So... why is the Mavic AIr so easy to fly...? And so why do people crash them?

The new drones such as the Air are pure fly-by-wire. The pilot isn't commanding thrust, or direction, or roll - they are commanding a climb rate or a yaw rate or a sway rate.

In mode 2:
Just hold the right hand stick (called "roll" although it actually isn't) full left and the aircraft will move to the left, after accelerating it will move left at a constant rate.. It isn't actually continuously increasing roll; what is being commanded is a "sway" to the left at a specific rate. The aircraft will roll to the left  to be able to produce the "sway" rate required, but once that move to the left, the "sway" rate has been achieved the aircraft won't keep rolling left; it will maintain it's flight attitude, about 20 degrees left "wing" down. It will also increase the power to the motors as the lift vector is no longer vertical; thus more power is required to maintain height. The reason it maintains height is that the left stick, which command "surge" or rate of change of height, is commanding constant height.
Similarly for right stick forward (called "pitch" although it should be called "surge").  And so on.

And this is good; it's very easy to fly; but... when things aren't right then the pilot has to be able to take control when things are degraded.

And that needs to be understood by DJI drone pilots.

An aircraft or ship moves in six degrees of freedom; three of them are rotational, these are roll, pitch and yaw, the others are not rotational, they are surge, which is forward/back, heave which is up/down, and sway which is left/right. So the left stick in mode 2 moved forward/backward is commanding a rate of heave (up/down). The right stick, moved left/right is commanding a rate of sway. With two sticks, only four of the six degrees of freedom can be commanded. What isn't directly commanded on a DJI MA are roll and pitch. The aircraft will decide what roll and pitch are required to meet the requirements of sway and surge.

So why is this important? Because in GPS mode, if the sticks are central then no yaw, surge, sway or heave is being commanded and the aircraft will remain stationary. But if the aircraft isn't in GPS mode then it at low heights can control it's height so the surge will be zero. Similarly, the internal compass will keep working, so their will be no yaw. If there are obsticles in front of the aircraft or behind it, it will not move forward or back, so no surge. But there are no sensors left and right, so there is nothing to prevent sway - i.e. drifting left and right. And how many videos have we seen where a DJI aircraft drifts left or right into a wall or building?

Again - this is what needs to be understood by DJI pilots.

Comments please.

There is no substitute for lots of practice manually commanding the drone even if not trying to take pictures.

Pure familiarity with the controls cones from visual flying.

brianoflondon Posted at 2018-4-20 22:10
There is no substitute for lots of practice manually commanding the drone even if not trying to take pictures.

Pure familiarity with the controls cones from visual flying.

Unfortunately the DJI Mavic Air cannot be truly manually flown. What would be very beneficial would be the ability to manually use ATTI mode instead of GPS mode so that the pilot could practice flying in ATTI mode in an open space.

I don’t think there is any need to make things more complicated by rewriting the manual.

How ever if you lose gps aircraft will pitch forward and backwards as obstacle sensors will be turned off as without gps your MavAir will be in Atti mode.

I think below is a more simple way to understand controls.

Pitch roll

* Plus Pitch – Move Forward
* Minus Pitch – Move Backward
* Plus Yaw – Turn Right
* Minus Yaw – Turn Left
* Plus Roll – Move Right
* Minus Roll – Move Left
* Plus Throttle – Stand Taller
* Minus Throttle – Crouch

Regarding Atti mode, yes from a practice point of view it would be nice to practice, but if you want true Atti mode without aircraft holding its height and no simple switch back to gps mode then purchase a cheap €50 drone, now that would be true attitude mode.
With all dji craft now when gps is lost Atti is auto, which is a much safer option, because if gps returns then it will also be auto.

I also fear that if we had Atti switch in these consumer drones used mostly by hobbyists and complete newbies, we would see many more crashes and worse more accidents to people and property.

Aloha Parrot,

     Can you rewrite your functionality summary when you are flying in FPV mode?

Aloha and Drone On!