I almost lost my week-old Mavic Pro tonight due to flying it around my house in the trees after having a couple beers with dinner.

Here near Seattle drones aren't allowed in any Bellevue city parks or King County parks except for two.  One has ridiculous fat old man RC club rules (check flight without GPS enabled, $75 annual membership, blah blah blah) and the other had the NW Regional Soccer Championship being set up.  I tried five different parks and schools after work and all were crowded with events.  So I went home dejected.  After a couple beers with dinner, what the heck I'll fly out of my front yard!  Yeah, I live 800' up an 1100' foot mountain with huge numbers of trees.  

Bad decision.  15 minutes of flying I'm bringing it home and end up flying into the 80' trees in my backyard.  I heard it fall through the branches and ran into the back but couldn't see it.  Then I spotted "something" flying in the air the other side of the trees and thought it was the Mavic barely staying in the air.  I could hear the motors, but it was not responding.  I rushed into the house to have my wife drive me around to see if we could find it.  The "find my drone" function on the DJI GO app said it was basically in my backyard still, but I didn't believe it.  Well, it actually was.  After a few minutes of driving around, I went back into the yard and figured out I could turn on the "make a sound" function and the drone started beeping.  It turns out when I saw "something" flying I was only three feet away from the Mavic lying in a planter box.  I'm sure you can understand the relief I felt to find it.

It fell 80' through branches with zero damage, not even a damaged prop.  Tough little bird!

Lucky you. I lost mine and could not locate it because I did not know how to activate the "find my drone" function or "make a sound function". BTW, please enlighten me so that I can learn in flying my next Mavic.

trees are not friends...

fansf95dd0d6 Posted at 2017-6-22 22:26
Lucky you. I lost mine and could not locate it because I did not know how to activate the "find my drone" function or "make a sound function". BTW, please enlighten me so that I can learn in flying my next Mavic.

I'll try to find a YouTube type walkthrough, but basically it's in the "hamburger" menu: the three horizontal bars in the upper left of the DJI GO app.  There's a "find my drone"" menu entry, and it's a Google Maps type direction to the last received position of the Mavic Pro.

Honestly I don't know how I found the "make a sound" entry.  It's somewhere in that "find my drone" flow, so I tapped it in DJI GO and the drone started beeping.

on my last meeting with a tree my battery fell out. good thing i had the drone in line of sight at day...

don't drink and fly you wouldnt want your pilot drinking and flying when you're on board just think of that

Lucky you were able to get the drone back. It is in fact a tough little bird. Always a good idea to be mindful where you fly and of course alcoholic beverages can be a big no no.

One hidden advantage of folding props is they are less likely to get snagged in the branches :-)