MM First flight- first impressions

[vindibona1]

I finally got my drone out after a week of waiting. Getting going reminds me of a saying that I frequently use when referring to working in Photoshop (which I think I coined myself ): "Things that appear difficult are often easy, and things that appear easy are often difficult". I don't think it was any different today.

It took some time to get things rolling at home. The controller needed pairing. I needed to purchase the refresh, calibrate the compass, go through the menus and set preferences, yada yada. The setup and firmware upgrade gave me a "chip overheat" warning, so I let it cool down and topped off the batteries before heading out. Not so hard, but I just didn't know what to expect. I watched Aldry Estacio's getting started vids to refresh my memory of things that I've read or seen before. But hands on is a different mindset.

I found a nice open field by my daughter's house. First moments in the air... A TOTALLY DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE THAN I HAD WITH THE EACHINE EX4! I found the MM to be absolutely solid in terms of control and never once felt that it wanted to get away from me. There seems to be no lag in terms of stick movements and response. When I let up on the stick the thing went into braking instantly. I didn't take it up more than 100 feet or out more than 100 years or so. At that distance it was a tiny speck in the sky.

My EX4 which I had for 2 days before claiming defect and demanding return/refund taught me a few things. I knew that at distance orientation might be a problem as I could not see the phone screen with the EX4, so I premptively did two things: 1) I built a temporary screen shade out of gaffers tape. Actually it worked reasonably well in the bright sunlight and with the DJI fly app I could actually see the screen the whole time. 2) I put a small 9 gram head lamp on the top/front of the MM so I could see from a distance with LOS if it was pointed toward me or not. At 100 yards I could actually tell where it was pointed, If it was pointed dead at me I could see the light. If it wasn't pointed at me the light wasn't visible. I'm glad I have the light, at least for now. I'm going to order an inexpensive shade as the gaffers tape was just hard to install and keep in place (I put two pieces, face-to-face so not sticky on the outside).

Later on I returned to my daughter's house, and comfortable that I could control this thing I flew it around the living room I had no difficulty controlling it, and liked it in the Cine mode for indoors. Never once did I think it was in danger of hitting something. I got a little practice in trying to adjust the gimbal as I would raise and lower the drone. It will take some work, but I think in a short while I should be able to master that.

As everyone said, the video footage is really good for what it is. I didn't go for anything spectacular or interesting. I just wanted to see it function and get some basic samples to view the image quality. In a short while, when maneuvering this thing becomes second nature I'll start thinking about creative shots. Yeah, it's a little sharp, but could be easily softened a bit in DaVinci Resolve.

I did not try any of the "quickshot" functions. I don't even know are there... Dronie, Helix and something else??? I dunno. Maybe one day. But they aren't as appealing to me as to some. Maybe I'm wrong and I'll find out when I go to test them.

In spite of it's size this is definitely not a toy. Again, I cannot believe the difference in feel between the EX4 and MM. While the EX4's body is heftier, in comparison to the MM, the ability to control the EX4 is much more toy-like and at times uncontrollable, which was the reason for an earlier thread asking if a MA2 was less likely to crash than the MM. All I can say is that the MM isn't likely to crash IF YOU KEEP IT WITHIN ITS PARAMETERS, being aware of wind, weather, battery charge, range and nearby obstacles. In other words it handled far more solidly than I had expected. I'm sure there will be things I'll remember later on, but that's it for now.

I want to thank the folks on this forum that held my hand and helped with advice as I crawled my way into the first flight.
Thank you all so much.

 

[lannes]

With the MM, try and fly into the wind on the outward leg, so that you can come back with a tailwind.
The tailwind will help get the MM back if the wind gets stronger, flying out with the wind will mean the MM will be fighting a headwind on the way back and it's not that powerful to overcome strong winds

When flying inside, make the area as bright as possible (windows open, lights on) this will allow the vertical positioning system to work most effectively. This is important when you don't have great GPS signal indoors.
Also always fly will propeller cages indoors as the uncovered blades can easily hurt someone

 

[itsneedtokno]

So at the bottom of the fly app screen, the drone orientation is shown.

In case you didn't know! ?

 

[vindibona1]

So at the bottom of the fly app screen, the drone orientation is shown.

In case you didn't know! ?

I knew. I had no abilityt to see the screen with the EX4 so for $6 I put a 9 gram LED light on the front just in case. It was helpful at the distance I was flying as I didn't need to be in my phone to know what it was doing. My experience with the EX4 was pretty awful and made me a bit gun shy. I just watched the few seconds of what I recorded with the EX4 and even in hover it just wandered around. The MM just stays in one place, rock solid position. No comparison. I can't imagine what the MA2 is like. Some day, if this hobby takes.

Edit: P.S. ( I knew there would be something I forgot)... Knowing that at any distance the MM would be a speck in the sky. I premptively bought a cheap pair of 10x binoculars for $10. Were they helpful? Somewhat, I think. I only mention this because for that little money the binocs are surprisingly quite good. I would expected a toy, but these are solid and seem to be better than the price point would indicated. Here's the link for anyone who thought they might want/need some.
Cheap but good binoculars on Amazon