DJI Wookong M Hexacopter Landing on Ice with Return Home and Auto-land

I had a nice little flight around Homestead Park in York yesterday with my DJI Wookong M driven Hexacopter.

As usual it flew very well, extremely impressive at various altitudes.

I did some nice flying between and close to some trees, and hovered very low over a frozen fish pond.

My acolytle, Kevin (filming), dared me to land on the ice. I wasn't going to take him up on it at first, but in the end I went and did it anyway. I did not have the nerve to let the motors stop though, just in case.

DJI Wookong M Return to Home and Auto Landing Failsafe

One of the selling points of the DJI Wookong M flight controller is its GPS assisted failsafe return to home and auto-land when it loses the signal from your radio. The idea is if you fly too far away or your radio somehowe malfunctions and the signal is lost between your radio control and the hexacopter (or whatever) the 'failsafe' kicks in and brings her home and safely lands at the spot where you first switch on your machine. It works by logging the GPS coordinates when you first connect the flight battery as the start point, then heads back to that spot when the signal is lost.

There are numerous example videos of people demonstrating/showing off how cool this feature is. The only problem is, to simulate signal loss you have to switch off your radio, which is a very unnatural thing to do for an RC Pilot -  a bit like throwing the steering wheel out of the window on your car and trusting a computer to drive you home.

After flying with the Wookong for a few months, I decided today was the day to test this function - it's scary, but after all you do need to know it works, it's half the reason you spent over 800 quid on the thing in the first place.

I minimized the worry factor by starting up at one side of the field then flying to the other side and hovering nice and low before I switched off the transmitter. Anyway, as you can see near the end of the video, it works perfectly - waits a few seconds to ensure signal is definitely lost, shoots up to 15 metres alititude to avoid obstacles, then flies quickly back to the start point and gently lands after pausing above the start point for a short time.

In the words of Kevin, "It lands better than you do...".