Hello all. Been a M2P owner since early June, slowly learning the craft and getting more comfortable with flying a small craft around!
Had a short long-weekend break arranged with my Uncle to go sailing off the West Coast of Scotland, and decided to make a good film of it using both the M2P and a Fuji X-T3. I think it turned out ok! You can see how well the DJI image quality stacks up against the Fuji, and that combo works phenomenally well.
Anyway, one of the goals for the trip was to launch the M2P off the back of the yacht to get some shots of us sailing in this beautiful country of ours, and so it came to be as we headed (not so much sailed) down Loch Sunart, the wind was very light and the water calm, I decided the time was right.
I am totally comfortable with flying my M2P and had no doubt about getting it back into the yacht after launching, had a plan of attack and had uncle prepped ready, but I remembered as soon as I launched the M2P into the air, that the EXP settings for the forward/backward, and the bank (side to side) was not working properly. It was super super sensitive and would send the drone at lightning speed at the touch of stick movement. I forgot to investigate this before launch, even despite saying to myself that I must remember to look into why this was happening suddenly... and as I flew around I knew that it might become an issue!
After getting some nice footage of us, I brought the little rock muncher* in to land and struggled to get it lined up and in control, with the sensitive sticks. My idea was to get it into tripod mode and gently float it towards us, but the tripod mode speed was just too slow for the speed the yacht was going. My uncle killed the speed a bit and after setting the drone far in front of our advancing position, set about floating her into my uncle's reach. After a nervous 3 seconds of drone inches from rigging, uncle snatched it from the air and I killed the rotors. She was safe!
A post-mortem found that the stick EXP was set to 0.95 for two of the directions, instead of the default 0.25 (I think). I decided to find my perfect setting when we arrived at our destination marina, and settled at 0.15 for all EXP settings and it's now beautifully progressive and controllable at really slow speeds, but with the flexibility of maximum speed at full stick! The benefits can be be seen in the later shots around the sand mine and orange pontoons. Shame I didn't have this control whilst buzzing around a massive loch on-board a yacht! Lessons learned, but despite my borderline heart attack as I struggled to get the drone back on-board, with these new settings I definitely think it would be a lot easier!
I did purchase some floatation foam attachments for the M2P but didn't use them, as I felt it safe enough without!!!
So there we go - first go at launching from a moving, water-bound craft. It was nerve wracking but now I've done it once, and I know the settings are now perfect for control, I'd be keen to try it again!
*reference to me flying, by mistake, the M2P into a rock face and surviving it...
Had a short long-weekend break arranged with my Uncle to go sailing off the West Coast of Scotland, and decided to make a good film of it using both the M2P and a Fuji X-T3. I think it turned out ok! You can see how well the DJI image quality stacks up against the Fuji, and that combo works phenomenally well.
Anyway, one of the goals for the trip was to launch the M2P off the back of the yacht to get some shots of us sailing in this beautiful country of ours, and so it came to be as we headed (not so much sailed) down Loch Sunart, the wind was very light and the water calm, I decided the time was right.
I am totally comfortable with flying my M2P and had no doubt about getting it back into the yacht after launching, had a plan of attack and had uncle prepped ready, but I remembered as soon as I launched the M2P into the air, that the EXP settings for the forward/backward, and the bank (side to side) was not working properly. It was super super sensitive and would send the drone at lightning speed at the touch of stick movement. I forgot to investigate this before launch, even despite saying to myself that I must remember to look into why this was happening suddenly... and as I flew around I knew that it might become an issue!
After getting some nice footage of us, I brought the little rock muncher* in to land and struggled to get it lined up and in control, with the sensitive sticks. My idea was to get it into tripod mode and gently float it towards us, but the tripod mode speed was just too slow for the speed the yacht was going. My uncle killed the speed a bit and after setting the drone far in front of our advancing position, set about floating her into my uncle's reach. After a nervous 3 seconds of drone inches from rigging, uncle snatched it from the air and I killed the rotors. She was safe!
A post-mortem found that the stick EXP was set to 0.95 for two of the directions, instead of the default 0.25 (I think). I decided to find my perfect setting when we arrived at our destination marina, and settled at 0.15 for all EXP settings and it's now beautifully progressive and controllable at really slow speeds, but with the flexibility of maximum speed at full stick! The benefits can be be seen in the later shots around the sand mine and orange pontoons. Shame I didn't have this control whilst buzzing around a massive loch on-board a yacht! Lessons learned, but despite my borderline heart attack as I struggled to get the drone back on-board, with these new settings I definitely think it would be a lot easier!
I did purchase some floatation foam attachments for the M2P but didn't use them, as I felt it safe enough without!!!
So there we go - first go at launching from a moving, water-bound craft. It was nerve wracking but now I've done it once, and I know the settings are now perfect for control, I'd be keen to try it again!
*reference to me flying, by mistake, the M2P into a rock face and surviving it...
