 metres. Why is 40 metres fine for the final return to home but not for battery changes.

Once the aircraft gets a return to home signal, be it from the app, the remote or the battery saying it is out of power, the aircraft is no longer under waypoint flight control and is doing its return to home routine. This routine happens at a previously agreed upon height. 

For Terrain Aware flight, the return to home height gets set to be 40 meters higher than the highest terrain value that is experienced on the programmed path. This is a safety measure to make sure it will be able to clear anything (hopefully) in the immediate area since the RTH event can happen anywhere on the flight path. 

If you want the aircraft to stay whatever the fixed AGL of the terrain aware flight is you would need to do a much shorter flight that would allow for the whole flight to take place in one battery so that it remains under waypoint flight control. 

Basically, as long as there is battery and you don't hit RTH on the app or remote the aircraft will stay at the programmed flight height. If RTH is initiated we have to assume the worst case which is the highest terrain in the area is between the aircraft and the home point and that there is no RC signal to adjust the return to home height.  

Zane, I can see where you are coming from but for a 40 metre height flight you are doubling the height. Which seems overkill as I have just flown an entire flight at 40 metres less than the RTH height..

For a 100 metre flight you can't add 40 metres as it would exceed the 120 metre limit, so a bit inconsistent.

Most of my fields require 3 to 4 battery changes.

So it would be nice to be able to adjust this.

The DJI Go app already allows you to set the RTH height.

For my 4 battery changes I am wasting time and battery rising up to 80 metres, then having to land from 80 metres.

Thanks

Kim

The 40 meters is a universal number. If you think it is too much feel free to take over and fly home manually. This is a CYA measure. 

Zane,

Fair enough, just getting my point over.

Regards

Kim

There is always still the option to select "no" when asked whether you want to bump the RTH altitude to 40 m plus the highest terrain in the mission, right?

I'd suggest doing this if you are worried that your missions are being cut off too soon in order to give the drone time to climb to 40 m plus the highest terrain.

The other trick I've found is that you can always cancel the drone's climb after a low battery RTH is triggered by pulling down on the left joystick once. Then the drone will stop climbing and beeline back to the home point and land. I haven't seen this feature discussed, but it was been amazing for my use case (trying to preserve as much battery and usable near-solar-noon flight time as possible). I know this worked on Map Pilot 4.0.8, but I haven't been able to fly yet with newer versions to test it for those too.

"There is always still the option to select "no" when asked whether you want to bump the RTH altitude to 40 m plus the highest terrain in the mission, right?"

Correct.

"The other trick I've found is that you can always cancel the drone's climb after a low battery RTH is triggered by pulling down on the left joystick once. Then the drone will stop climbing and beeline back to the home point and land. I haven't seen this feature discussed, but it was been amazing for my use case (trying to preserve as much battery and usable near-solar-noon flight time as possible). I know this worked on Map Pilot 4.0.8, but I haven't been able to fly yet with newer versions to test it for those too."

Interesting. We weren't aware of this. This doesn't have anything to do with Map Pilot as it is something that is controlled by the aircraft firmware. We have to account for the cases where someone flies up and over a hill, loses RC, and the system has to rely on the set RTH height where this workaround wouldn't work but in cases where you have a good connection this sounds like a good way to do it.

Hi, even if you answer No the RTH is still being bumped up by the 40 metres to 80 metres in my case. Not really sure the point of having this question? I use DJI Go 4 to reset to 40 metres most days but it just gets bumped up again. Last week I had a low battery RTH triggered and it did not set the return point, which meant the next flight returning to the return point before that, and flying a large section of the field again. So I am reticent to take over the Drone for manual flight. 

It's a great feature-- I'm glad it happens to work that way even if you all didn't program it! It works regardless of whether you've selected "yes" or "no" when asked whether RTH height should be bumped up to 40 m plus the highest terrain.

Just to expand a bit on the benefit I've experienced for illustrative purposes:

Let's say the flight is at 120 m with my RTH height also set at 120 m, and I have selected "no" when asked whether I want to return at 40 m plus the highest elevation in the mission. If a low battery RTH is triggered when the drone is 90 m downslope (so only 30 m above the take off point) but I have a clear visual of the path the drone will take to return home at 30 m AGL with nothing in the way, then I'll cancel the climb. Without cancelling the climb, the drone would have to ascend 90 m to reach the 120 m RTH height. At the max climbing speed of 3 m/s, that would take 30 seconds to ascend, then 40 seconds to descend from 120 m. By cancelling the climb, the drone will take 0 seconds to ascend and 10 seconds to descend (from 30 m). A whole minute saved! Note you can also throttle up on the return to home to move faster than the default speed without the RTH course being adjusted.

To Kim Gouldstone: sorry to hear about the RTH height still being adjusted to 80 m. I haven't experienced this.

For the return point not being properly dropped, remember you can always triple tap on the beginning of any segment to force the drone to start there, rather than re-fly from the previous return point.

No triple tap. The Manual Restart Point feature requires one tap on a corner waypoint while the blue verification line is showing. 

https://support.dronesmadeeasy.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005940746-Manual-Restarting-Point

We will look at why it is being touched if you answer 'No'. The return to home height should still get set to the highest height it encountered on the terrain. 

For example: If you take off and fly up a slope and the aircraft goes up to 57 meters above the take off location, the RTH height will be set to 57, not 97. It will not go down to 40 meters because it would then be likely to hit something.