Oh, that's a real help.... Not!!!
But thank for your concern all the same.
My $1600aud is now in a lake through no fault of mine, it's never been able to perform as designed from day one using the POS Android app.
Definitely NOT a good value for money unit.
Yes, I've been able to take some nice vision with it, but there have been MANY times where I've missed a shot because it wouldn't take off, or the app crashed and the restart took too long.
Besides which, It was 70m out and 46m up in light wind with no obstructions or birds etc.... Hardly a risky flight other than the water being beneath.
Please keep your negative vibes to yourself. I hope your drone continues to fly.
Look. I wasn't making fun of your loss.
Prior to flying drones, I did underwater photography semi-professionally for many years until I got bent one too many times and the doctor made me stop. Imagine jumping off the side of a boat with $20k worth of very sensitive digital photography equipment and swimming after the biggest baddest apex predators the ocean has to offer. Lots of things can and have gone wrong.
You'd be amazed what damage a single drop of salt water can do to expensive camera equipment. We'd literally spend hours before a dive sitting at a table meticulously prepping our gear in dead silence looking for any grain of sand, hair, or cracked O-ring that could potentially flood our gear. There were many times along the way that even that wasn't good enough and thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment plus thousands of dollars of travel expenses were wasted in an instant. It was a high stakes game filled with risks but we fully understood and accepted those risks each time we jumped in the water. Sometimes we made money. Sometimes we lost. The last time I ended up in a hyperbaric chamber and almost lost my life.
Through it all, one thing I did learn was that every failure was of my own making. 100% operator error every single time as looking back, there was always something I could have done differently to change the outcome. Yet, in the end, it was very worthwhile as I had some amazing adventures along the way.
What's this have to do with the loss of your Mavic drone you might ask? A lot actually. First of all, we are using a small radio controller to send up our aircraft out for a specific mission. We are helpless in the sense that we are at the mercy of properly functioning equipment to safely send it up and bring it home once again. There are lots of things that can go wrong up there. Some of them are easily understood. Others leave us to wonder why. The truth is that short of some extremely rare manufacturer defect or act of nature, we, as human beings, are almost always responsible for when things go wrong.
You stated that you had problems controlling the Mavic with the app from day one. The question is, was there anything you could have done to correct the situation before you took flight that final time? Different software, different mobile device, working it out through tech support? Personally, I've added hundreds of dollars to the expense of my Mavic by adding the parts and accessories needed to make it fly and photograph to my standards. Your mileage may vary but I would never consider sending my Mavic up knowing it had issues.
Bottom line is, the Mavic is a very advanced piece of technical equipment that is very easy to fly. Is it perfect out of the box? Close, but you still need to add things to make it fit your needs. If I were to lose or destroy my Mavic, (someday I will) I wouldn't hesitate to buy another one to replace it. It's a rock solid platform that even has a chat board dedicated to it. Can you imagine that?
