Recommended AltaX Settings

The Alta X has many options and settings, the user should be familiar with the operation of the Alta X as per the Freefly documentation.

This page, along withMAVLink Telemetry details setting that can be useful for setting up the Alta X for tethered use, but it is not an exhaustive list.

RTL Altitude

When the AltaX goes into return to launch, it will climb to a specified RTL altitude.

It is critical that this altitude is lower than the safe flight height on the tether, and this should be checked before every flight.

Low Battery Failsafe

If the tether system shuts down in flight for any reason, the Alta X should be landed immediately, as the system cannot be restarted in flight, and the backup batteries have limited capacity.

This emergency landing can be performed manually by the pilot monitoring the system.

However, this can be configured to occur automatically, by using the low battery fail safe on the Alta X.

The Alta X default settings will not cause a low battery failsafe until the batteries are almost completely empty, this is reasonable for normal battery operation with large battery packs, but when we fly the tether system with small backup packs, the settings must be changed to execute the failsafe at a much higher voltage level.

The Low Battery Failsafe settings are adjusted in the safety page of Alta QGroundcontrol. We recommend for tethered operation:

  • Failsafe Action: Return Mode

  • Battery Warn Level: 50%

  • Battery Failsafe Level: 40%

  • Battery Emergency Level: 4%

When changing these settings, you will notice that these values are outside the normal ranges set by Alta QGroundcontrol, so you will need to bypass the limits to manually enter these values.

Take note of your previous settings so you can revert to them for non-tethered flight.

Geofence

Optionally, a geofence can be configured using Alta QGroundControl, to prevent the aircraft flying further from the takeoff location than is safe, or higher than the safe operating length of the tether.

The geofence is configured on the safety page of Alta QGroundcontrol. A typical geofence setting used for tethered operation directly above the takeoff location is:

  • Height: 60m (or higher, depending on the tether length)

  • Radius: 30m

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