fans4287815f
lvl.3
Flight distance : 14196 ft
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Thanks for the replies guys.
Now I'm in a quandary again...
Mavic 2, Mavic Air, Mavic Pro or Spark?
Problem is I have multiple use-case scenarios...
I do ultralight back-packing, where I weigh everything to the gram. The Spark seems the obvious choice for that, and mostly I'd just be doing the odd "dronie' shot, up and away from my wife and me, or our campsite, or just up, spin around slowly for the view and down again. That's pretty much all I used the P3S for.
But...
It's also true to say the reason for such simple flying was the PS3's transmission range was pretty feeble. Any significant distance, a few hundred yards, and I'd get "Weak signal" messages, so I never felt confident doing much else anyway. This is partly as I'm not in America, so any drone will be in CE mode, not FAA, so transmission power and range are drastically reduced from DJI's claimed figures.
On the other hand I do really love the idea of doing some longer-range exploring, heading up the river to see if there's a better campsite, checking if the 4x4 trail ahead is washed out or where some side turning leads to, or just the fun of looking around the area. For that I need good range, both battery and transmission. The Spark would be useless for that.
The Mavic 2 though..? That price is just too much. I could literally buy 2 new and perfectly nice laptops for that money. My P3S once tried to fly away. I was demonstrating to the guy I sold it to how you have to wait for the "Home point recorded. Please check it on the map" message, and how to check it really is where you are. Then flew it away from us and turned off the controller to show how it would RTH. That was actually the first time I had ever used RTH but I was totally confident in it.The crazy thing then headed for the previous RTH from the week prior, heading for some hills about 30 miles away! Happily I was able to turn the controller back on, stop it, turn it around and bring it back, but that episode has put a serious dent in how much money I'm willing to throw at a drone! I just don't, cannot, trust the RTH if signal is lost.
In my personal experience it has a 100% failure rate!
So Mavic Air? Pretty much as light as the Spark, actually smaller packing size... But no Occusync or Lightbridge, just Wifi like my old Standard?
I guess my main question is how does the Mavic Air's transmission range compare to the P3S, under CE regs, in the real world?
Or, since I'm not really seriously into the videography stuff, should I just go for the original Mavic Pro, giving me the range I want for the price of the Air? But it's a lot heavier...
Argh!
Mmm, writing this post is helping me think actually... How about a plain Spark, no controller, for the little up-spin-down or dronie selfie stuff when hiking, and a Mavic Pro for the truck/boat? Or am I being ridiculous now?
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