Newbie questions after two Mavic Air flying questions

[4Props]

1. Today was my second day of flying and I got a CPU overload message when my Air, Steve, was 300ft overhead ... within a minute I got the dreaded death spiral on my iPhone and it crashed. I thought WTF#! Then I calmed myself thinking that if I press the return to home button on the remote Steve should return to home .. I pressed it repeatedly but nothing happened. Steve was still sitting way up there at 300ft. Next I thought to restart both the controller and my phone ... amazingly I managed to reestablish connection to Steve and right about the same time the low battery was flashing and return to home was activated and Steve returned safely thank goodness! Everything happened in a freezy ... in this situation what is the recommended procedure to bring your Air back safely?

2. I suspect that the triggering event that led to my phone to crash was an incoming text message. I'm guessing that I could put my phone in airplane mode to avoid any interruptions .. is this commonly done? What I the downside to this?

3. I crank my iPhone up to full brightness in order to see it in broad daylight but this causes the battery to drain pretty quickly ... today I found myself topping up the phone with my 20,000 mAmp usb charging brick every time I replaced the drone battery. The screen is still not very bright. And I would prefer it to be larger. Any recommendations for a good bright tablet with good battery life to connect to my remote?

P.S. The day ended safely and I managed to get a couple of good shots (attached) of the outskirts of Leesburg, VA.

 

[Travisimo]

1. Today was my second day of flying and I got a CPU overload message when my Air, Steve, was 300ft overhead ... within a minute I got the dreaded death spiral on my iPhone and it crashed. I thought WTF#! Then I calmed myself thinking that if I press the return to home button on the remote Steve should return to home .. I pressed it repeatedly but nothing happened. Steve was still sitting way up there at 300ft. Next I thought to restart both the controller and my phone ... amazingly I managed to reestablish connection to Steve and right about the same time the low battery was flashing and return to home was activated and Steve returned safely thank goodness! Everything happened in a freezy ... in this situation what is the recommended procedure to bring your Air back safely?

2. I suspect that the triggering event that led to my phone to crash was an incoming text message. I'm guessing that I could put my phone in airplane mode to avoid any interruptions .. is this commonly done? What I the downside to this?

3. I crank my iPhone up to full brightness in order to see it in broad daylight but this causes the battery to drain pretty quickly ... today I found myself topping up the phone with my 20,000 mAmp usb charging brick every time I replaced the drone battery. The screen is still not very bright. And I would prefer it to be larger. Any recommendations for a good bright tablet with good battery life to connect to my remote?

P.S. The day ended safely and I managed to get a couple of good shots (attached) of the outskirts of Leesburg, VA.

1) When the DJI Go app crashes (or consequently from your phone crashing), the drone will continue to operate and you continue to have control of it with the controller. If you are within line of sight, you can fly it home safely yourself. If you are not, you can attempt to reconnect by restarting the phone or app. If that doesn't work, then you did the right thing by thinking of the RTH button.... BUT per the manual, you press and hold the RTH button to initiate Return to Home (and you press it again to cancel), so by pressing it multiple times, it probably just did not function. Obviously, when the battery gets low enough, it'll also return to home, so that was the function that saved you.

2) You can put the phone in airplane mode, but you will lose some functionality with the map and settings. Alternatively, you could use the Do Not Disturb feature, which will leave the radios on but will prevent either calls, texts, and notifications from interrupting (you can set these in the Do Not Disturb settings menu on the iPhone).

You can check out several other threads with recommendations for tablets. I just use my iPhone X and it works well even in sunlight (though it isn't the largest screen, admittedly). I just figure the main advantage of the Mavic Air is portability, so I don't want to use a tablet with it.

 

[4Props]

Excellent advice .. Thank you!

 

[msinger]

Next I thought to restart both the controller and my phone ... amazingly I managed to reestablish connection to Steve and right about the same time the low battery was flashing and return to home was activated and Steve returned safely thank goodness!

Keep in mind that the Mavic will auto initiate RTH three seconds after the remote controller disconnects from it. If that happens, you could cancel RTH by pressing the RTH button on the remote controller after it reconnects to the Mavic.

Any recommendations for a good bright tablet with good battery life to connect to my remote?

The DJI CrystalSky is one of the brightest devices available. DJI has a 1,000 nits and 2,000 nits model. If having a bright screen is very important, then it's an option to consider.

 

[4Props]

Thanks for the help .. would love to have one of those CrystalSky monitors but will need to save up!