I agree and also not what I expected. There was plenty of light on the horizon, but it was actually just about as dark as the Mavic camera portrays it. I thought the Mavic did well in low light considering. I did remove all ND filters so as to give as much light into the camera as possible.
There was a lot of planning on this. I've been thinking about where I was going to go and what kind of shots I wanted now for months. But, you are still correct, being lucky and leaving some of the shots to that luck is part of photography, at least it has been that way for me for a while now. The crowd was awesome to work with. We did have about 10 people that got way too close to the runway while the other R/C pilots were flying. The local club president asked me to ask them to move to a safer spot. Everyone was very cooperative. We enjoyed them being there, and they enjoyed watching the planes in the Pre and Post eclipse flying show! It couldn't have been more fun.