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are you afraid to fly your SPARK
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12576 155 2017-7-25
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Charles Adams
First Officer
Flight distance : 3821312 ft
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United States
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I don't fear flying my spark.  And I'm still flying over water (if it ditches, I won't be able to retrieve it).  But what I lack is confidence.  I want confidence in myself and in my equipment.  I have confidence in myself.  I've practiced various scenarios so that in case something unexpected happens I'll have some experience to react to the situation and handle it appropriately.  But do I have confidence in my equipment?  Am I certain that my drone will not experience a sudden loss of propulsion or power?  No.  I lack that confidence.  I am nervous every time I fly over water.  That's my choice, I admit.  But I bought the drone expecting to have confidence in the equipment.
2017-8-11
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Bobesh
lvl.4
Flight distance : 270840 ft
Czechia
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Mine dropped from 100m today :/
2017-8-11
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CoreyB10
Captain
Flight distance : 1665023 ft
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United Kingdom
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All latest FW and no issues at all. Took it to Lanzarote last week - got back yesterday and had a blast with it. Especially sport mode on the beach.
2017-8-12
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Retroglide08
lvl.1
Flight distance : 13015 ft
United Kingdom
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Bobesh Posted at 2017-8-11 12:49
Mine dropped from 100m today :/

What were the circumstances? Distance, height, surroundings etc?
2017-8-12
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fans5713abc7
lvl.1
South Africa
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I'm flying mine. Although switched to beginner mode and hopefully won't get any issues flying it as such
2017-8-12
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HoracioChavez
lvl.1
Flight distance : 6407 ft
Mexico
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Mine dropped from 91m...
2017-8-12
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alan1206
lvl.1
Flight distance : 119934 ft
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Hong Kong
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luckily i am in open area to test my spark. otherwise it is in the aea already
2017-8-12
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alan1206
lvl.1
Flight distance : 119934 ft
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Hong Kong
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Charles Adams Posted at 2017-8-11 08:07
I don't fear flying my spark.  And I'm still flying over water (if it ditches, I won't be able to retrieve it).  But what I lack is confidence.  I want confidence in myself and in my equipment.  I have confidence in myself.  I've practiced various scenarios so that in case something unexpected happens I'll have some experience to react to the situation and handle it appropriately.  But do I have confidence in my equipment?  Am I certain that my drone will not experience a sudden loss of propulsion or power?  No.  I lack that confidence.  I am nervous every time I fly over water.  That's my choice, I admit.  But I bought the drone expecting to have confidence in the equipment.

i always fly over water with my p4 and mavic. i lost confident with spark. i saw mine sudden fall down for 1-2m on openspace area for test flight. so scary.
2017-8-12
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Bobesh
lvl.4
Flight distance : 270840 ft
Czechia
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Retroglide08 Posted at 2017-8-12 08:05
What were the circumstances? Distance, height, surroundings etc?

See here https://forum.dji.com/thread-108591-1-1.html

- No interferences (radio towers, power lines...)
- In the forest
- Clear line of sight

The drone just suddenly cut the power, started falling and sort-of booted up and tried to mitigate the fall but it was too late.
2017-8-13
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Doobry
lvl.3
Flight distance : 394800 ft
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United Kingdom
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Probably going to regret typing this tonight but I haven't had any issues with mine other than overly sensitive controls..
2017-8-13
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Charles Adams
First Officer
Flight distance : 3821312 ft
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United States
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Another weekend at the lake, another flawless flight.  I have been real concerned with the reported drops, but my spark keeps performing great.
2017-8-13
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Frangu
lvl.3
Flight distance : 19849 ft
United States
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forced landing and fly away today
2017-8-13
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fans78376957
lvl.4
United States
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Got 2 of my drones insured through State Farm for 75 a year so that gives me a piece of mind when flying.
2017-8-13
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Fabic
First Officer
Brazil
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Yes, I am a beginner, and I was very frustrated when I learned that in spark they did not enable the couse lock (headless) function ...
I should have bought another machine
2017-8-14
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Oracle Miata
Captain
Flight distance : 3759829 ft
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United States
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I adore my Spark, and intended on grounding it when I got my Mavic.  That has not happened.  I really enjoy flying the Spark.  It's just fun.
2017-8-14
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Charles Adams
First Officer
Flight distance : 3821312 ft
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United States
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I keep flying it, even with the reports.  A lot of my flights are in areas where I am certain I can retrieve the spark in the event of some failure, and I fly with absolutely no reservations.  The exception is the lake.  I keep flying there too, but each flight causes some anxiety (that's my choice), and I breath a sigh of relief every time I land.
2017-8-14
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PercyJ
lvl.1
Flight distance : 117677 ft
United States
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I don't have DJI care, but I did some research and purchased a policy for $60 from state farm...

Firmware: Every few flights i'll get a "Firmware mismatch" error. It will then "finish" the firmware upgrade from 98%, then ask me to restart the drone

2017-8-14
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Zviratko
lvl.1
Flight distance : 1401 ft
Czechia
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It's good to be afraid when operating a drone, keeps you concentrated and thinking.

But yes, I am quite afraid that one day I'll turn the Spark on, let it lift off and it will just fly somewhere on its own. It's happened to me before with my DIY drone with GPS - the GPS module had a loose wire which caused it to reset, and when that happened during flight it also triggered some bug in the control software.
This meant that I took off with home position "unset", effectively 0°00'00.0"N 0°00'00.0"E. This also meant that when it happened during flight, drone switched to RTH mode and went full speed away to that location - luckily straight into a bush. Were it not for the bush it could have gotten 20km away somewhere then dropped like a rock. (true that Spark would have avoided the bush and screwed me much more )

Drones have come a long way, DJI Spark is another beast completely, but it still runs software, and it will always have bugs.
But cars also have software (with bugs). Airplaines also have software (with bugs), your electricity company uses software for management - and (surprise) it will have bugs, yet you don't see crashed cars/aircraft everyday, and your electricity works.
The better question is how likely you are to trigger this bug - even if we had, say, 200 people on this forum whose drone flew away or dropped from the sky, it's still but a fraction of the number of drones that fly every day.
And people coming here either
1) were registered and coming here already, thus we can infer they probably fly more than your average guy
2) had this issue happen and came here to share/complain/find solutions
neither I think represents the average user who bought it to take snaps on a holiday and has a drone more as a novelty....

However! People do stupid things with drones, like flying over people, near highways, close to electricity lines and so on. If this issue exists and has a more than negligible probability of occuring, then DJI should tell us - so far I've seen no explanation, no disclosure, no alert from them. I'm wondering what would happen if we reported those issues to the NTSB...
2017-8-14
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Ken-Rick
lvl.3
Flight distance : 18898 ft
Netherlands
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The more experience the less scary
2017-8-15
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JoeCec
First Officer
Flight distance : 3491430 ft
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United States
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2017-8-15
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JoeCec
First Officer
Flight distance : 3491430 ft
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United States
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2017-8-15
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Jose Ramos
Second Officer
Flight distance : 72825 ft
Portugal
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I'm always extremely anxious every time I fly my Spark, due to all the horror stories. I had no idea that the Drone market had not matured yet enough to the point of consumer drones being dummy proof, so I feel I have been deceived by Dji with false advertising.

Meanwhile, I have had ZERO problems flying my Spark, in terms of not having falls or flyaways. I paid a lot of money for this piece of technology, to enrich my photographer activity, so it either allows it or does not. I've been flying it with moderate/strong winds, over lakes, over the ocean etc. For security reasons (and laws), I don't let it go out of my sight, so I usually don't go farther than 100-150m.
2017-8-30
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agonzarn
lvl.3
Flight distance : 84993 ft
United States
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Mine is gone as of today! Hopefully I will hear something positive from DJI after the review.  
2017-8-30
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Raadje
New
Flight distance : 4482 ft
Netherlands
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Mine flew away. Due to lost signal the Spark came back. All of my hairs grew grey in minutes!
2017-8-31
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Maxi3D
Captain
Flight distance : 307621 ft
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United States
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Of course, I am afraid to fly my Spark and my other copters also. Every time I fly there is a chance of it not coming back. One needs to calculate the risk vs reward. I just flew my Sparky during the solar eclipse, I took a risk and the reward was great.
2017-8-31
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Centraltooth
Second Officer
Flight distance : 76539 ft
Thailand
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I am seeing reports of Sparks flying away and dropping out of the sky almost daily now, either from the forums, youtube or facebook groups. The fear of losing my Spark every time I fly is real
2017-8-31
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Tekn1que
lvl.1
Flight distance : 186401 ft
United States
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Nope. Flight# 10 coming up!
2017-9-1
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Hotlush
lvl.1
Flight distance : 100367 ft
United Kingdom
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Wary, rather than scared.

My experience has been using remote+phone+otg has been fine.
Any other control method and it acts "strange".

Gesture only I struggled to get it to land and haven't used that since.
Remote only and it flew off in to a tree.
2017-9-1
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fans8f24fed8
lvl.3
United States
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Whenever I go to fly my spark I set it in the same take off spot I used to fly my Phantom 2 Vision which I never had GPS or connection problems but with the Spark I keep losing GPS and having connection problems.
That's a bad sign right from the get go so I don't even lift off.
2017-12-31
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djiuser_mxp7X0b
lvl.1
Flight distance : 5272 ft
United Kingdom
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fansdaf36ddd Posted at 2017-7-25 14:06
I have logged 112 flights with zero issues.  And I'm not going easy on it.  Great little drone in my opinion.

Apple IOS owner?
2017-12-31
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spookster
Captain
Flight distance : 419649 ft
Germany
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No worries on my end. Spark works as expected for me. Since it is so small I don't let it fly away to far and so far did not have any connection issues.
2017-12-31
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heliman
First Officer
Denmark
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I still prefer to avoid flying over water. In particular if it is sea water.
I have had several motor stops on my rc helicop†ers during the years. They are not made of cheap stuff eitther.

Otherwise I feel confident in the spark. Except I don’t trust tripod mode in tight spaces, because the speed 5-doubles if
it suddenly decides to change to atti mode. I would much feel safer if I could force atti on and let it stay there.
I haver never used the prop guards, but will try to remember bringing them for next tight-space surprise.

Oops! - correcting myself. When popping from tripod mode to atti mode, the speed increase is not 5-, but 13-doubled.
Or so.

2017-12-31
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massipos

Italy
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Love my Spark, no kind of any issues since today. Got it from first days in november.
2017-12-31
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nmac
First Officer
Flight distance : 256 ft
United States
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After yesterday Yes.
2017-12-31
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eYeSkYeYe
Captain

Croatia
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I am not scared nor worried when flying Spark. It's DJI GO app that sucks as well as DJI policy of babysitting grown up man but with a bit of tweaking it's rock solid flyer.
2017-12-31
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sSkyPilot
First Officer
Flight distance : 311089 ft
United States
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Yes... 1 degrees outside... Can't fly till maybe April here. Still, I hope my spark/software isn't plagued.
2017-12-31
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