My appologies if this is redundant information, I just wanted to share a few things I've discovered in the short time I've owned my Mavic.

I received a private pilot's licence several years ago. Pilots are put through various life saving exercises in the event of situations such as loss of fuel or an engine out. To me it's just as important as a drone pilot. After a few insidents I experienced as a new drone pilot, I decided to put myself through these maneuvers in the event of any real life situation such as described below.

For starters, I have found it necessary during RTH flights, especially during situations involving low light, to press the red X on your viewing device during the return to home maneuver (which then displays the "YES or NO" option). I do this well before it begins its landing sequence. I've experienced, on at lease three occasions, where my MPP would have landed in the wrong LZ; two of which were on top of my house :-(

Having the "Yes" option at the ready during a decent, as opposed to the X, leaves only one touch of the screen to halt the RTH sequence, thus avoiding a major catastrophe (learned the hard way). The drone simply stops at the altitude its at when the "YES" is pressed, giving the PIC total control of the landing.

I fly mostly with Dji Goggles for the immersion experience, and with the HUD its easier to keep up with signal strength, battery life, distance from home, etc. without having to look down at your viewing device, thus taking your "eyes off your drone", so I rarely use RTH.

I stress this because during one of my first flights, I looked down at my phone, which was on map view, to get a layout of my surroundings. When I looked back up, my drone was nowhere in sight. Aperently I had held the drone in a climb attitude the whole time I was looking at the map. My first inclination was that I had crashed. I moved the right stick forward and detected movement so I knew I was still in the air so I simply hit RTH.

By this time I had walked several hundred feet away from where I had taken off, not knowing I needed to set a new home. The next message I received was an obstacle warning, unable to land, yet I still didnt have a visual. Being a newbie, I simply flew the drown over my current pision depicted by the "blue dot" on the map displayed on my phone, and started a desent. It seemed like forever then out of nowhere my drone apeared directly overhead. Looking at the flight data later, I had assended to 500 feet AGL which to my eyesight the little drone was undetectable. Fortunately I landed the drone without insident.

Preflight should be a habit. Checking the overall condition of your aircraft, its fuel (battery) level, and communications systems. Another important prefilight check is weather.

When I first purchased mt MPP, after a few short flights, I decided to venture out to near the signal boundries (I know, hey yall watch this). To my surprise, I was able to travel a great distance in a short amount of time. Upon returning to home however, I found that my drone's GS was extremely slow compared to the flight over. My first thought was "I forgot to check the wind speed!".  I knew the wind would be a lot less if I dropped to a lessor altitude, but doing so would cause me to lose signal. My only choice was to locate an LZ while I was still in full control of the aircraft and imitate a landing.

After that experience, I decided that practicing emergency landings for the purpose of proving the system is, in my opinion, good practicve. On one such practicve mission, my objective was to run the battery down past my preset "RTH" level of 25 %, to the my preset "auto land" level of 10%. I stayed within range of the remote and my LZ. When the first low battery warning sounded I simply opted to keep flying but decended from 50 meters to 1 meter AGL. The LZ I chose was an open field adjacent to a road, which I managed to get very close to before the Mavic's control system took over, landing on it's own when it reached 10%. A note to remember is that the MPP will autoland at low batttery, even in forward motion. Fortunately for me, I was simply creeping along the ground, inching my way towards the road (I was trying to avoid a long walk LOL). Had I not slowed to a crawl however, the outcome could have been much different, especially had I been full throttle in sport mode. I would like comformation on the landing during forward motion...something for another test

Anyway,  I then jumped in my vehicle and following the "blue" dot icon, as opposed to the "red aircraft" icon when flying. I drove directly to the drone. It was sitting exactly where I expected it to be, with strobes still flashing, i was smiling.

In retrospect, I feel I should have had a spotter positioned at the LZ to ensure my drone wasn't carried off by a curious canine hehe.

Our (me and a spotter this time) next experiment will be to fly to a predetermined location, land, and then take off. I've tried this in the past and the landing went well,  however the drone failed to take off again due to, i'm guessing here, weak signal. Therefore I need to know if it's even possible.

This next mission will be flown from a higher ASL than the LZ as before, in hopes of maintaining signal strength. The LZ is approximately 3 miles distance with no follage or man made obstructions. I hope to reach the LZ, desend to about 5 meters AGL, rotate 360 degrees for obstacle avoidance, then do a quick touch and go.

If this proves successful, our followup mission will be to take the drone through another low battery landing, have a spotter to shut the system down completely after touchdown, change to a fresh battery, reenergize the system, and see if I'll be able to reconnect, establish my home position, then take off and fly back.

As I mentioned earlier, I once flew general aviation aircraft. Keep in mind that the limit of 500 AGL is to protect pilots who are allowed to decend as low as 1000 feet AGL during flight over unpopulated areas. A Mavic traveling at 40 mph meeting the windshield of an aircraft traveling in oposite directions could be fatal. An even worse case would be an ultralight aircraft, often without windshields, that are allowed to fly at any AGL. These are particularly vernable to drone impacts. The "big sky theory" is sometimes the only thing that keep aircraft from coliding. "See and be seen is the name of the game" There are many apps available that show aircraft positions and altitudes.

happy flying

My appologies if this is redundant information, I just wanted to share a few things I've discovered in the short time I've owned my Mavic.

I received a private pilot's licence several years ago. Pilots are put through various life saving exercises in the event of situations such as loss of fuel or an engine out. To me it's just as important as a drone pilot. After a few insidents I experienced as a new drone pilot, I decided to put myself through these maneuvers in the event of any real life situation such as described below.

For starters, I have found it necessary during RTH flights, especially during situations involving low light, to press the red X on your viewing device during the return to home maneuver (which then displays the "YES or NO" option). I do this well before it begins its landing sequence. I've experienced, on at lease three occasions, where my MPP would have landed in the wrong LZ; two of which were on top of my house :-(

Having the "Yes" option at the ready during a decent, as opposed to the X, leaves only one touch of the screen to halt the RTH sequence, thus avoiding a major catastrophe (learned the hard way). The drone simply stops at the altitude its at when the "YES" is pressed, giving the PIC total control of the landing.

I fly mostly with Dji Goggles for the immersion experience, and with the HUD its easier to keep up with signal strength, battery life, distance from home, etc. without having to look down at your viewing device, thus taking your "eyes off your drone", so I rarely use RTH.

I stress this because during one of my first flights, I looked down at my phone, which was on map view, to get a layout of my surroundings. When I looked back up, my drone was nowhere in sight. Aperently I had held the drone in a climb attitude the whole time I was looking at the map. My first inclination was that I had crashed. I moved the right stick forward and detected movement so I knew I was still in the air so I simply hit RTH.

By this time I had walked several hundred feet away from where I had taken off, not knowing I needed to set a new home. The next message I received was an obstacle warning, unable to land, yet I still didnt have a visual. Being a newbie, I simply flew the drown over my current pision depicted by the "blue dot" on the map displayed on my phone, and started a desent. It seemed like forever then out of nowhere my drone apeared directly overhead. Looking at the flight data later, I had assended to 500 feet AGL which to my eyesight the little drone was undetectable. Fortunately I landed the drone without insident.

Preflight should be a habit. Checking the overall condition of your aircraft, its fuel (battery) level, and communications systems. Another important prefilight check is weather.

When I first purchased mt MPP, after a few short flights, I decided to venture out to near the signal boundries (I know, hey yall watch this). To my surprise, I was able to travel a great distance in a short amount of time. Upon returning to home however, I found that my drone's GS was extremely slow compared to the flight over. My first thought was "I forgot to check the wind speed!".  I knew the wind would be a lot less if I dropped to a lessor altitude, but doing so would cause me to lose signal. My only choice was to locate an LZ while I was still in full control of the aircraft and imitate a landing.

After that experience, I decided that practicing emergency landings for the purpose of proving the system is, in my opinion, good practicve. On one such practicve mission, my objective was to run the battery down past my preset "RTH" level of 25 %, to the my preset "auto land" level of 10%. I stayed within range of the remote and my LZ. When the first low battery warning sounded I simply opted to keep flying but decended from 50 meters to 1 meter AGL. The LZ I chose was an open field adjacent to a road, which I managed to get very close to before the Mavic's control system took over, landing on it's own when it reached 10%. A note to remember is that the MPP will autoland at low batttery, even in forward motion. Fortunately for me, I was simply creeping along the ground, inching my way towards the road (I was trying to avoid a long walk LOL). Had I not slowed to a crawl however, the outcome could have been much different, especially had I been full throttle in sport mode. I would like comformation on the landing during forward motion...something for another test

Anyway,  I then jumped in my vehicle and following the "blue" dot icon, as opposed to the "red aircraft" icon when flying. I drove directly to the drone. It was sitting exactly where I expected it to be, with strobes still flashing, i was smiling.

In retrospect, I feel I should have had a spotter positioned at the LZ to ensure my drone wasn't carried off by a curious canine hehe.

Our (me and a spotter this time) next experiment will be to fly to a predetermined location, land, and then take off. I've tried this in the past and the landing went well,  however the drone failed to take off again due to, i'm guessing here, weak signal. Therefore I need to know if it's even possible.

This next mission will be flown from a higher ASL than the LZ as before, in hopes of maintaining signal strength. The LZ is approximately 3 miles distance with no follage or man made obstructions. I hope to reach the LZ, desend to about 5 meters AGL, rotate 360 degrees for obstacle avoidance, then do a quick touch and go.

If this proves successful, our followup mission will be to take the drone through another low battery landing, have a spotter to shut the system down completely after touchdown, change to a fresh battery, reenergize the system, and see if I'll be able to reconnect, establish my home position, then take off and fly back.

As I mentioned earlier, I once flew general aviation aircraft. Keep in mind that the limit of 500 AGL is to protect pilots who are allowed to decend as low as 1000 feet AGL during flight over unpopulated areas. A Mavic traveling at 40 mph meeting the windshield of an aircraft traveling in oposite directions could be fatal. An even worse case would be an ultralight aircraft, often without windshields, that are allowed to fly at any AGL. These are particularly vernable to drone impacts. The "big sky theory" is sometimes the only thing that keep aircraft from coliding. "See and be seen is the name of the game" There are many apps available that show aircraft positions and altitudes.

happy flying