Mavic Air won't start Tap Fly mode

Erix · Sep 5, 2020

I've been racking my brain around this all day. Firstly, I had to get an authorization to fly in the blue zone in my yard, which has been easy to do in the past, but spent 2 hours this time having to go through my desktop app and online to get the authorization. Got that finally done, great! What I was intending to do from the start was try the Tap Fly Free mode. I had gone through a couple of hours of tutorials before and periodically during my trials. I don't know what is going on, but when I have it hovering without any obstructions around and in Tap Fly Free, I touch slightly above the horizon for the course I wanted and then tapped the screen, the green Go came on and then I tapped it again expecting it to go into the flight mode. However, in an instant (less than 1/2 a second) it revs up, I see the Tap Fly show up at the top of the screen (in a flash), the drone immediately stops and hovers again. I've tried this over and over and over. And then over again! I also tried the other modes like Forward and Backwards with the same result. Is there an issue about being in the blue authorization zone and using Tap Fly? Is there a minor but crucial step I'm missing? I have looked at YouTube tutorials showing the screen view and it looks like I'm not missing a step, but I must be missing something? I'm really wanting to use this Fly Tap but have only frustration to show for it. Thanks!

https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?ur...-1.html&text=Tap+Fly+Won't+Start&via=DJI

Erix · Sep 19, 2020

Update: I had many phone calls with DJI support, emails and videos to describe and show what's going on with Tap Fly. Some of these support emails were sent on to their engineers. The last suggestion was to set my max flight altitude to over 100 meters. I looked on my controller and it had been set to 300 meters for the whole time already anyway. When I fly it here at home, I have a notice saying that I can't fly over 197 feet, due to my proximity to the airport that is near and I have to get authorized first. This got me thinking, maybe I should set it to 196 feet and see what happens? BAM! That's what it took to get Tap Fly to work! When the max flight altitude is set above your max allowed altitude (in this restricted zone at my house), that's as high as it will let you go under normal flying, stopping your drone when you get to that height. But with Tap Fly, it won't even stop you at 197 feet, it'll just not even operate at all, whatever your altitude is when you try. Support and the engineers probably didn't realize this until I put it together when they said to try at over 100 meters. I wrote back to them with my findings. Hope this helps anyone in the future, not only with Tap Fly on the Mavic Air, but maybe in other Intelligent Flight Modes where they might be flying in an Authorized Zone.

Thomas B · Sep 19, 2020

Erix said:
Update: I had many phone calls with DJI support, emails and videos to describe and show what's going on with Tap Fly. Some of these support emails were sent on to their engineers. The last suggestion was to set my max flight altitude to over 100 meters. I looked on my controller and it had been set to 300 meters for the whole time already anyway. When I fly it here at home, I have a notice saying that I can't fly over 197 feet, due to my proximity to the airport that is near and I have to get authorized first. This got me thinking, maybe I should set it to 196 feet and see what happens? BAM! That's what it took to get Tap Fly to work! When the max flight altitude is set above your max allowed altitude (in this restricted zone at my house), that's as high as it will let you go under normal flying, stopping your drone when you get to that height. But with Tap Fly, it won't even stop you at 197 feet, it'll just not even operate at all, whatever your altitude is when you try. Support and the engineers probably didn't realize this until I put it together when they said to try at over 100 meters. I wrote back to them with my findings. Hope this helps anyone in the future, not only with Tap Fly on the Mavic Air, but maybe in other Intelligent Flight Modes where they might be flying in an Authorized Zone.

Great info! Deserves it’s own thread with a title descriptive of the altitude settings you explain.
Great detective work!