Mavic Pro and Landing Pads

[Hell_Hawk_33]

Hey guys, my first post here. I became a Mavic Pro owner a few weeks ago after flying a Phantom 3 Standard for two years. I love the Mavic Pro. I'm blown away at what I can do with such a small thing. It's been a lot of fun to fly and along the way I've gotten some fantastic photos and videos. This forum has been a great resource.

What I wanted to ask about was landing pads and ensuring it is picked up by the Mavic on takeoff to ensure an accurate RTH landing. I have been using a DIY landing pad that's about 1.5' wide, and 2' long. Typically the drone lands on it but once in a while one leg may be over the edge. But my OCD side would prefer if 100% of landings were on the pad with nothing hanging over (yes I follow DJI's recommended takeoff procedure to ensure optimal Precision Landing performance).

So after reading posts about landing pads needing to be distinguishable I added some yellow electrical tape to make an X. But will adding a bright color help much? Is there something else I can do to make my pad more distinguishable? Any tips and advice will be greatly appreciated. If you got pics of your DIY landing pad even better.

On a side note I ordered one of those orange folding landing pads from Amazon. For $20 CAD it's worth a try, but I like my DIY landing pad because it is heavy enough I don't need to stake it down to protect from prop wash, and it's still small enough I can transport it anywhere with ease.

Pics of my DIY landing pad w/o yellow tape and w/ yellow tape:

 

[deufrai]

Hi and welcome to the forum

My last flight yesterday seem to bring some light on the benfit of a landing mat with respect to the precision landing.

As see in this flight log


I used the precision take off and when I let the drone RTH on low battery trigger, it corrected its position twice to achieve a precision landing.
The catch here, is that I had to move my landing pad (Orange disk with whit 'H' @ center) a few inches to clear the way for a vehicle. And the mavic landed percisely where the pad originally was. So it seems to indicate that precision takeoff takes a broad mapping of the takeoff area and that a mat is not the critical point.

I'll do further tests to reproduce (or not) this behaviour and confirm my thoughts

 

[Hell_Hawk_33]

I used the precision take off and when I let the drone RTH on low battery trigger, it corrected its position twice to achieve a precision landing.
The catch here, is that I had to move my landing pad (Orange disk with whit 'H' @ center) a few inches to clear the way for a vehicle. And the mavic landed percisely where the pad originally was. So it seems to indicate that precision takeoff takes a broad mapping of the takeoff area and that a mat is not the critical point.

Interesting. So you're finding it's not the lay of the land (landing pad among terrain) it's records. It's the exact spot it records on takeoff.

I was under the impression it did a scan of the landing area when taking off, which is why it needed to descend to 20' and hover for a second. Having a landing pad that stood helped with this.

Now I can't wait to go home and do some flights with RTH landing and see what happens.

Update: When I let the Mavic do a RTH auto landing a message would pop up saying the landing area is unsafe. It did this a couple times. Flipped the landing pad over to the plain plywood side and it did two bang on pinpoint RTH auto landings. Removed the fancy yellow stripes and then did three RTH auto landings. Each one was spot on, dead center with no unsafe landing area warnings. I guess the yellow stripes added to much contrast and the drone thought the landing area was unsafe???

But now I got a camera that loses focus and won't refocus, in auto focus or manual focus. If it's not one thing it's another.

 

[idbl_fanatic]

Could it have something to do with the screw (I assume that's what those are) and the Mavic not "Knowing" exactly where they should line up?

 

[Hell_Hawk_33]

Could it have something to do with the screw (I assume that's what those are) and the Mavic not "Knowing" exactly where they should line up?

Yep those are screws. It is a piece of plywood and door mat screwed together.

It could be the screws causing issues. But as I mentioned last night after removing the tape every landing was bang on. I will go on another flight this evening after supper and see how it goes.