I have been flying my DJI MA2 for almost a month now and was interested in its range capabilities, so I decided to do a range test, not my first one with the drone, I did a lot of range tests in the past with other drones both DJI and non-DJI.
This one went, let's say, pretty bad, but it might have been much worse, I was very lucky, let me explain why!
I took off from the roof of my apartment building, where I was standing too, and flew into the distance, keeping VLOS most of the time, the signal was going worse and worse but after re-adjusting the antennas it was better, long story short I flew 6.3km away from the Home point ignoring the Return-To-Home prompt! Always, ALWAYS bad idea! Just don't, it exists for a good reason, to notify you when you need to return back! But I didn't, I continued going and when I couldn't go further I started returning and started noticing that I don't quite have enough battery to return! That made me nervous but I had a car with another person that could drive it so who cares, I thought, if needed I will drive to a safe place to land, and do that! Well, if that would be as easy as I thought I wouldn't write this... when the battery was as low as 20% I hopped into the car and went to the location (I thought) the drone was a BAD IDEA, I lost signal immediately and the drone started landing, not returning to home because the battery was on 8%! I was in the middle of a pretty big town, not knowing well the streets... When I approached the location, went out of the car I finally got RC signal. The drone was on 1% battery hovering near a hotel I don't even know, "that's not good" I thought, of course, it wasn't! I tried to look at the map and figure out where to go, I did, but the drone was already on 0% battery, I was holding the stick up as it was above some street with people! In its last milliamps available in the battery I managed to fly 30 meters before it depleting and landing pretty safely near me with a lot of people looking, not good!

So what I'm trying to say here:
- Don't go away from your home point until you find a good location to emergency land, and definitely don't go with the car while the drone is in the air, even if you're not driving the car yourself, as the signal as well as the VLOS will be lost.

- If the drone says that you should return then do it!

- Take wind into account

- Only do a range test in a controlled environment, without cars or people ideally in some open field area

- And of course, don't land your drone in areas you don't know

This definitely taught me a lesson, I will try to fly safe from now on!
Pls don't send hate to this...
Thanks for reading

You pretty much broke several rules when making long range flights....
The most important one is "Dont do long range flights on cities" it can go wrong in so many ways.
You where very lucky, it could have been much worse.

Glad are taking your own advice. You're one lucky guy it didn't go worse.

I have done plenty of long range flights and pushed passed the return to home warning many times. The key is to know the wind direction if there is wind. Always fly into the wind and have it at your back on return, helps a lot. It also pays to know your drone and its capabilities well and how much longer it can fly from say 20% to 0% battery.

Hello there Yaros1. I am sorry to read and to know what happened to your previous flight of your DJI Mavic Air 2. Just a reminder that DJI highly recommend to follow the rules and regulations when flying your DJI Drones to avoid an untoward incidents and to avoid being apprehended as well. Thank you.

Glad this worked out safely for you and your drone.    Thanks for sharing as we can always learn lessons from each others mistakes.  

once you had decided that you're not going to make it, why not look for a suitable place to land and proceed to set it down.  when the drone is on the ground safely then you can jump into your car and drive to that location.  it is never a good idea to try to keep a long range connection to a crippled drone while you ride in a car trying to chase down your drone....that's a bad idea from the start.  use the camera and the map to find a safe spot and you can even hover high enough so the drone spends the minimum amount of time on the ground. you can''t be more than 5 or 10 minutes away so a driveway, sidewalk, or parking lot is ok.

if you do the work beforehand, you can scout a nice suitable location before you start the test and mark it and if you find yourself in trouble, send your drone to the emergency landing spot.

Suren Posted at 9-5 16:42
I have done plenty of long range flights and pushed passed the return to home warning many times. The key is to know the wind direction if there is wind. Always fly into the wind and have it at your back on return, helps a lot. It also pays to know your drone and its capabilities well and how much longer it can fly from say 20% to 0% battery.

...how much longer it can fly from say 20% to 0% battery.
With latest app my MA2 tries to RTH at 20-18% (according to fight characteristic, flying VLOS not that far) and at 10% always performs forced landing. So my MA2 can not fly under 10% without danger of loosing the drone or damaging the battery. Just my 5 cents...

Might be worth it to note that some people have complained about how the battery seemingly just drops from a high % to a low % much faster than they thought.  There was a forum on this and DJI recommends only flying with freshly charged batteries, otherwise the flight duration can vary even if at "take-off" the battery may have been at 80%.  Good Information and worth a scan thru if you have not read it yet.  https://forum.dji.com/forum.php?mod=redirect&goto=findpost&ptid=246906&pid=2526423

UPDATED the link, the first time it did not paste correctly.  

Terrible Experience!

I flew out the other day doing a range test. It was in the wide open farm country so no obstructions nor any crash concerns. But it was into a headwind (which is what I usually try and do so on the way back you have a tail wind). But it was slowing the drone down about 10mph less than what it is capable of. My battery was at about 50% when the RTH warning popped up and I of course didn't push it and brought it back. Interestingly enough the battery was at 35% when it finally arrived at the home point and it was able to maintain full speed because of the tail wind on the return trip.  Had I gone the other direction I might not have gotten it back. I don't know if DJI software or the app accounts for this.

One thing I have not tried is if you think you're not going to make it back, then use the manual update home point feature to select a landing spot on the map that's fairly secluded and easy to access. Then just drive there and hope your drone is waiting for you nearby. I'm going to test this with my wife at the chosen location one of these days.

Range test is pretty pointless because it varies from place to place.  Sometimes I can't even fly more than 400m w/o issue.  Some areas I can go over 2000m w/o issue.

So you ignored the RTH prompt.  Did you actually lose signal to the drone other than when you went to go get in your car?  
I am curious what you had set as your options for loss of signal.  I just posed about my RTH and obstacle avoidance but when did you make your choice to return to home or did it do it automatically when you lost signal.  

I would like more info on this scenario.  The question of if you lost signal or and if and when in the process and for how long.  Also what was the setting the RTH enabled or hover.

I think in your scenario if you had the RTH enabled that is why it started to come back to home point without any prompting.  

I think the safest thing was to make sure you had a proper return to home as the setting it would have been safer to let it start returning to home when it lost signal and then when you reaquired signal to find a safe place to have it hover and safely land if it did run out of battery, as opposed to flying and losing where it was.  

Those are just my thoughts...

KryosChaos Posted at 9-12 08:47
So you ignored the RTH prompt.  Did you actually lose signal to the drone other than when you went to go get in your car?  
I am curious what you had set as your options for loss of signal.  I just posed about my RTH and obstacle avoidance but when did you make your choice to return to home or did it do it automatically when you lost signal.  

I did have RTH as my failsafe setting and I never lost signal other than then I went to the car.
My best option would be stay in the safe place, land the drone and then go to get it, but I decided to go while it was in the air.
I understood my mistake and will not do it again (at least try not to)

Yaros1 Posted at 9-20 23:54
I did have RTH as my failsafe setting and I never lost signal other than then I went to the car.
My best option would be stay in the safe place, land the drone and then go to get it, but I decided to go while it was in the air.
I understood my mistake and will not do it again (at least try not to)

i was going to say... worst case when you lost signal let the RTH work until you get close to the controller and safely land at that time.