M2P, One year, 197 successful flights

[Reelman67]

I recently sold my Mavic Pro which I had for over a year with no crashes or flyaways. I attribute my safe flights to the reading of this forum. Now I have a Mavic 2 Pro and am anxious to resume safe flights and great videos and photography. Just a recreational flyer, and having a great time doing so.

 

[Aaron24]

One year, 197 successful flights flying around the Russian River Valley and Sonoma County California coast. Straight out the box, I've never calibrated anything and have not single incident. I have to credit searching and reading this forum's data base wealth of information to my success. Proper flight planning, understanding local weather patterns and not doing anything stupid or I'm just lucky. Either way after a year of reading failures, losses and flyaways I guess I'm bragging a bit too. Now I just have learn post video editing and processing. Bought a Dell G7, having to relearn Windows 10, since last operating system I used was XP. Totally lost leading Davinci Resolve 16.

Best of luck to all that fly drones. Have fun, fly safe. Steve LaBranche

Similar to me. Bought a Mavic 2 Zoom when first released. Hundreds of flights and no problems. I’m a pretty cautious flyer. Apart from a wrap and ND filters everything else is original, even the props.

 

[Reelman67]

1 year and a half with the Mavic Pro. When I first bought it I left it in the box for a month cuz I was so nervous about flying it. After watching a few YouTube videos and reading a bit on this forum I finally flew it and just now logged my 150th eventless flight. Eagerly awaiting the MP3 and a better quality camera.

Same as me with my Mavic Pro. Took me nearly a month to fly it. Wanted to know all the rules and prohibitions first. Had it, same as you, for nearly a year and a half. Now have a Mavic 2 Pro. Just bought it pre-owned, almost no miles on it.

 

[kidroc]

I have well over 1000 flights between MP and spark over a 3 years no incidents ever!!

 

[Johnmcl7]

People are much more likely to come to forums with an issue compared to those who don't have a problem which can make a product look much worse than it is and I think it's worse for drones because there's a high degree of user error that people will claim was a drone fault. It can be quite scary glancing through the crash/flyaway forum because it looks like there's a high probability the drone will go wrong and fly off itself or crash itself and nothing you can do which of course isn't the case if you check in more detail.

I decided to go through the crash/flyaway forum and record the model of the drone, the cause of the problem (pilot error, drone fault or unknown) and overall it came to 69% pilot error, 20% drone fault and 12% unknown (doesn't quite add up to 100 due to rounding errors). While that looks bad that one in five problems were hardware faults this is only counting problems, I can't include the huge number of Mavic drones with no issues.

What also stands out when reading through the crash/flyaway forum is that many of the crashes or flyaways were due to simple errors, flying in high winds (even for the more powerful Mavics), flying near obstacles particularly tree branches, flying low over water, not doing basic checks on take off (ensuring the drone has GPS, suitable battery, pointing the right direction etc.) and flying at extreme range.

I've had a Mavic 1 Pro early on and then upgraded to Mavic 2 Pro neither of which I've had any problem with. The Mavic 1 did go into ATTI mode unexpectedly one time but I knew this could happen and when the warning came up on the display I knew what it meant and what I needed to do so it wasn't an issue at all.

 

[Camino Ken]

People are much more likely to come to forums with an issue compared to those who don't have a problem which can make a product look much worse than it is and I think it's worse for drones because there's a high degree of user error that people will claim was a drone fault. It can be quite scary glancing through the crash/flyaway forum because it looks like there's a high probability the drone will go wrong and fly off itself or crash itself and nothing you can do which of course isn't the case if you check in more detail.

I decided to go through the crash/flyaway forum and record the model of the drone, the cause of the problem (pilot error, drone fault or unknown) and overall it came to 69% pilot error, 20% drone fault and 12% unknown (doesn't quite add up to 100 due to rounding errors). While that looks bad that one in five problems were hardware faults this is only counting problems, I can't include the huge number of Mavic drones with no issues.

What also stands out when reading through the crash/flyaway forum is that many of the crashes or flyaways were due to simple errors, flying in high winds (even for the more powerful Mavics), flying near obstacles particularly tree branches, flying low over water, not doing basic checks on take off (ensuring the drone has GPS, suitable battery, pointing the right direction etc.) and flying at extreme range.

I've had a Mavic 1 Pro early on and then upgraded to Mavic 2 Pro neither of which I've had any problem with. The Mavic 1 did go into ATTI mode unexpectedly one time but I knew this could happen and when the warning came up on the display I knew what it meant and what I needed to do so it wasn't an issue at all.

Hi John, @Johnmcl7

I am interested in the statistics you have compiled. Would you be willing to publish them here? I think it would be useful to see a breakdown (pardon the pun) by model type to see the relative reliability and user error for each. The Mavic 2 vs the mini for example, would be interesting to start.

Thanks in advance.

Ken

 

[Johnmcl7]

Hi John, @Johnmcl7

I am interested in the statistics you have compiled. Would you be willing to publish them here? I think it would be useful to see a breakdown (pardon the pun) by model type to see the relative reliability and user error for each. The Mavic 2 vs the mini for example, would be interesting to start.

Thanks in advance.

Ken

That was my original plan but in the meantime there were a couple of heated topics on the Mavic Mini implying that owners of that drone were more careless which were locked and that made me think maybe I shouldn't publish the figures.

However having said that the variation between the four drones isn't that large and all four show similar figures between the four causes, I'll maybe PM a mod and see what they think. It's taken quite a bit of effort to put it all together and I think it is something useful but I don't want to kick off another argument.

 

[Camino Ken]

That was my original plan but in the meantime there were a couple of heated topics on the Mavic Mini implying that owners of that drone were more careless which were locked and that made me think maybe I shouldn't publish the figures.

However having said that the variation between the four drones isn't that large and all four show similar figures between the four causes, I'll maybe PM a mod and see what they think. It's taken quite a bit of effort to put it all together and I think it is something useful but I don't want to kick off another argument.

I don’t see any reason why you cannot publish your data. Data, in of itself, is non-controversial and non judgmental. Folks can always debate the accuracy of the data or the collection method. What is guaranteed to be controversial is the conclusions that one draws. Just publish the data and your method and let others draw the conclusions.

 

[Saber911]

Congratulations on a successful year and a perfect flying record! I’ve heard many people say crashing is just part of the hobby, but obviously that doesn’t apply to everyone.

I would also recommend DaVinci Resolve for editing, the free version is more than enough to get you started.

 

[pelagic_one]

One year, 197 successful flights flying around the Russian River Valley and Sonoma County California coast. Best of luck to all that fly drones. Have fun, fly safe.

Great post and its ensuing positive thread, Steve. Folks like you keep our hobby going strong!

 

[Johnmcl7]

I don’t see any reason why you cannot publish your data. Data, in of itself, is non-controversial and non judgmental. Folks can always debate the accuracy of the data or the collection method. What is guaranteed to be controversial is the conclusions that one draws. Just publish the data and your method and let others draw the conclusions.

Thanks for your input, I've taken your advice and posted it here:

Summary of drone crashes from the crash/flyaway forum

There's been a few posts by people concerned about the number of 'flyaways' which of course are mostly not the case so i decided to trawl through the crash/flyaway section here and for each thread note the model of the drone and whether the crash/flyaway was caused by pilot error, a fault with...

mavicpilots.com

 

[mariachi76]

Same here, I fly the M2P for 18 months with around 150 flights and only one minor incident (pilot error).
I am certainly not the most cautious person and would say that my style is “calculated risk”.
I do fly far (los not needed in my country), I do fly many miles over open sea, I quite use up my battery and I fly with high winds sometimes, I fly very high or very low.
However I do full pre-flight checks, ensure GPS, compass and all sensors are working and check the battery and battery position before I fly away. I check the winds (as a windsurfer I am very familiar with winds ?).
So far no problem or unexpected behavior at all.
The only incident was 150% my fault: I wanted to land on my terrace(p-mode), but the obstacle sensors didn’t let me. I wanted to put T-mode but accidentally put S-mode. A slight touch to the forward controller was then enough to crash the drone into my house wall. Again, 150% pilot error. Costed me a new gimbal and some new props and an arm. But even DJI service was perfect was reasonably priced.
Very happy with the M2P, I wish you all safe flights!

mariachi76

 

[mariachi76]

Bought a Dell G7, having to relearn Windows 10, since last operating system I used was XP. Totally lost leading Davinci Resolve 16

Resolve 16 is imo the best software you can get for video editing. I recommend you to install a Nvidia RTX graphics card (2060 or 2070) as these cards take over all video rendering and reduce rendering times around 10-fold compared to a normal average quad-core CPU. It even clearly outperforms my 12-core CPU.

keep flying!
Mariachi76

 

[Steve LaBranche]

I guess I wasn't specific in my question. Do you have the gimbal setting turned on that allows it to go above the horizon. I think the max is 30 degrees but I believe the panos only go to 15 degrees up.

Guess I didn't read your question properly. I have every thing set to auto. I can tell from looking at pics I can tell the gimbal is going above the horizon but I do not know to what degree.

 

[Camino Ken]

Guess I didn't read your question properly. I have every thing set to auto. I can tell from looking at pics I can tell the gimbal is going above the horizon but I do not know to what degree.

I use everything on auto as well. The reason I was asking was that it seemed like your panos have a larger hole at the top than mine. This is the area that the drone attempts to “fill in” with pseudo sky. There is a setting in Go4 to enable +30 degrees on the gimbal pitch which will allow a bit more sky view and therefore a smaller hole at the top. I know it’s a small thing and if you’re happy with what you get now please ignore this suggestion. By the way, I first noticed this when I took a pano at a lower elevation, just below the tops of the 150ft tall trees around my property and saw that the tops of the trees were cut off.

I love panos and take them every new place I fly.