Mavic 3 seems to never need compass calibration

[JoelP]

When I flew the old Mavic Air 1 it seemed that if I changed my location by 3 miles or more it required a compass calibration to fly. With the Mavic 3 I have changed my location by 300 miles and it still shows the compass as normal. If the reason for calibration is the deviation in magnetic north by location, why would the Mavic 3 require less calibration than the Mavic 1?

 

[Meta4]

When I flew the old Mavic Air 1 it seemed that if I changed my location by 3 miles or more it required a compass calibration to fly. With the Mavic 3 I have changed my location by 300 miles and it still shows the compass as normal.

There's nothing unusual about your Mavic 3.
DJI drones don't normally ever need compass calibration.
A better question would be: what was wrong with your Mavic Air?

If the reason for calibration is the deviation in magnetic north by location, why would the Mavic 3 require less calibration than the Mavic 1?

This is an old myth.
Compass calibration has nothing to do with magnetic deviation or where you are on earth
Changing location by a few miles (or a few thousand miles) makes no difference to compass calibration.

Read the first post of this thread to get an understanding of what compass calibration actually does and when it might be needed (rarely).

A short explanation of compass function, calibration and errors.

BACKGROUND The aircraft compass is often misunderstood, both in terms of function and purpose, but it is important to understand what the compass measures, why, and what happens to that information. At the most basic level the purpose of the compass is to measure the earth’s magnetic field in...

mavicpilots.com

 

[JoelP]

There's nothing unusual about your Mavic 3.
DJI drones don't normally ever need compass calibration.
A better question would be: what was wrong with your Mavic Air?


This is an old myth.
Compass calibration has nothing to do with magnetic deviation or where you are on earth
Changing location by a few miles (or a few thousand miles) makes no difference to compass calibration.

Read the first post of this thread to get an understanding of what compass calibration actually does and when it might be needed (rarely).

A short explanation of compass function, calibration and errors.

BACKGROUND The aircraft compass is often misunderstood, both in terms of function and purpose, but it is important to understand what the compass measures, why, and what happens to that information. At the most basic level the purpose of the compass is to measure the earth’s magnetic field in...

mavicpilots.com

Thanks for posting this link to a very clear and complete explanation of how our drones use compass calibration. It finally makes sense to me. It is likely that the old M1 had a firmware issue that DJI never bothered to correct.

 

[Tofino]

I still have and fly my original Mavic Pro and only had to calibrate the compass once on the initial setup back in 2018.
I have been all over Canada and a few places in the US and have never had to re-calibrate the compass.

 

[Meta4]

I still have and fly my original Mavic Pro and only had to calibrate the compass once on the initial setup back in 2018.
I have been all over Canada and a few places in the US and have never had to re-calibrate the compass.

You didn't even need to recalibrate the compass when you bought the drone.