I got a little brave yesterday, and thought I'd share my story.
My family and I took a hike to the bottom of a waterfall. Of course I carried my Karma kit so I could film the trek with the grip, and also took the drone "just in case". When we reached the bottom, I thought it would make a fantastic shot with the drone slowly rising up towards the top.
I powered up, but the most I could get was 20% GPS signal, even after a few minutes. This wasn't a total surprise - we had cliffs on two sides and dense canopy over everything else. I looked at my wife and said "I'm not sure I'll have any control over this; I've never flown without GPS", to which she nervously replied "your call".
Challenge accepted.
Karma asked me to verify that I understood the risks of flying without GPS by touching the screen, after which it took off fairly cleanly. It didn't take long for the drifting to start, and I was quite nervous at first, but I eventually got the hang of it. You have to constantly adjust the position of the drone or else it slowly drifts off into the trees/rocks/water, but otherwise it worked as well as I'd hoped in that situation. I decided to catch the drone rather than land it on the first attempt, and asked my wife to catch it on the second. No problem.
In the end, I'm not sure it was worth it - the footage is a little jittery owing to my constant adjustment of the drone's position to stop it from meeting an unfortunate end. There's a few seconds in there of "professional" grade smooth footage (if I may be so bold as to use that label), but the rest of it was pretty amateurish.
Anyway, in summary, the bird responds as you'd expect without GPS if you're brave and ensure it stays close so you can keep it well under control.
My family and I took a hike to the bottom of a waterfall. Of course I carried my Karma kit so I could film the trek with the grip, and also took the drone "just in case". When we reached the bottom, I thought it would make a fantastic shot with the drone slowly rising up towards the top.
I powered up, but the most I could get was 20% GPS signal, even after a few minutes. This wasn't a total surprise - we had cliffs on two sides and dense canopy over everything else. I looked at my wife and said "I'm not sure I'll have any control over this; I've never flown without GPS", to which she nervously replied "your call".
Challenge accepted.
Karma asked me to verify that I understood the risks of flying without GPS by touching the screen, after which it took off fairly cleanly. It didn't take long for the drifting to start, and I was quite nervous at first, but I eventually got the hang of it. You have to constantly adjust the position of the drone or else it slowly drifts off into the trees/rocks/water, but otherwise it worked as well as I'd hoped in that situation. I decided to catch the drone rather than land it on the first attempt, and asked my wife to catch it on the second. No problem.
In the end, I'm not sure it was worth it - the footage is a little jittery owing to my constant adjustment of the drone's position to stop it from meeting an unfortunate end. There's a few seconds in there of "professional" grade smooth footage (if I may be so bold as to use that label), but the rest of it was pretty amateurish.
Anyway, in summary, the bird responds as you'd expect without GPS if you're brave and ensure it stays close so you can keep it well under control.