Take Off Mid-Air?

Robert Granata · Mar 16, 2017

I think the motors turn off when it is upside down. When I clipped a table on my lawn with the tip of one prop, the mavic flipped over and before it hit the grass the motors had turned off. So if it is tumbling, I don't think it will start and it doesn't look aerodynamic enough to stay upright in freefall.

NinjaBlade · Mar 16, 2017

Robert Granata said:
I think the motors turn off when it is upside down. When I clipped a table on my lawn with the tip of one prop, the mavic flipped over and before it hit the grass the motors had turned off. So if it is tumbling, I don't think it will start and it doesn't look aerodynamic enough to stay upright in freefall.

That's what I was afraid of, besides the IMU and compass abnormality.
I don't know if the motors will spin up to full throttle with all that wind resistance.

SteveG · Mar 18, 2017

I saw video of this tried with a phantom dropped from a height from a large drone. It never stabilized enough to fly and burned into the ground fast!

BossBob · Mar 18, 2017

The Parrot minidrone that I bought to practice with while waiting 3 months for a Mavic has an option to launch by throwing it rather than taking off from a the floor. Not even thinking of doing this with a drone costing and weighing 10 times as much!

vinhidalgo · Mar 18, 2017

Will try something. I´ll post the results.

halley · Mar 18, 2017

NinjaBlade said:
As a reminder, DJI Care Refresh costs $90 + $80 for the first replacement. It's not a $1000 risk.

That would be straying pretty close into insurance fraud territory, and is why companies are so hesitant to offer insurance.

DJI will inspect the log file recorded internally in order to pay a DJI Refresh claim, and will see that there was a lot of gyroscopic activity on powerup. State Farm doesn't do any analysis but if they were able to figure out that you were intentionally throwing your equipment at the ground they should reject the claim.

Hellsbellsidaho · Mar 18, 2017

NinjaBlade said:
Has anyone tried throwing Mavic off a building, and take off before it hits the ground?

You must live in one of these states were pot is legal.

NinjaBlade · Mar 18, 2017

halley said:
That would be straying pretty close into insurance fraud territory, and is why companies are so hesitant to offer insurance.

DJI will inspect the log file recorded internally in order to pay a DJI Refresh claim, and will see that there was a lot of gyroscopic activity on powerup. State Farm doesn't do any analysis but if they were able to figure out that you were intentionally throwing your equipment at the ground they should reject the claim.

That's what insurance is for.

NinjaBlade · Mar 18, 2017

Hellsbellsidaho said:
You must live in one of these states were pot is legal.

Indeed.

fh.hillsboro · Mar 18, 2017

Kilrah said:
There's a whole thread about stopping and restarting the motors in flight, you might have a look at it since it's just the same stupid thing to do.

Hold my beer..... Watch this ...

Aerial Imaging Australia · Mar 19, 2017

Suggest it to Casey Neistat. He's loaded and gives zero sh1ts about his gear

Rennsport · Mar 19, 2017

Cannot be done. This is the future project of DJI.

The real life prototype does it but badly.

FordP · Mar 19, 2017

SteveG said:
I saw video of this tried with a phantom dropped from a height from a large drone. It never stabilized enough to fly and burned into the ground fast!

This?

SteveG · Mar 19, 2017

That's the one. Not a good result.

LivinLarge · Mar 19, 2017

Remember the Lily drone? It was supposed to be thrown to launch. After collecting millions of dollars, they have closed the project and delivered nothing. Having said that, it should be possible to power up a quad in a stable position, arm the motors, toss it and then raise the throttle to fly.

Stemiko · Nov 6, 2017

I've been wondering about this too.

It'd startup, and recover -if it's high enough. As a reader above mentioned, people have done mid-air power-offs followed by free-fall restarts, which is basically the same thing.

Adamcain112 · Nov 6, 2017

Mid air shut off and restart

KiterTodd · Nov 6, 2017

Gregp2016 said:
You must be joking........right??? No one in their right mind would throw a $1000 drone off a building to see if it would start and fly before it hit the ground.

You apparently don't watch YouTube.

I'm not saying they are in their right mind, but there's a video up every day that seems more ridiculous than this idea!

Back to the OP, I think it would work. Have an already powered up drone, connected to your controller, toss it, start it up, then left stick up! You first.