A tough flight in a storm

[master magoo]

Excellent video and narration with happy ending...

 

[BadRad]

Well documented Mikko -- kiitos.

 

[cderoche]

I was astonished at the durability of Mavic Pro. Yes, I know I was lucky.

No harm was created to people or animal kingdom during this flight. I'm glad about that. But I'm ashamed of my inability to take the copter safely down in time. My only reason to publish this is to warn others that hard winds often begin well before the rainstorm.

Safe flying, friends!

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Geez!
I'm shocked it didn't crash! Its a solid bird!

 

[AirBean]

I'm at a lost for words. thanks for sharing. Glad it came back home

 

[ergoadams]

I would love to see the specs on the storm, wind speed, gusts etc. any chance of posting that?

 

[roadkilt]

Great vid. Last time I flew in very light rain the obstacle avoidance lenses got wet and it kept stopping and wouldn't fly back saying obstacle in the way! I tried flying backwards and still no luck. Eventually I figured it out and shut off obstacle avoidance and got it back home. Yikes...message..stay dry!

 

[ChipFrazier]

I was astonished at the durability of Mavic Pro. Yes, I know I was lucky.

No harm was created to people or animal kingdom during this flight. I'm glad about that. But I'm ashamed of my inability to take the copter safely down in time. My only reason to publish this is to warn others that hard winds often begin well before the rainstorm.

Safe flying, friends!

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[ChipFrazier]

I was astonished at the durability of Mavic Pro. Yes, I know I was lucky.

No harm was created to people or animal kingdom during this flight. I'm glad about that. But I'm ashamed of my inability to take the copter safely down in time. My only reason to publish this is to warn others that hard winds often begin well before the rainstorm.

Safe flying, friends!

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Thank you for posting. I don't intend to fly in a storm, but your video was interesting! Glad you got your MP Back, but sorry you lost the battery. Wrap your MP in plastic next time. LOL

 

[Dennischiayc]

I was astonished at the durability of Mavic Pro. Yes, I know I was lucky.

No harm was created to people or animal kingdom during this flight. I'm glad about that. But I'm ashamed of my inability to take the copter safely down in time. My only reason to publish this is to warn others that hard winds often begin well before the rainstorm.

Safe flying, friends!

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I know its a scary experience. Last week I flew Mavic over a suburb in Perth, Western Australia, with winds of about 30kmh or possibly more .It wasn't raining but temperature was about 17 degrees Celsius. I took Mavic up to 300 - 320 ft. I struggled to bring it back home as it continued drifting away from my location. I later checked the local meteorological website and it showed wind of 65 - 70 kmh per our at 3,000 feet. After fruitless tries to bring it home, I first brought Mavic down to about 50 - 60 feet and press the the RTH button. It returned safely to home point. I took off with a fully charged battery and had only 4% left on return.

I was using a relatively new battery at 100% charge and noticed that in colder temperature the battery only lasted 17 minutes. My flight time was 13 minutes!

 

[hianhwee]

The early first few seconds footage was awesome.

Great to know that the copter came back safe. Happy for you.

Thanks for the informative reporting.

 

[liquidguru]

Amazing and amazing footage of the howling storm below. Incredible that it made it through all that.

 

[m0j0]

Wow

 

[Luckyroo]

thanks to share good info

 

[votography]

WOW! WOW! Great video. So glad you got the Mavic back!

 

[Lsv]

I was astonished at the durability of Mavic Pro. Yes, I know I was lucky.

No harm was created to people or animal kingdom during this flight. I'm glad about that. But I'm ashamed of my inability to take the copter safely down in time. My only reason to publish this is to warn others that hard winds often begin well before the rainstorm.

Safe flying, friends!

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Mikko!! You were really lucky on this flight! Courageous, but careless too! I´m very surprised you didn't crash the Mavic. I said careless because you could have dead-shorted the battery mid air and infinite other electric panic. I know that you realize how careless you were, but I strongly recommend you to read the battery safety guide. DJI advise against getting these batteries wet, they may even burn or explode according to the guide. I invite everybody to think and consider: 1 - The main problem when crashing drones on a residential area is to hurt others. Imagine 750 g free falling on someones head. 2- I don´t know what are the flying drone rules in your country, but this kind of attitude may contribute to make rules even stricter on us. Think about that.
Mikko thanks for sharing this extraordinary experience though.

 

[OCsurfer411]

Though I've never flown my Mavic in storm conditions such as that, I have flown it in light rain and morning marine layer fog and she handled it like a champ.

In June, I was in Northern England attempting to film the Priory in Tyne (part of New Castle) and the winds were about 50-60kph - far more than the Mavic rating. She fought me the whole flight. I was using my android phone and the app was crashing every few minutes (still a problem, I've since switched to my iPad tablet and the app has never crashed, but that's a different story).

Anyway, as I was getting ready to bring her in (about 30% battery left) the app crashed and the wind picked up at the same time. I got the app up and running about 90 seconds later and was horrified to see my Mavic had drifted about 1km out to sea and had 24% battery left. I immediately switched it to Sport mode and limped her back in. The whole time I was thinking, "This is it. This is the time she goes in the drink."

But, I was able to bring her back in and touchher down at the LZ with 8% power remaining. Phew.

Here's the final edited video (doesn't include the drifting out ot sea part as I wasn't recording at that time).

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[OCsurfer411]

I think he recognizes right up front that this was ill-advised, and he says several times throughout the video this type of flight should not be performed.

As to your comment about drones hitting people, what do you think the actual risk of hitting a person is during such a storm? In fact, I don't recall even seeing another human being underneath the drone during this video, and he was over residential areas almost the entirety of the flight.

I mention this because many of the laws out now seem to focus on the danger of a drone hitting and injuring somebody, when in fact this has happened maybe 1-2 times total in the history of small UAV flights. You have a greater chance of a coconut falling on your head (which kills 200 people annually) than you do a drone falling on your head.

Let's temper the risk advisement with reality.