Qualifications of MP in degraded conditions

[nikkolaa]

I was wondering so much, before to go one week in south africa, whether or not to bring it along, so each time I had an opportunity once on site I did not wonder too much anymore, and therefore experienced new degraded cases [emoji5]️
Worth to note my low experience (1h 10min of flight)..

Here's some of the waivers to basic rules I've made to actually fly, as I never had "perfect" conditions as during previous flights at home.

I just always took off only with sufficient GPS sats locked..

 

[nikkolaa]

First flight:

in private gamereserve after consentement of owner and in absence of other people except employees and our group.

First dérogation: from preflight checklist to landing 15min later, I'm "surrounded" by friends and reserve owner, curious about the "thing".

Second dérogation: I have magnetic interference and need to recalibrate compass, that I do not perform. I'll do it later I'm thinking at this point.

Dangers encountered:
I've been too closed to some tree top sometimes, mostly because mixing the throttles when talking at the same time..

Extension of flight experience: went beyond direct LOS after 2 minutes to seek animals in the domain, and high scored my max distance (700m)

Initial mitigation measure: mostly an open area with few groups of small trees and a forest in the end of domain, looked quite safe.

Instant step back: after 5min I landed manually, and moved for a place with direct LOS .

Return of experience : SLOWLY WITH THE FINGERS AND GIMBAL DUDE!! the video is beautiful when following running animals, but a manual repositioning is really hard to achieve without any assistance of intelligent modes (never tried yet).

I basically ran the three batteries that were around 50-60% each and landed each time when reaching 25%.

And here some footages:

 

[nikkolaa]

 

[nikkolaa]

 

[nikkolaa]

Second flight:
crazy thing, before I was looking for wild animals in the forest at the very end of the domain, more than 600m away, did not find anything..
Now we're leaving the camp by car and after 2min I spotted giraffes on our left!
We're taking pictures with the camera but they're 60m meters away above us, and I'm struggling about launching the MP to get some better video footage from above..

So I'm setting it up with the battery i think has the better charge, I'll have only one shot as they are already leaving the spot..

At switch on, battery is at 22%, and compass still needs to be recalibrated (but no magn interf this time).

The time to modify and lower the critical battery thresholds to delay RTH triggering, I'm at 20%.

I've done very short shots, and went back directly when hitting 15%, alarm was ringing all the time and just one second before the end of manual landing, auto RTH is triggered (set at 11%) but the manual manœuvre is ended so all good!!

See hereafter!!!

 

[nikkolaa]

 

[nikkolaa]

 

[TrayBoz]

Those are some great photos. I wish I could fly my mavic in an interesting place like Africa.

On my last flight I got some great video of a Costco and 6 pigeons.

 

[RayOZ]

Nice. Last I heard, Africa is a restricted place to fly drones unless you have proper permission/clearance.
I find animals tend to flee when they see people around, especially with buzzing device. I tried to do an intelligent flight mode on some cows, and they flee. The next time I tried, I was over 500m away, so the cows couldn't see me. I manage to do a nice 360 circle dronie shot of a cow. It just lazily stared at my drone as it flew around it. That was with a Spark, so not sure if i get the same reaction with a Mavic.

 

[nikkolaa]

Those are some great photos. I wish I could fly my mavic in an interesting place like Africa.

On my last flight I got some great video of a Costco and 6 pigeons.

This is what happened to me also usually at home, nothing more than hills, valley and forest!

It was definitely a good idea to bring it yes!

 

[nikkolaa]

Nice. Last I heard, Africa is a restricted place to fly drones unless you have proper permission/clearance.
I find animals tend to flee when they see people around, especially with buzzing device. I tried to do an intelligent flight mode on some cows, and they flee. The next time I tried, I was over 500m away, so the cows couldn't see me. I manage to do a nice 360 circle dronie shot of a cow. It just lazily stared at my drone as it flew around it. That was with a Spark, so not sure if i get the same reaction with a Mavic.

Yes this time it was after having discussed 20 good minutes with the owner, not it was difficult, more because he was really interested about getting one!

Further flights were not on private land so it was another part of the Südafrikan laws i tried to stick with! [emoji3]