Minimum Controller Charge for 25 Minute Flight?

[DrDyno]

Hi All,

I wound up with a Mavic Pro Combo by virtue of the fact that I happened to walk into my LHS a half hour after UPS made an unexpected delivery. He had three Mavics on the counter and I grabbed the only Combo. Prior to that I spent most of my flight time with a Blade 350 QX3.

I'm an X Vietnam Helicopter Pilot (UH1's) and thought quads would be a breeze... Not! Even FPV is unlike actually being up in the air.

Anyway... one thing I don't like about the Mavic Controller is that it requires a battery charge (which I often forget to check). So, I'm wondering... from your experience, what's the minimum charge the controller needs to guarantee a full battery's worth of flight time (say, 25 minutes)?

Many thanks in advance of your insights!

 

[JGhost]

Honestly, mine cost me too much to even consider a 25 minute flight without a full charge.

 

[Pedro]

30% - 35% should be safe enough.. Obviously you'll be keeping an eye on the amount of charge left as you're flying anyway so you could always bring her back sooner of you start running out.

 

[armoredsaint]

i'm more concerned about how fast my iPhone 6 plus drains.

 

[GlenT]

Hey there DrDyno, welcome.
Personally I don't let my controller go below 50%
I went out for a flight yesterday and checked the controller battery, it was 65%. So I gave it a quick top up to 95% even though I was planning on only flying for about 15 mins.
My reasoning is that the controller will be able to transmit at full power and achieve maximum signal strength when the battery is at a higher capacity.
Plus given the opportunity, I'd much rather take the time to leave the house knowing I'm not going to have to worry about that half way through a flight. Same goes with the iPad mini I use as a monitor, I always have that fairly well topped up. Not below 50%.
You'll get a good 5 batteries worth of flight time from a fully charged controller if you were keen to let it drop down low enough.
But to answer your question, probably 25-30%, but I wouldn't be keen, you never know what could eventuate.

 

[rnewman34]

good to know info as far as minimum guideline, but I bought the DJI car charger, and carry an additional 12k MAh charger, which is smaller then my iPhone just to make sure.. gotta have redundancy for everything with this hobby. You can also get the power bank adapter from DJI which allows you to use one of your Mavic batteries to charge the controller. I've also seen a video of a guy that velcro'd a slim charging device to the back of his iPad and ran USB to his RC charge port, which could also be used to charge is iPad as well. Lots of ways to handle this.

 

[Dadcat]

Honestly, mine cost me too much to even consider a 25 minute flight without a full charge.

That may be a bit conservative.

The one time I ran 3 batteries back to back - to 30% on the Mavic each time - my controller was only down to 67%. My iPad Mini 2 was down to about 70%. Those flights were about 18-20 minutes each so I would adjust the 25 minute estimate for that.

I'm comfortable starting a flight with around 50% charge on the controller. What would be the point of extra batteries if you have to charge the controller after every flight?

 

[DrDyno]

Thanks for your collective insights. My question came not so much from flight preparation as from getting all set up in the field and then realizing I forgot to check and/or charge the controller. Thinking about it, the experience of having posted this question and having learned from your answers, I'll probably be less forgetful concerning the controller's state of charge.

Many thanks!