....don't want to make any mistakes and have the thing fly back to China like so many are experiencing. Maybe I'll get my fishing pole and tie the line onto it so I can reel it back in if it takes off on it's own.
One more VERY important piece of advice -- if you read the many, many threads talking about "flyaways", you will eventually realize something -- almost NONE of these events are caused by defective hardware/software. Nearly all are caused by pilot error/inexperience.
Let me give one generic example --
Imagine you are flying at the beach. You set your RTH (return to home) height at 50M. This seems OK at the time because the beach is mostly flat, open space.
You then fly off down the beach and around the back side of a steep cliff that's 500M tall. As you fly behind the cliff (out of line of site), your Mavic will eventually lose signal. As good as the signal range is, it won't travel through massive buildings, cliffs, tall rock outcroppings, etc. So, if you are flying behind any of these things, you should expect that your Mavic WILL lose signal, and it WILL try to return home if you have it set that way.
I hope you see the problem -- when the Mavic loses signal behind the cliff and automatically starts to return home, it will NOT retrace the safe and clear path it took to reach its present location. Instead, it will head home in a straight line heading directly towards you. If there is nothing taller than 50M between you and the Mavic, then it should make it home safely as long as you have sufficient battery remaining (and as long as the Mavic is not flying into a setting sun which can blind the front obstacle cameras causing it to think that it's heading towards an invisible wall). But since there is a 500M tall cliff in the way, you WILL lose your drone...and you might try to call that a "flyaway".
Unfortunately, a lot of new pilots just don't stop and think about these issues. As a result, they inadvertently fly their Mavic into a situation that it cannot get out of through no fault of DJI. Probably due to panic and a lack of willingness to admit they screwed up, many people call these situations "flyaways", but that's rarely the case. Instead, the Mavic did exactly what it was designed to do, and if the settings were incorrect (such as the RTH height), then yes the Mavic may end up flying into the side of a cliff, building, or simply stopping in the sky (due to sun blinding) until the battery runs out....because of mistakes the pilot made in both setup and operation.
Bottom line -- if you are a new flyer, GO SLOWLY AND LEARN BEFORE YOU GO TOO FAR. ALWAYS STOP AND THINK ABOUT "WHAT IFS". What if you lose signal and an auto RTH happens?
If people would just be more careful, the vast majority of issues wouldn't happen....or at least would not result in a loss of their Mavic.
Now, go and enjoy flying! ;-)
He took it the right way and edited it - good sense of humour that lawyer.
