wind and the Mavic Mini an unexpected outcome

[darren6270]

I bought a Mavic Pro when they first came out. Absolutely loved it. On my last flight in July 2018 I took off from a sea wall and the Mavic spun (due to the metal supports in the concrete wall apparently) and crashed into the wall. I put it back in the cupboard until last Wednesday when a friend of mine called and asked if I could help him with a little favour and fly my drone to get an overhead view of a job he was looking at.

I got it back out, charged the batteries (all good), turned on the drone and after booting up received an error message warning me about a load on my gimbal. Looking online it was a part replacement and nothing could be done within a few days (have subsequently decided to sell for spares / parts). I decided to buy the Mavic Mini, it was a toss up between that and the Spark but the flight time tipped it for me towards the mini.

I picked one up from a store and after the shock of seeing it in the flesh of just how small and light it is got down to reading the manual, looking at reviews, YouTube, forum posts re issues etc, charging batteries etc.

Saturday morning came and time for its maiden flight, weather was ok, winds were about 10mph with gusts up to 15mph, just inside the recommended limits.
The mini performed admiralty, took it out about 400m, and highest about 60m. Received a couple of high wind warnings, and the odd flash of lost connection but apart from that I was really surprised how capable it was. The footage was good, nice and steady, no miss behaving and none of the apparent issues some others appear to be having. Three good flights and i'm happy.

I think it is all down to expectations. This mini can probably do 75% of what I used my Mavic for, I was never in to distance or height tests, never really needed the obstacle avoidance as I never flew too close to anything, so for me, it's pretty good, but I know what it can't do, and I wouldn't attempt to push it. I think a lot of the issues come from people who buy this and think they have a full blown Mavic, (or even an Inspire) and just go bonkers.
This drone is 100% perfect for the selfie generation, fly low, fly close, half decent picture quality and that's about it.

The problem is now I enjoyed it so much i'm now looking at the Mavic 2's !!!

 

[Glambert7777]

Hello guys, I see your comments about the motor noise when hovering in place in winds. You have to understand that for this little thing, it is much more difficult to stay in place, rocksteady than to fly along or against the wind. Stay in place requires constant adaptation of the throttle while even flying against the wind may require full throttle but this is basically what I do most of the time while in sport mode. Whether with spark or mini, I have flown in winds and as long as you don’t try to hover in place, I found it handle it very well:

Spark filming sailboat:

Mini in La Jolla beach: