Sigmo
Second Officer
United States
Offline
|
I'm at 5150 feet elevation here. From the start, with the DJI prop guards in place, my drone has had very limited battery life and given max power errors. But something that I learned from a YouTube video is that supposedly DJI says you should not use the prop guards at any elevation over 1500 meters (4921 feet) which is a bit lower than where I am. So it isn't a surprise to me that my Mini struggles with the prop guards in place.
I also bought one of the PGYTECH prop cages to try. I weighed both the pair of DJI prop guards and the PGYTECH cage. The pair of DJI guards weigh in at 48.94 grams total. The PGYTECH cage weighs 61.96 grams. So it is a bit heavier than the DJI guards.
When I tried flying with the PGYTECH cage in place a while back, my Mini immediately went into an uncontrollable spin as soon as I lifted off. So I set it back down and set that cage aside. This was indoors.
I saw a couple of YouTube videos where a reviewer got an early copy of the Mini, and had problems with the drone dropping down to the ground as he was trying to fly at a fairly high elevation. He said that DJI worked with him, and they redesigned the prop blades and made a firmware update. When he tried the Mini again with the new blades and new firmware, he was able to fly well at a bit over 10,000 feet elevation.
So something I've wondered about my Mini is if it came with the old-style props or the new, improved, high elevation ones. Then I started seeing posts on here where people cured some "dropping" problems and the power warning problems by simply swapping all of their props for new ones out of their Fly More Combo kits. If there's something to that, it may be that some Minis were shipped with the "old style" blades, but got "new style" blades in their Fly More kits such that swapping them all out gave their drone the better designed blades.
The other night, I put all new prop blades on my Mini because I've read that this can help.
Out of curiosity, I flew my Mini tonight, indoors again, with the PGYTECH cage in place. It flew rather well for me now. So perhaps the blade-swap is really true.
I flew for quite some time, and the only problem I did have was when I flew into a room with a forced air furnace vent blowing down from the ceiling, and flew fairly close under it, I did again get the spinning action. So at my elevation with the extra-heavy PGYTECH cage installed, my Mini is right on the edge of its capability, even with the "new" prop blades.
Without the cage or prop guards in place, I think my Mini now has a reasonable margin of lift at my elevation.
What elevation are you at? Do you have enough spare prop blades to swap them all?
What firmware/software version are you running? And have you made sure all of your batteries are also updated so their firmware matches the firmware in your Mini?
Swapping the blades and being sure your batteries are all updated to match the drone's firmware may let you use the PGYTECH cage. But if you're at a high elevation, you may be out of luck. This tiny drone just can't carry much extra weight, and especially when it's flying at a high elevation.
|
|