Look Ma No Phone

[Randy_Culp]

I've only had my Mavic about a week, and I'm considering flying with controller only, and not connecting a phone. The idea is just back & forth flying relatively close in, just to get hand-eye coordination and smoothing out my flying. So my question is: whether flying without the DJI Go App running is something that more experienced pilots consider inadvisable?

I have reservations already about doing it, since for one thing there's no way to confirm that the home point is where you expect it to be. There would also be no way to trace the aircraft location should something go wrong and the drone ends up in the rough. On the other hand my goal is to have eyes glued to the aircraft, no distractions like a screenfull of telemetry or real time video to be gazing down at. So maybe I shouldn't care that I have no app. And it's another degree of flexibility in flying the drone if it works out fine.

Am I too nervous about this or am I not nervous enough?

 

[Former Member]

You can always connect the device and then fly by line of site. That way you would benefit from the RTH feature at the very least.

 

[Cut.Aussie]

Probably more than half of all drones are flown line of sight with controllers that don't have video screens.
RTH should still work just fine, the location is stored in the drone not the phone

 

[Kilrah]

If you have updated to the latest versions you can't fly further than 50m horizontal/30m high when not using a phone.

 

[gspannu]

Why not connect the phone and then switch phone to home screen. You still have the phone connected, but no active app running.

 

[Kilrah]

Because the whole point is probably not to have to bother taking a phone out, connecting etc in the first place.