2 Questions about flying a few feet above a lake

[swb_mct]

1. The only open areas in my world are lakes. Its fun doing large scale figure 8's in sport mode but the Mavic seems to be a perpetual decent in sport mode. If I try this starting 30 feet at 40mph I always chicken out because it seems to be headed for the ice.. The Altitude reading on my display does not reflect this descent but it is happening . . its not an illusion caused by distance perspective.

Will a Mavic just fly into the ground in sport mode or does it flatten out at some point before it crashes. I don't want to answer this with an experiment . . . the ice surface is rough cruddy mess and its too weak to walk on in late April.

2. In normal mode, will a Mavic do something bad if you fly it a 4 feet, 3 feet, 2 feet above a perfectly flat terrain. Like will it going into and automated landing descent, or automated abort (like it does if you forget to take an opaque gimbal cover off ?

Sometimes questions like this are answered with comments like . . your too stupid to talk to. That may be true, but if you know the answers I would be grateful.

 

[msinger]

Flying a few feet above the ground in a slow, controlled manner is usually a pretty safe thing to do if you can clearly see the Mavic with your eyes. I wouldn't recommend flying quickly (especially in sport mode) and/or outside of VLOS since the Mavic sometimes descends a bit when flying low to the ground and it might be hard to quickly make the necessary adjustments in order to prevent a crash.

 

[swb_mct]

since the Mavic sometimes descends a bit when flying low to the ground and it might be hard to quickly make the necessary adjustments in order to prevent a crash.

To "fine tune" your answer .. is there something specific in the system logic or sensors that predictably causes the Mavic to descend a bit when flying close to the ground, or are saying the normal flat flight path has enough random deviation from "flat" that its necessary to keep significant clearance from perfectly flat ground like a frozen lake.

 

[msinger]

is there something specific in the system logic or sensors that predictably causes the Mavic to descend a bit when flying close to the ground

I'm not sure what causes it to happen. In all cases I've reviewed, the aircraft pitch and/or roll changed during those times of automatic descent. So, I'm thinking you could prevent that from occurring if you somehow manage to figure out how to fly at a steady pitch and roll for the entire section of the flight where the aircraft is close to the ground.

 

[neggy]

reflective surfaces and the Mavic sensors do not play well, especially water.

For some reason they want to go into submarine mode when close to water

 

[msinger]

Turning off the bottom sensors will prevent such issues from occurring.

 

[Huge Bama Fan]

I have flew just a couple of feet above the water when over the river from time to time but it slow and I'm close.

 

[macoman]

Five feet above water is pretty safe even in sport mode in a clear weather with very low wind.

 

[swb_mct]

Thanks for all of your replies

 

[CamoGreg]

I did a lot of flights just over water !

Check this out !