@Chaosrider, just curious, why did you get 3
mini 2's?
Obsession, mostly. And overconfidence.
In a previous incarnation, I bought my first "drone" in 2010 +/- 2 years. It was a tiny little RC helicopter, which took three hands to fly. I've still got it, but the linkage for the rotation trim has gotten loose, and it would need to be adjusted before it could fly. It still charges and spins the props, but with no rotational control.
More recently, the Ingenuity helicopter first flew on Mars on April 19th, 2021, and that inspired me. I went out and got a Snaptain S5C, which I first flew on 30Apr21.I named it Ingy. It was a great little intro drone, but it had ZERO wind resistance. I flew cautiously at first, but on 28May21, a big wind gust caught it, and it flew behind me and over the garage, lost forever. Or at least, until a few weeks ago, when a neighbor of mine
found it in the dirt under a sagebrush. I cleaned it up, and returned it to flight on 27Mar22.
But by the time Ingy flew away, I was hopelessly hooked on droning. I went over to Best Buy the next day, and bought a Mini-2...but I couldn't
fly it until 7Jun21, because first I had to get a new phone that would run DJI FLY.
I rapidly got basically competent at flying the Mini-2, and not long after that, I got over confident. I tired flying it into the garage from the end of my driveway, lost my bearings with it, and banged it into a wall. I was surprised at the fact that it seemed undamaged. A week later, I was coming home to the rear flight deck, and I found out just how different it is to do "reverse flying", where the drone is facing you, and all the controls are "reversed". I whacked it into the screen door. Once again it flew, but I had cracked the lens cover, and the video was useless. Off to Care Refresh it went.
Not willing to be grounded at that point, I went and bought
another Mini-2. My skills were vastly improved, but my overconfidence remained intact. There were some gorgeous aspens mixed in with the pines around the creek (which is at -150 ft ATO) at the bottom of the canyon, and I decided to go check them out. Then, a demonic pine tree reached out and grabbed it, and threw it to the ground. It was actually pilot error of one form or another. I think I flew it so low into the canyon that it lost GPS lock, or controller signal, and tried to RTH home...into the pine tree above it. DJI suggested that it was a control input error, which strikes me as less likely, but it was pilot error one way or the other.
I had an adventure hike down to the creek bed, and I retrieved it. Off to Care Refresh it went. But the first one wasn't back from Refresh yet! So what could I do?
I went to Best Buy again, and bought a
third Mini-2. I've never been droneless since. I was sort of interested in selling one of the Mini-
2s for a while, but I got over it.
And now you know, the
rest of the story...
;-)
TCS
