Few annoying issues on my Mavic Air

[PhotoAdventures]

Hello everyone.
This is my first post here, so I'm gonna start with a little presentation of myself.
My name is André and I'm from Portugal.
I'm 26y old and recently I started following my dream of becoming a Landscape Photographer, I quit my 7-year job as a Meteorologist and since October 2017 I'm traveling through Scandinavia taking landscape, astrophotography & nature photos.

I had modified my ordinary Renault Kangoo into a MiniCamper and this is how I travel, eat, sleep and enjoy my days up here, in the North of Europe.
You can follow my adventures here:
-www.500px.com/andrefarinha
-www.instagram.com/andre_farinha_photography (@andre_farinha_photography)
-www.intagram.com/minicamper.traveller (@minicamper.traveller)


I bought a month ago the new Mavic Air fly more combo to help and improve my photography skills.
I love the new perspective that MA offers me but I'd found some annoying issues that bother me a lot, this is why I am writing here, to find solutions, tips or new ways to go around these crappy issues.

-CALIBRATION
every single time that I try a flight with MA, he always asks me to calibrate the compass... no matter what...
I have to repeat the process several times (at least 5 times in a row) to get a green light to fly my MA and even sometimes when I'm flying my MA he says that I need to calibrate the compass...
this is crazy...


-DNG vs JPEG
Well... DNG means Digital Negative, so this is the RAW file...
I'm wondering myself how a JPEG file could have a wider frame than the DNG file

let me show you what I mean



as you can see, in the JPEG file corners and sides I have more information than the DNG file.
EX: antenna on the left side of each image.



-SIGNAL LOST OR A LOT OF INTERFERENCE
during my flights (short flights, no more than 500 meters away from me), I lose MA signal quite often or I get a lot of interference even if I'm in the most remote area, hundreds of Kilometers away from civilization...
and yes, the remote control antennas are well positioned.


These are the most annoying issues that I found so far.
I bet that I'm not the first MA owner having this kind of problems with it.

If you know any solution for these issues, please help me get rid of them.
Best wishes!

André Farinha.

 

[mkiii]

A couple of thoughts spring to mind. In remote areas, might not people be using stronger/more radio transmitters, or stronger MW transmissions to communicate than normal urban areas? After all, one of the objects you point out appears to be a comms tower. I'm not sure how all the rocks might affect a signal - but I'm sure someone here does.

the DNG size thing. I never noticed this, but having just checked, it's the same here, at least with the lower res thumbnail stored in the dng file. the thumb is a little smaller all round. on a 4k image, I estimate that a border of around 64 pixels is cropped off.

 

[MavicMo]

Welcome! Awesome that you are following your dream! Good Luck!

The two things you point out are the two things that bug me about my MA.

Frequent CC - Even when I launch from the exact same location (the back deck of my house) even on the same day, it will ask me for a Compass Calibration very often, like every 3rd flight. I can go to a totally different location miles away and it may or may not ask for one.

Poor Range - Same here. The MA seems to be very sensitive to outside interference. When I fly in wifi dense areas my range is less than 800' and I have lost connection with the MA three times initiating auto-RTH. This is the shortest distance of all my DJI drones. Even my Spark can fly out to 800' in the same area/neighborhood and NOT experience any issues. I also don't like that of these 3 times, 2 twice it basically just completely dropped out. The other time I noticed the image was starting lag then it dropped out.

While DJI has done something with one of the firmware updates, the MA can still get pretty "laggy" at short ranges. I can start seeing bad lag at only 150' out and 125' high...

This is why my MA tends to sit on the shelf more than any of my other DJI drones to include the Spark....

 

[pablococito]

I think that the raw file has some sort of distortion correction preset applied to it, or the other way around and that might eat up a few pixels.

 

[JDawg]

That is a cool picture, where is it?

 

[NordicMan]

Just wondering about your frequent compass calibrations... I calibrated mine once when I got it & never have been prompted to do it again. Had it for about 1.5 months, and OK I do mostly fly from the same area.

..do you by any chance have a bunch of other high powered electronics "nearby" each time you launch that may be affecting the MA? Maybe you habitually have a backpack of other tech that is always nearby? As long as you MA isn't faulty, it shouldn't need calibrating that often.

 

[scotte]

I'm not sure why, but my Air has never prompted for a compass calibration - never even once including the first flight.

[Edit: fixed typo]

 

[JDawg]

I'm not sure why, but my Air has never promoted for a compass calibration - never even once including the first flight.

Ditto. I see weird things happening to people in various threads, none of which happen to me, and it seems most of them, but not all, come down to things the user can control. Being close to rebar in concrete or even being close to your vehicle seems to be a reoccurring theme with the compass problem. I am NOT saying that is the case here. And I would still like to know where that picture is from.

 

[MavicMo]

I can't speak for the OP, but I'm an experienced Drone flyer. And it bugs me when I can launch my Spark, Mavic Pro, Inspire, Phantom 4 from the exact same location on the exact same day maybe just minutes apart with no CC required, loss of connection, laggy video, but my MA asks for CC, loses connection at shorter distances (than even the Spark), and/or the video gets laggy.

I have a route I fly with all my drones after I do a firmware upgrade or I feel I need a shakedown run. On this route the Spark works just fine and zero issues with all the other drones except the MA. The MA can sometimes complete it, other times it will lose connection or video gets laggy. With all my other drones I can fly with my Apple Watch on, Ipad Mini 4 tethered to my Iphone, apps running on the Ipad Mini with ZERO issues. With the MA, I don't even take that chance. I download the maps, untether, put my Apple Watch and Iphone in Airplane mode and the MA still acts the same.

I don't think I have a bad drone as when I go to the mountains or into wide open spaces with minimal interference, its distance is good and it can sometimes ask for a CC. Just my experience the MA seems to be very sensitive to outside influences...

Oh and before anyone thinks I'm a Mavic Air "hater"... Hardly. I'm tryin to make my Mavic Air my "go to", "take anywhere", "take all the time", which is a role my Spark currently occupies..

Ditto. I see weird things happening to people in various threads, none of which happen to me, and it seems most of them, but not all, come down to things the user can control. Being close to rebar in concrete or even being close to your vehicle seems to be a reoccurring theme with the compass problem. I am NOT saying that is the case here. And I would still like to know where that picture is from.

 

[Jameslavis]

I experience none of these with my air and travel lots. I also hand launch. I maybe calibrate 1 in 10 runs