What Happens When Drone Goes Out of Range

When you have just purchased your first drone, you may want to fly it, have some fun flying your drone, explore, and see what kind of pictures and videos you can get. Not only that, but you also want to see how far you can fly your drone and if it has enough power for it to return to you. Drones limit how far they can go to a range or how far the signal can fly from the controller to the drone. But if you take your drone a bit too far, and you might accidentally have flown out of range, what to do? Here is our guide to what happens if a drone goes out of range. We will cover all of these possible situations in detail in this article. We also listed some of the drones with the most extended flight range in this article’s end.

What Happens When a Drone Goes Out of Its Range?

If most hobby drones go out of range, such as the DJI series, the video transmission cuts off, making the video in your feed blank. The drone is designed to automatically return home (RTH) to the position you launched it. Once the drone goes back into range, video transmission will return, and you’ll be able to cancel the RTH and resume control.

Nowadays, most drones have a memory with GPS, which means that it records the position as its home when the drone takes off. So, it will return to the place or close to the location from where it took off in the first place.

When the drone flies and gets outside the controller’s wi-fi zone, the pilot will receive an alert on their remote, smartphone, or tablet. At the same time, the drone will attempt to get back to its place. The drone does this by tracing its flight path until it regains the lost signal.

Many drones have the feature “Return To Home” (RTH). The drone pilot can activate this feature from the controller. Thus, it will return to where it took off from using its memory. When the signal is lost or the battery power is getting down too low, and there is not enough time or power to return to you, your drone can be lost somewhere. You must know the approximate location from GPS or video feed so that you can retrieve your drone without any loss.

What If I am in the “SPORT” Mode?

The previous “RTH” method works only in the “Standard mode” while flying your drone. But if you are flying your drone in the “Sport mode,” you are in manual control. However, the controller will still send a message that the drone is out of range.

Most of the latest drones aren’t going to drop dead out of the sky. When something goes wrong, or you lose the signal, the drone will land wherever it happens to be. Just fly safely, especially when you are flying in “sports” mode. Check your drone has these extra safety features, so it doesn’t crash or fly away to be lost forever!

What If You Lose the Remote Signal for Your Drone?

You should be aware that your remote can lose the signal from the drone. When this happens, the RTH feature will not be automatic. If there is a connection problem, you can switch to RTH to be on the safe side. At least it helps in the case with the DJI Phantom 3 drones.

If you are under the RTH altitude, the drone will rise to the height. If it is higher than the altitude, it will remain at the height it was. It will return from where it took off from (RTH). However, you can then take control of the Phantom 3 if you are within the range.

Some Long Distance Range Drones

If you don’t want your drone to go out of range, the best option is to buy a drone with a broader scope so you don’t lose signal quickly. Here we have listed the best consumer drones with long ranges so you can fly further!

Few Tips For Drone Owners

Before flying a drone, you must know the causes of a drone flying out of range. It would be best to know what happens when a drone gets out of range and what you should do to prevent this.

When your drone goes out of range, the possibilities will either crash or collide with something. Here are some tips to follow to prevent your drone from getting out of range:

• Test your drone, check the flying performance in a safe place.
• Fly and tour your drone to practice a complete rotation.
• Fly your drone in different angles, lift to your right and left, then do forward and backward motions. Be comfortable in controlling the controller.
• Fly your drone in circular motions. Do it from different heights.

These tips will help you to practice the controlling system of your drone to prevent unwanted fly-aways. Also, you may read our how to find lost drone tips.

Conclusion

Since buying a drone is an expensive investment, you must know how to prevent your drones’ undesirable problems. Such cases are inevitable, but it will not be hard for you to troubleshoot your device when you know where the problem lies. As long as you can see and control your drone, keep your drone in good condition. There are different kinds of drones, and they all have different types of ranges for the distances they can fly. If you keep your drone in its safe range and within eyesight, it should be safe to fly your drone. We hope our article helps you to understand better what happens if a drone goes out of range.

Featured Image by Pixabay