I learned about flying from that!

[gregstone]

A week into flying my Mavic Air I had come down low under some tall trees to get a shot of the entrance to a woodland path. I then made a big mistake. I pushed the go back to home and land button. The drone, of course, immediately climbed and with no sensor on top it ran right into tree branches causing a pretty terrible crash. I could have easily flown it out of the situation manually, but for some reason I used that button, forgetting that it needed to climb - apparently - to figure out where it is and where it should go! Ouch! I'mgrounded until the replacement comes.

 

[LuvMyTJ]

Hello,
It is a pleasure to welcome you to the Mavic Pilots forum.
I hope that you will be able to use the forum to further your safety knowledge and for the exchange of innovative ideas and as a resource for current developments in Mavic quadcopters.
Enjoy!
*MAVIC PRO/PLATINUM MANUAL: https://dl.djicdn.com/downloads/mavic/Mavic Pro User Manual V2.0-.pdf
*MAVIC AIR MANUAL: https://dl.djicdn.com/downloads/Mavic Air/20180213/Mavic Air User Manual_v1.2.pdf
*GO 4 APP MANUAL: DJI Go 4 Manual

Sorry to hear of the "incident" you had.

 

[dirkclod]

Welcome to Mavic Pilots .
I hope you will find our site helpful and look forward to any input , photo's/video's you might post .
Don't be shy and ask anything if you can't find it by searching .

 

[msinger]

Welcome to Mavic Pilots!

Sorry to hear about your bad news. In the meantime, you can download the Mavic Air manual here if needed. It contains a lot of useful information (like the scenario you shared above).

 

[neggy]

Don't take this the wrong way, but you need to become proficient at "airmanship".

I was having a conversation with a former military ( and civilian ) CFI II and he and I both agreed that pilots rely too much on technology and not enough on developing skills.

IMHO the only time to use the RTH is when you get over your head. I have used it once when my phone was locking up and I could not get good data back from the aircraft.

The Mavic's, in all their various models, are technological marvels, but technology can fail. Pilots are trained how to keep the plane in the air and get out of situations when the technology in the cockpit fails. Our aircraft are no different. Spend some time getting really proficient in manual flight modes, starting in areas you know well. Once you get proficient, you will never want to hit that button again, unless you get in a situation where you have done everything you could to bring it back yourself.

Read up on the settings for RTH too, you are not the first person to have sent a Mavic up into a tree, but it is a lot easier to learn the limitations of RTH with it on the table in front of you than wondering where your thousand dollar bill just flew off to when the RTH executed with bad settings entered by the pilot.

Again, not a slam, just an opinion, YMMV

 

[Bunny Too]

A week into flying my Mavic Air I had come down low under some tall trees to get a shot of the entrance to a woodland path. I then made a big mistake. I pushed the go back to home and land button. The drone, of course, immediately climbed and with no sensor on top it ran right into tree branches causing a pretty terrible crash. I could have easily flown it out of the situation manually, but for some reason I used that button, forgetting that it needed to climb - apparently - to figure out where it is and where it should go! Ouch! I'mgrounded until the replacement comes.

Howdy from Wyoming @gregstone , welcome to the community, plenty of fine folk and excellent information here.