I'm pondering calling CS this weekend. Went out for a fly Tonite after work, seeing how the temp was in the 60's. Flew the newest one of my orange birds, seeing how it hasn't been getting much love lately. Put it thru all the paces, just to make sure everything was ok. Well.... almost ended up having to change my shorts. I had brought it in kind of close...maybe 100 yards. The wind is at my back, and the bird is in front of me. She's sitting maybe 30 yards from a tree line, behind her, with the wind in her face. I hit RTH, part of the workout / check-up I'm doing. She sits there, after climbing to 400 feet... figure it's normal, getting her bearings, you know the routine. Well.... next thing you know, she takes off at a diagonal, like in a dead stick in ATTI mode, in probably 30-35 mph winds, up at that height. Still in GPS mode, but not responding to the sticks. Now past the tree line, out of sight. It's now dark out, can't see diddly on the camera view.... And my map is locked. CRAP! I'm madly scrolling, trying to catch up with it. Finally, I do. I cross my fingers, and put it into ATTI mode. Trying to spin it towards me with panicked stick fingers, keep over doing it..... it's at 20% battery, and a half mile away, and needing to fight the wind to get back. OK.....RELAX.... OR YOU'RE GONNA BLOW THIS...I keep telling myself. Finally, I'm making headway, in the right direction. Dropping the altitude as I go, trying to get under the winds... and here comes some bozo in a small airplane about 300 ft AGL. Check my altitude, less than 200...ok.... not worrying about him. I hear her.... Alright, got eyes on her....blinking red lights, no less.....got her back down right at 15% battery. Sure glad I had it set for minimum 10% critical landing! All's well, that ends well. At least I wasn't trudging thru the woods, looking for her with Google maps, like I was last Thursday with another small, cheap, GPS quad I have, that just died in the air. Maybe I won't fly for awhile. This many oopsies in less than a week is more than I care to handle. But, wondering if they could review the flight log, and give me an idea of what happened. Maybe it needs work. I just don't want a firmware update, unless they do it, and make sure all is good. And promise to set it back to original, if it doesn't. Anyway... the moral to the story is....know how to fly your bird without gps...or one day, you'll wish you did. Glad I learned on a fully manual quadcopter, or I might be out a bird right now.
