techrtr

Made an interesting discovery about power lines this evening. Was flying around my neighborhood when I got pretty close to an overhead power line. Lost power and the DF came down hard on the road. The red light on the board was flashing intermittently and the green leds were also flashing. No throttle response at all. I shut the power off, turned it back on and re-armed and everything worked normally again. The only thing that I can think of is that the electrical field around the power line garbled the receiver and caused it to shut down completely. I've noticed a momentary hickup before when flying under a power line but never a complete shut down. Will be very careful in future about how close I get to powerlines.

Fesfly

I had a similar issue when I crossed over some power lines and started to bring the DF down (so the power lines were inbetween me and the DF) - it dropped like a rock - no damage, I just re-armed it and went again. Tested the theory a couple of times and each time I crossed over it seemed like I had no signal and the DF lost all power. Only one time did it freak out like when you arm it without turning the radio on.

Interesting, on the DFI site they have a video where the DF is flying less than a foot from some serious powerlines. They must not be energized.

techrtr

Yeah, I was wondering about how useful the DF would be for remote inspection of high tension towers or transmission towers etc. if they are that susceptible to glitching from electromagnetic radiation, microwaves etc.

Sky High

I have flown around, over and under power lines with no issues but did experience RF interference with the video signal. I have also flown within 200 yards of a cell tower without any issues but I don't like doing that if it can be avoided. I have seen other larger RC AP planes & helos fly within 20-30 ft of those types of towers with no issues either. [link=http://helifreak.com/viewtopic.php?t=25756&postdays=0&postorder=asc&&st art=0]Here[/link] is a thread with some of those types of images from close proximities. DFI said that the power lines in their demo were live at the time that was done.