Who has has the guts to take it to the max.

[Droneteen]

Thanks, but it will be a while before I can afford that.
And from what I have read so far, it looks like I won't need it.

 

[rickw]

Got to love our new Christmas mavic drone pilots,5,10,15 post,wow our new DRONE POLICE,gotta love it

 

[lannes]

Thanks, but it will be a while before I can afford that.
And from what I have read so far, it looks like I won't need it.

Unfortunately find my drone can't be relied upon to work all the time, I use the trackimo as a back up/ failsafe

 

[m0j0]

Just stay there in the States and do your crazy stunts and do not come to Aus and have our country shut down as it is over there

Shut down? That's funny, can fly just about anywhere over here except places you logically shouldn't fly. Shut - down..LOL

 

[hammick]

I did it quite by accident on my second day of flying. I forgot to put the antennas up on the RC and also didn't realize that the max height and RTH height were in meters. So I set the max height and RTH height to 400 and then flew it out a reasonable distance. The controller disconnected and the drone when bye bye. I was sick in the gut. The wife went running in the direction I flew the drone with her binoculars in hand. About four minutes later while I was still frantically trying to get the RC to re-connect I heard the drone descending directly over me.

After it landed I determined that it went to the RTH height of 1,300' and then came back. That's why it took so long. Thankfully I was flying in a very remote area with little to no aircraft at that altitude. Thinking about i can't remember if it auto landed or if I was able to connect the RC and manually land it.

After that I started reading all I could about people having close calls and fly aways.

 

[Howcroft22]

Well, that time RTH did work after signal loss and then I did fly back manually after reconnecting. Problem was headwind and then the battery died before it reached me.

Does that count as a fail?

Nah. You at least has the ba**s to go for it.

 

[Mike4884]

Thanks. Sounds good to me. I've read the manual like four times. But I am not sure I can remember it all, yet. I still have a couple questions.
Why set it to hover in a forest?
Do they ever fail to do what I will program it to do?
Where do I get the find my drone app?

I wish they hadn't titled this about who has the guts? It made it sound dangerous, or something.

So if u were in a forest or somewhere where there were structures around u ... u would want it to hover because say u lose signal or low battery rth kicks in it wont rise up to predetermined rth altitude like it normally does and crash into the trees....it will just hover and find my drone is inside the dji go 4 app itself....i have android so it looks like this...i am running the hacked app but it will pretty much look the same.....also no the drone does not fail to do what i tell it to as far as critical things like this. I have been flying dji products since the 1st p1 great products never failed me....can they fail? Certainly. But i am very confident in the products

 

[Howcroft22]

I did it quite by accident on my second day of flying. I forgot to put the antennas up on the RC and also didn't realize that the max height and RTH height were in meters. So I set the max height and RTH height to 400 and then flew it out a reasonable distance. The controller disconnected and the drone when bye bye. I was sick in the gut. The wife went running in the direction I flew the drone with her binoculars in hand. About four minutes later while I was still frantically trying to get the RC to re-connect I heard the drone descending directly over me.

After it landed I determined that it went to the RTH height of 1,300' and then came back. That's why it took so long. Thankfully I was flying in a very remote area with little to no aircraft at that altitude. Thinking about i can't remember if it auto landed or if I was able to connect the RC and manually land it.

After that I started reading all I could about people having close calls and fly aways.

Yeah that’s crazy! I wish you could change the increments to feet instead of meters.

 

[Nathan Hoover]

RTH works really well in my experience. I was pretty nervous the first time I carefully tried it (Dec 2013, Phantom 2 Vision), and every DJI drone since (I've had more than 10 including work ones) has NEVER failed. That's just under 1000 flights. I don't use RTH in most flights but have tried it from close and far with each drone.

The Mavic is the most amazing of all: I was out over 22,000', 350' up, the other day and had 4 bars signal, perfect FPV. As others have said it's really important to understand all the details of how it works, all the settings, and consider the terrain and weather where you fly. I've never had a "Fly Away".

 

[toddellis]

... OR, just fly within VLOS and never worry about it.

 

[BD0G]

I do sometimes with Lichti Missions where the Mavic reception is blocked by tree's typically. The Mission completes as it has been uploaded to the drone. Its nice to know that the Mavic will return to the last waypoint (which is always placed above my takeoff location).

I have also tried turning the remote controller off and back on again to regain signal in an open area to simulate loss of signal. Mavic has done very well each time.

 

[whiskeylover]

I've had signal disconnect a few times. And every time that happened, my MP started flying towards me until it got closer and reconnected, at which time I cancelled RTH and continued flying.

 

[m0j0]

Unfortunately find my drone can't be relied upon to work all the time, I use the trackimo as a back up/ failsafe

You won't need a Trackimo unless you fly in hazardous conditions. Conditions where you probably shouldn't be flying anyway like around tall buildings or around mountains where your signal could be blocked. I'm on my 6th DJI with thousands of miles flown and I have never needed a tracking device. If you set it up the bird properly; know what you are doing and correctly setup return to home your chances of anything catastrophic happening resulting in the loss of your copter are negligible.

Yes I have flown my DJIs a countless number of times to the limit allowed the RTH to kick in and monitored their safe return. RTH works pretty flawlessly. To be honest where I fly, the Mavic rarely loses signal. I turn around because the battery level precipitates it, not because I lose signal. There is no interference over mesquite and coyotes. The Mavic is pretty stable. The more likely problems results from pilot error. Not the Mavic . Common ones seen here.

- not setting RTH properly
- not understanding the difference between video disconnect and TX disconnect
- flying behind obstacles
- flying through interference
- calibrating in a bad area introducing a bad calibration
- not understanding how to fly without GPS locks

 

[borislip]

One specific situation i'd suggest to be really careful about is losing your signal behind a mountain by going over the peak and then being stupid enough to start descending on the other side. Eventually you will get your signal blocked, you are likely to be already above your set RTH altitude, so guess what happens after RTH kicks in. If you've also happened to disable the forward collision sensors, the result is rather expectable. The bottom line is - be careful, know what you are doing.

 

[m0j0]

I forgot to put the antennas up on the RC and also didn't realize that the max height and RTH height were in meters. So I set the max height and RTH height to 400 and then flew it out a reasonable distance.

Oh crap!

set the max height and RTH height to 400 and then flew it out a reasonable distance. The controller disconnected and the drone when bye bye.

This is what I mean when I say proper setup is critical and knowing what you are doing is critical.

I After that I started reading all I could about people having close calls and fly aways.

What happened to you was what I call a "give-away" not a fly away. A series of bad actions that often times result in the loss of your quad.

 

[borislip]

...I forgot to put the antennas up on the RC and also didn't realize that the max height and RTH height were in meters...

I don't know why, but it did remind me the "Gimli glider". In any case, there was no RTH failure here, it did exactly what you told it to do, went to 400 meters, flew back to you, and landed.

 

[borislip]

What happened to you was what I call a "give-away" not a fly away. A series of bad actions that often times result in the loss of your quad.

The guy forgot to open the antennas and configures the craft to return at 400m altitude, which is WAY out of range with the antennas folded down. And yet it WASN'T a flyway after all. I'd say the RTH did a very good job.

 

[Howcroft22]

Today I tired it, after hearing everyone’s stories. I got out to 9727 feet and it was going in and out of RC signal. The return to home came on and I thought that was it. But then later while watching the video, I noticed it said return to home because it was only enough battery to get home. Not because it was totally out of RC range. I had been flying for a few minutes before I decided to try this. So I used up some battery before that. So I had more distance I could have gone. Next time I will hopefully breakthrough 2 mile mark, and max the range out!

 

[Droneteen]

So if u were in a forest or somewhere where there were structures around u ... u would want it to hover because say u lose signal or low battery rth kicks in it wont rise up to predetermined rth altitude like it normally does and crash into the trees....it will just hover and find my drone is inside the dji go 4 app itself....i have android so it looks like this...i am running the hacked app but it will pretty much look the same.....also no the drone does not fail to do what i tell it to as far as critical things like this. I have been flying dji products since the 1st p1 great products never failed me....can they fail? Certainly. But i am very confident in the products

Thanks. That should have been obvious to me. But I had not thought of it.

 

[DJinCleveland]

Thanks. Some of the stories here make it seem like it might not do what I set up. Has that ever happened? If it does not do what I programmed, what will it do? How can I find it? And parents want me to ask will it be safe? I'm sorry, about that, but I guess they are new to this too. And I guess it is kind of half theirs.

I don’t know what it would do. I’ve not experienced it doing anything other than what was programmed. While anything is possible, its possible that the few that have said it did did not have something set properly. My guess is the most likely possibility is it crashing from hitting something or from having a propeller come off. If you check your props and don’t count on the collision sensors, you should be ok. The obstacle avoidance is great, but if you are flying blindly counting on the obstacle avoidance, you’ll be disappointed.
Also, be aware of your surroundings, so if something does go wrong, you have a good possibility of finding it. Try avoiding places you don’t have access to. Use find my drone on the app