I've learnt a few lessons in the last couple of months of Mavic flying. I've noticed a lot of new flyers read the forum for tips before the drone arrives so I thought it might be helpful to summarise some of the lessons I've learnt (mostly through severe frights plus a couple of minor crashes). All of these have already been well stated before but maybe someone might find them helpful to have them gathered together.
- Don't fly indoors until you are very comfortable with flying outdoors with plenty of space and good GPS.
- Remember that in autonomous flight the drone won't necessarily respond to control imputs so you must know INSTANTLY how to disable autonomous mode and stop the drone.
- If the drone is drifting, even slightly, there's a problem. Don't put off calibrating the compass or whatever instructions you are given. Next time you might fly off in the wrong direction.
- Don't rush to take off before getting enough satellite fixes on the GPS.
- Don't rush to take off before checking the return to home location has been set.
- It takes much longer to stop if you're travelling fast in sport mode. Especially important if you are heading towards a tree!
- If you press return to home (RTH) and then en route you decide to take over control and bring it down to land it will then suddenly fly off when you release controls as it is still acting under your instruction to return to home. This can be very scary if you have brought it down with virtually no battery left. Remember to cancel return to home if you want to take over yourself.
- Remember to press the return to home (RTH) button and hold it down until it beeps otherwise it doesn't work.
- Be familiar with quickly accessing Home Lock. It is a very reassuring method for bringing the drone home if you've not sure where it is.
