Yesterday when I was taking off, I put both controls down and in a little for takeoff. It spun up and showed take off on the screen, but did not lift off. Just sat there spinning. I tried it many more times the same thing happened. So I pressed take off mode and it went up fine. Am I doing something wrong at take off manually.
Also it flew fine it advertised up to 5 miles in distance but I reached about 3/4 of a mile and it was losing signal on the video, is this normal (there was a lot of trees between me and the drone)  or does it need to be open and clear no trees. Also I got this Mavic Pro used so the battery is not new was able to fly it about 18 minutes. Maybe part of it is the battery is not new.
Thanks

Will quick question. After you started the Mavic with both sticks down toward center did you then push the left stick up to take off?.

After starting manually the Mavic will just sit there until you push the left stick up to take off.

Auto takeoff does all the work for you as it starts up and fly to a hover .

Enjoy the MP and I hope I might of helped with your problem.

Forgot to mentioned the battery would not cause the problem. If battery is bad the App would let you know and would not let you take off at all.

Hello and good day kaustin6. I am sorry for the trouble and thank you for reaching out. May we know if the DJI Mavic Pro's controller is set on mode 2 when you initiated this procedure? With regards to the signal loss issue. Can you please fly you drone to a different location to test if the issue will still persist? Please check the location where you are flying your drone if there are metal structures that can interfere with the signals of the drone. In addition I will be posting an official DJI tutorial video on Remote Controller Antenna Best Practices. Please keep us posted on the said issue for us to be able to help you further. Thank you.