Part 107 UAS pilot reported briefly flying above their LAANC authorized altitude.
Synopsis
Part 107 UAS pilot reported briefly flying above their LAANC authorized altitude.
Narrative
I was the Remote Pilot in Command for this flight. I was flying roughly 4.4 miles north of South Bend International airport. I was conducting a map plan flight in Drone Deploy (version mobile 5.31.0) to collect boundary information for our contractor. The flight was conducted with a Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. The flight was conducted in Class C airspace; but I had submitted a LAANC request that satisfied the FAA requirements. My flight was mostly done; and I was waiting for the battery to hit a low enough point to trigger the Return to Home and end the flight as I had previously captured the area I was flying and wanted more overlapping pictures. I had planned to assume manual control using the Drone Deploy manual flight trigger within the app. I heard the Return to Home beep activate-indicating the drone was beginning its ascent to return to home altitude-350 feet is what we had set it to previously and I did not change it. I did not recognize that Drone Deploy's manual takeover does not overwrite the Return to Home flight and noticed quickly that the UAV was ascending past my LAANC max altitude. After a couple of seconds of figuring out a plan I remembered to turn the controller to Sport mode; which instantly stopped the Return to Home flight and the UAV-which had climbed to approximately 334 feet Above Ground Level according to the flight log. Once manual control was initiated; I dropped the UAV to below 200 feet and took it home and landed it. Had I not decided to wait for Return to Home to trigger or had changed the Return to Home altitude; I could have avoided this situation. In the future; when myself or other pilots I interact with conduct a LAANC based flight we will change the Return to Home altitude to slightly below the max altitude allowed in our LAANC request.
NASA callback
The reporter had no additional information to share.
Source: NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (public domain). Reports are voluntary submissions and are not verified by NASA.