Hi I have had my mini se2 for 3 weeks and still not flown it. I am worried I’ve missed something as I’m crap with it stuff. Are there and groups for people like myself to learn how to fly. First flight for dumb ***’s or such?
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- Thread starter flyingpig69
- Start date
Looks like this person started with their new drone right out of the box. You can rely on a series of youtube videos to help get you flying your drone safely, for example:
Start by reading this
several times, slowly and carefully, DO NOT skim "small print".
Then compare it to the drone.
If you are inclined to fly it indoors at first then make sure the room is well lit, preferably from above, and that the floor has a clear, readily discernable pattern. The drone has an optical vision system, VPS, that will be responsible for position holding indoors and it needs good lighting and clearly visible targets to work.
several times, slowly and carefully, DO NOT skim "small print".
Then compare it to the drone.
If you are inclined to fly it indoors at first then make sure the room is well lit, preferably from above, and that the floor has a clear, readily discernable pattern. The drone has an optical vision system, VPS, that will be responsible for position holding indoors and it needs good lighting and clearly visible targets to work.
If you have other youtubes in mind then I would suggest that you post their URLs.
Unfortunately there are loads of buck 'ejits' on youtube and far too often they unfortunately rise to the top of search lists.
I would not recommend setting the drone down on grass and certainly not suggest trying to start the motors and launching from grass.
On grass I would suggest either using a landing pad of some sort or hand launching and if hand launching use the CSC to start the motors then throttle up to launch and keep the throttle open until the drone is a few feet up in the air.
With my minis I actually rarely throttle up, I start the motors then move my hand about until the motor rev. Then I lower my hand and the drone hovers out of my 'grip' but that takes experience and knowing how the drone 'feels' when it is 'ready' to fly.
I recollect that in my early attempts I tended to lower my hand before the drone was ready to fly and the drone stayed in my cupped fingers.
I AM NOT suggesting this as a suitable method for a newbie.
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AeroJ
Well-Known Member
It's true these things can be flown indoors with the right conditions, but if you have no drone XP at all I really wouldn't recommend it for your first time and certainly not if you don't have prop guards. The chances of VPS (edit) failing at some point are relatively high, and if you end up drifting in the wrong orientation (say with the camera facing you, which means your controls are reversed) a crash is virtually guaranteed and it will make your first experience of flight a stressy one.
IMO, you want a nice, big, open field with no1 else in it for your first flight - no pressure, the minimum of things to worry about, good weather, not much wind, good light, and then don't take off until the machine tells you it has found enough satellites and a home point has been established. 25 is a good number satellites to have 'locked in'. 15 is about the minimum you should take off with.
Try and find a nice field like that quite close to you, that you can think of as your 'home ground', and become very familiar with, so that a nice easy comfortable flight is always close at hand for those days when bigger missions are thwarted by the normal enemies of such things (regulations, adverse weather, 'other' regulations, temporary flight zone restrictions etc etc)
At the very start it is good to have pre-thought through your order of operations, and I found it helpful to make myself a pre-flight / pre-launch checklist, which I ran through every time for at least the first 10 sessions until it became automatic, to make sure I didn't miss anything either safety or video related in those first few flight sessions. Here's what mine looked like for the M4P, but yours will be quite similar...
I have similar lists for things to check pre-landing and also info to check before leaving the house, but I won't bore you with all that now...
IMO, you want a nice, big, open field with no1 else in it for your first flight - no pressure, the minimum of things to worry about, good weather, not much wind, good light, and then don't take off until the machine tells you it has found enough satellites and a home point has been established. 25 is a good number satellites to have 'locked in'. 15 is about the minimum you should take off with.
Try and find a nice field like that quite close to you, that you can think of as your 'home ground', and become very familiar with, so that a nice easy comfortable flight is always close at hand for those days when bigger missions are thwarted by the normal enemies of such things (regulations, adverse weather, 'other' regulations, temporary flight zone restrictions etc etc)
At the very start it is good to have pre-thought through your order of operations, and I found it helpful to make myself a pre-flight / pre-launch checklist, which I ran through every time for at least the first 10 sessions until it became automatic, to make sure I didn't miss anything either safety or video related in those first few flight sessions. Here's what mine looked like for the M4P, but yours will be quite similar...
I have similar lists for things to check pre-landing and also info to check before leaving the house, but I won't bore you with all that now...
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Make sure it's a heavy (rubber) mat.
Don't use something lightweight because the prop wash from the aircraft may lift the mat if not heavy.
Painting an X is optional.
.
AeroJ
Well-Known Member
Yep, that'll do, although it won't be very visible from 400 ft up ! Most of the landing pads are orange or blue, or other bright colour that stands out from both asphalt and grass. This was more important though back in the days when your controller didn't helpfully place a large yellow 'H' on your screen to show you where home is ! So yeah, the mat will probably be fine to keep grass out of your props, but perhaps not one of those deep pile brush ones you wipe your feet on, which tend to hold loads of dust, and you don't want all that blowing about round your motors and gimbal either !
A door mat might be a bit dusty from all the stuff that gets trodden into it, some people use rubber car mats that can be shaken clean.
I think visual markers such as the white Xs are really only of use when checking that the drone is vertically above the desired landing point at the start of the descent.
It is often difficult to judge what is perfectly, vertically above you when you are looking 'straight up' so the camera's view, which can look straight down, is useful.
The mini 2SE does not have precision landing so it can not use markers to automatically fine tune its horizontal position, that is the pilot's responsibility and you should be ready to intervene with alieron and elevator commands if you think the drone is descending into danger.
I watch the drone during the descent and landing phase, NOT the screen
Even in an automated RTH landing GPS accuracy is 2 -3 ft at best and probably less accurate than. Consequently, if left to its own devices in an automated RTH landing, there's a fair chance that, unaided, it will completely miss the landing pad.
You should note that you can use stick commands to fine tune position etc. during an automated landing
Really good advice so far. If you've genuinely never flown a drone before: my 'drone 101' contribution would be for you to start by putting it up in the air in a slow, straight vertical line (about 20' away from you) and use the control sticks gently to work out how the drone responds to stick commands.... up: down (throttle), left: right (roll), forward: backwards (pitch) and spin left: spin right (yaw). Increasing the force of the stick movement alters how aggressive the responses are.
Afterwards you can start to experiment with using two sticks simultaneously to cause more complex controlled movements in curved flight paths.
As already mentioned: the movement of the drone also alters in relation to left/right stick commands depending on whether the camera is facing towards you, or away from you. This can be VERY confusing.
These are some of the best basic things you will learn as you will know how it moves in three dimensional space and that like with a car or bike: you have to factor in braking distances.
To polish your skills, you can factor in camera and gimbal control later on.
Know what your drone is capable of (and what it is incapable of) before you send it off for a trot down the metaphorical road.
Afterwards you can start to experiment with using two sticks simultaneously to cause more complex controlled movements in curved flight paths.
As already mentioned: the movement of the drone also alters in relation to left/right stick commands depending on whether the camera is facing towards you, or away from you. This can be VERY confusing.
These are some of the best basic things you will learn as you will know how it moves in three dimensional space and that like with a car or bike: you have to factor in braking distances.
To polish your skills, you can factor in camera and gimbal control later on.
Know what your drone is capable of (and what it is incapable of) before you send it off for a trot down the metaphorical road.
Sorry but you are using inappropriate vocabulary which may confuse the OP.
"Vision assist" is something new and differs completely from VPS.
I doubt the mini 2 SE has vision assist since it does not have obstacle avoidance, OA.
As for VPS "failing at some point", the only times it has failed me was when I flew the drone into or over poorly lit areas/flooring.
VPS is, I think, sensitive to things flapping within its field of view but that just makes the drone wobble a bit.
I have actually left a Mavic Mini or Mini 2 hovering, completely unattended, for perhaps 15 minutes whilst I was in another room, it was within a couple of inches or less of where I had left it when I returned.
I am not recommending that any one try that.
It might be better if to delete references to OA related features from your lists (OBS ?), at least for this thread.
What are "sync clap in front of craft", "headcam" and "CRC" ? I think the latter should have been CSC.
AeroJ
Well-Known Member
Yep, my bad - good catch ! I am always calling stuff the wrong thing - I do try and get better at that.
Sync clap is like a clapperboard function in films for later sync of 2 separate camera feeds (in case I wanna do a narrated flight for example). Headcam is the Osmo Action 3 camera I am syncing with (mounted to baseball cap), so I have ground footage and live commentary recording. Yep, CRC was a typo I didn't catch first time
I did wonder after posting if parts of it might be confusing, but did mention that it specifically applied to my setup, and my intention was only showing the 'sort of list' one might typically make...
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MA2 317" data-source="post: 1651387" class="bbCodeBlock bbCodeBlock--expandable bbCodeBlock--quote js-expandWatch">I have seen that exact thing! A pilot put his drone down on a banner as a landing pad. Seconds later it was rolled up in the mess lol. For sure get a pad with a little weight to it.
I forgot to add get a blue or green pad and using reflective or glossy black tape-Draw a hashtag on it.....Try it! you may find your Drone returns to its pad instead of beside it.
I could spray it orange with a black H on it!! LolYep, that'll do, although it won't be very visible from 400 ft up ! Most of the landing pads are orange or blue, or other bright colour that stands out from both asphalt and grass. This was more important though back in the days when your controller didn't helpfully place a large yellow 'H' on your screen to show you where home is ! So yeah, the mat will probably be fine to keep grass out of your props, but perhaps not one of those deep pile brush ones you wipe your feet on, which tend to hold loads of dust, and you don't want all that blowing about round your motors and gimbal either !
and don't send it trotting downwind on the outbound leg. it make the upwind return on a draining battery stressful for both yu and the drone
AeroJ
Well-Known Member
Well you could
Or just get your £11 out and go get yourself one of these ! Orange on one side (for visibility against grass), blue on the other (visibility against corn / brush / darker ground).Mine has lasted over 7 years, they are a meter wide, and fold down (via metal twisty witchcraft) to 30 cm, and come in a neat little bag you can store any overflow gear from your main kit bag in too; they are quite brilliant ! Only thing you gotta watch with those is that you peg them down on windy days on high hills, lest they become kites of their own once the weight of the craft has left them !
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Thank you so much for this. I think I might ask on my local Facebook community page to see if someone would actually meet up and talk me thru my first flight
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