I write this post to share my experiences in two flights using the Mavic 2 resulting in a crash. I bought the drone in March 2020 and have clocked 8 hrs of flight since then. I love the sensors on the drone that make it stop once to close to objects. But I have two crashes that could easily been avoided if I planned my flights better.
Both happened using intelligent flight modes. I love the look when the drone circles around a moving object. Tried this several times with great result. But in this instance, I was skiing at the top of a mountain and wanted to get footage of the background as I used my cross-country skis along the track. There were no people or trees as far as eye could see, so the flight altitude was no more than 3 m. What I did not take in to consideration was that the track sloped slightly upwards, nothing that the drone corrects for. The ground was also covered with supersmooth and structureless hard snow. During flight, the drone circled around me ending up slamming sideways into the ground bending one of the front legs (got it fixed using a screwdriver). I also noticed that the side sensors are not active in program mode, so as the drone flies sideways, it won't see object coming. Drone worked fine afterwards.
The second crash was miscalculation of tree height and using the "Circle" intelligent flight mode. Again, side sensors are deactivated in Program mode. Got a kind mountain climber to get down the drone for me. So what did I learn? Plan all flights and fly high enough to avoid ALL obstacles. Obstacle height (ofcourse) vary when terrain is not flat
Great drone, not so great pilot.
Both happened using intelligent flight modes. I love the look when the drone circles around a moving object. Tried this several times with great result. But in this instance, I was skiing at the top of a mountain and wanted to get footage of the background as I used my cross-country skis along the track. There were no people or trees as far as eye could see, so the flight altitude was no more than 3 m. What I did not take in to consideration was that the track sloped slightly upwards, nothing that the drone corrects for. The ground was also covered with supersmooth and structureless hard snow. During flight, the drone circled around me ending up slamming sideways into the ground bending one of the front legs (got it fixed using a screwdriver). I also noticed that the side sensors are not active in program mode, so as the drone flies sideways, it won't see object coming. Drone worked fine afterwards.
The second crash was miscalculation of tree height and using the "Circle" intelligent flight mode. Again, side sensors are deactivated in Program mode. Got a kind mountain climber to get down the drone for me. So what did I learn? Plan all flights and fly high enough to avoid ALL obstacles. Obstacle height (ofcourse) vary when terrain is not flat
Great drone, not so great pilot.
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