A few more tips:
You can find some repair shops here.
after 266 flights i had a major crash. I am not blaming DJI or anyone else. I am taking full responsibility for the crash. What I would like to know is why I got a ******** error that led up to this. Me and the old lady went up to the local mountains for a couple days to get away. I brought my Mavic to get some great shots of the scenery. I had my 3 batteries with me. The one that came with the Mavic hasn't been used for a bit because I use the newer ones more to get them somewhat even so it self discharged itself. It showed 2 solid lights and one blinking. I figured I would use this one to set up the camera and then swap out a fresh fully charged on for the actual flight. I took off, waited for the home point recorded message and headed out over the trees to get the camera adjusted. I stopped forward flight and climbed to clear some power lines then moved forward while still climbing. I was looking at my notes on camera settings when I heard the remote say "landing". I looked at the app and it said "Critical low power. Landing" I turned the Mavic around so it was facing me and then let go of both sticks and began to panic. I never had a forced landing before. I looked ant the batt info and it showed 53% and 4.6 volts. I saw a red X on the app so i tried pushing it several times hoping to cancel the auto landing but nothing. After I realized it was landing no matter what I pushed forward on the throttle hoping to get it near to me without looking at what direction it was heading. In my panic I didn't even think of looking at the video. In my haste to cancel the auto landing I must have bumped the stick and turned the Mavic away from me. Instead of heading back it went away from me. At a height of 55 feet and a speed of 22 mph it clipped the corner of the church across the street and fell to the ground. I found it upside down in the grass next to the church. 2 broke props, a piece of the rear corner broke off and the camera ripped off but still transmitting video.I powered it back up and the only error im getting is the gimble. All the motors still spin freely and it still captures GPS. Hopefully it is repairable because If I have to get a new one im not even going to bother. I don't know if I trust it anymore and with the problems some ppl are having with the newer firmwares I'm not interested in an updated model. The worst part of all this is that after reviewing the flight record if I just let it land and not move it at all it would have landed in a flat dirt area next to the church and probably been fine.I still want to know what caused this low power error?
One important thing I found with these batteries was constantly checking their health. Never used to do this till I had some erratic actions during a couple flights. I noticed I only saw this with one particular battery. Tried all kinds of things I learned from this forum and others. But what gave me the heads up and some insight was using the Airdata app and using their battery monitoring tools. I found the battery which was causing problems was having numerous major deviations on EVERY flight. I took it out of circulation and have not had an issue since. I now use the AirData tools regularily and have not had any further issues. It is now part of my regular maintenance plans. I dont know if there are other tools like this out there and I have no vested interest in this application/ company other than a user. But if you are not monitoring the health/ usage of these batteries you are asking for trouble. It basically is the beating heart of your system and should receive constant scrutiny.
It baffles me that someone would take the time to arrange a flight lesson yet not prepare for that lesson. It's not hard to make sure everything is charged and in good order the night before. At least the silver lining is they learnt a good lesson.
It was apparently just outside the default 'self discharge' time, and they got to learn that these batteries even do that, ha. People get busy though, i understand. Part of learning with drones is slowing down and being thorough.
Thunddrone he is fast, good, and will give you a fair quote before he does the work, I found him here on these forums. My camera came off just like yours after I flew it through a tree, but I could never find my camera. Good luck.
How do you manage 20mins? I land just before 30% capacity, and only get a little less than 13mins each. I’ve only flown 7 times, with 3 batteries since I got my Mavic last week.
Yes I think as soon as I get the spendable funds I will be sending it to him for repair.
Flight time depends a lot on flight style, e.g. it will decrease if you are flying mostly in sports mode or with hard manoevering. I always try to fly smoothly with slow motion of sticks and the Mavic is in motion most time instead of just hovering.
You can fly a while more with 30% battery. Just do your closer to home flying when the battery is getting low. I have my low battery warning set at 15% and pay closer attention to wind direction and battery life indicator at the top of the Go 4 display. IMHO the wind direction is the most important thing to pay attention to. Since the direction and speed is often different aloft I judge it by the Mavic speed shown on the display. If it is going faster than normal away from you then you have a tailwind so you will be fighting a headwind on the return trip.
This has been my experience (stick control but she's coming down). I recommend forcing this to happen in a wide open space in early training/practice.... more then once till it is second nature.
Hang in there I think they can help for reasonable price
Yeah I felt like my pet died when this happened. But it will be repaired and it will fly again with a somewhat "smarter" pilot at the controls this timeThis has been my experience (stick control but she's coming down). I recommend forcing this to happen in a wide open space in early training/practice.... more then once till it is second nature.
Also you opened discussion by taking responsibility - Great lesson for newbies, always take off with a full charge. If you need to take off a lot you likely need additional batteries... I am sorry your awesome MP and you had to learn this way but you know you love the thing and want another - try sending pix to DroneNerds and see what they say - they saved my butt once in my early days
