New Toy and Heat wave.

On 2020-05-26 21:12, Savageduck wrote:
My new Mavic Air 2 drone arrived just before noon today.

So most of my day has been taken up with battery charging, and firmware updates. I managed to get out for a maiden flight around 14:00 hrs with the temperature hovering at 104F (40C). Needless to say the heat drove me to shorten everything, and the one 4K 30fps 4 minute video I shot was OK until the midpoint when there was what looked like a ripple running through the playback. It looked like an imbedded heatwave.

Then I discovered that each of my 3 batteries had to have the battery firmware updated to match the drone system FW.

Now I am waiting for things to cool down so I can get out for a sunset flight a little longer than my first excursion in the heat.

Congrats!

On 2020-05-27 22:36, Savageduck wrote:
On May 27, 2020, John McWilliams wrote
(in article ):

On 5/26/20 PDT 7:34 PM, Savageduck wrote:
On May 26, 2020, Bill Vanek wrote
That’s better than I thought. How much do the batteries cost? How many come
with the drone?

They are about $115 each.

The regular Mavic Air 2, which comes with one battery costs $799. However, if you buy their “Fly More� package for $988 you get 2 extra batteries, extra prop sets, a carry bag, a three battery charging bank, a set of 3 ND filters, and some other stuff. All for an extra $189 which is less than the $230 cost of two batteries.
Holy moly! That is some impressive package!

How close to the drone do you have to be to control it/get realtime
video? I presume something less than its five mile capability!

I ran it out to 5,400 feet this morning, just over a mile. I have seen some YouTube range tests where they went out as far as 4 miles before returning to home, and maintained a video feed. That is impressive, and I doubt that I would really like to take that risk. ...yet.

Legally you have to maintain visual contact with it. 200 - 300 m is
about as far as I can see my Mavic Pro (depends on light, background,
etc.) and about double that for the Phantom 4 Pro. 500m is the farthest
you're allowed to go in Canada.

Some people have flown some very long distances and back with the MP2.

On May 29, 2020, Alan Browne wrote
(in article ):

On 2020-05-27 22:36, Savageduck wrote:
On May 27, 2020, John McWilliams wrote
(in article ):

On 5/26/20 PDT 7:34 PM, Savageduck wrote:
On May 26, 2020, Bill Vanek wrote
That’s better than I thought. How much do the batteries cost? How many come
with the drone?

They are about $115 each.

The regular Mavic Air 2, which comes with one battery costs $799. However, if you buy their “Fly More� package for $988 you get 2 extra batteries, extra prop sets, a carry bag, a three battery charging bank, a set of 3 ND filters, and some other stuff. All for an extra $189 which is less than the $230 cost of two batteries.
Holy moly! That is some impressive package!

How close to the drone do you have to be to control it/get realtime
video? I presume something less than its five mile capability!

I ran it out to 5,400 feet this morning, just over a mile. I have seen some YouTube range tests where they went out as far as 4 miles before returning to home, and maintained a video feed. That is impressive, and I doubt that I would really like to take that risk. ...yet.

Legally you have to maintain visual contact with it. 200 - 300 m is
about as far as I can see my Mavic Pro (depends on light, background,
etc.) and about double that for the Phantom 4 Pro. 500m is the farthest
you're allowed to go in Canada.

Agreed! Once I have it off the ground it is tough to find when it is 200-300 m out.

On my dusk training flight yesterday I had to turn on the bottom LED landing light to be able to find it.

As far as range goes I must confess to pushing things beyond my 4 day experience really permits. ;-)


Some people have flown some very long distances and back with the MP2.

I have seen a few insane range tests, which I don’t feel are worth risking.

--
Regards,
Savageduck

On May 29, 2020, Alan Browne wrote
(in article ):

On 2020-05-27 22:36, Savageduck wrote:
On May 27, 2020, John McWilliams wrote
(in article ):

On 5/26/20 PDT 7:34 PM, Savageduck wrote:
On May 26, 2020, Bill Vanek wrote
That’s better than I thought. How much do the batteries cost? How many come
with the drone?

They are about $115 each.

The regular Mavic Air 2, which comes with one battery costs $799. However, if you buy their “Fly More� package for $988 you get 2 extra batteries, extra prop sets, a carry bag, a three battery charging bank, a set of 3 ND filters, and some other stuff. All for an extra $189 which is less than the $230 cost of two batteries.
Holy moly! That is some impressive package!

How close to the drone do you have to be to control it/get realtime
video? I presume something less than its five mile capability!

I ran it out to 5,400 feet this morning, just over a mile. I have seen some YouTube range tests where they went out as far as 4 miles before returning to home, and maintained a video feed. That is impressive, and I doubt that I would really like to take that risk. ...yet.

Legally you have to maintain visual contact with it. 200 - 300 m is
about as far as I can see my Mavic Pro (depends on light, background,
etc.) and about double that for the Phantom 4 Pro. 500m is the farthest
you're allowed to go in Canada.

Some people have flown some very long distances and back with the MP2.

BTW: Things got a tad scary on my training flight this morning, but it gave the obstacle avoidance a good workout. That saved me a retrieval hike.

I used iMovie to adjust the file size so it would fit the 3GB SmugMug file Max.

https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-NrS8zPB/0/ba28467b/1920/i-NrS8zPB-1920.mp4

--
Regards,
Savageduck

On 2020-05-29 18:12, Savageduck wrote:
On May 29, 2020, Alan Browne wrote
(in article ):

On 2020-05-27 22:36, Savageduck wrote:
On May 27, 2020, John McWilliams wrote
(in article ):

On 5/26/20 PDT 7:34 PM, Savageduck wrote:
On May 26, 2020, Bill Vanek wrote
That’s better than I thought. How much do the batteries cost? How many come
with the drone?

They are about $115 each.

The regular Mavic Air 2, which comes with one battery costs $799. However, if you buy their “Fly More� package for $988 you get 2 extra batteries, extra prop sets, a carry bag, a three battery charging bank, a set of 3 ND filters, and some other stuff. All for an extra $189 which is less than the $230 cost of two batteries.
Holy moly! That is some impressive package!

How close to the drone do you have to be to control it/get realtime
video? I presume something less than its five mile capability!

I ran it out to 5,400 feet this morning, just over a mile. I have seen some YouTube range tests where they went out as far as 4 miles before returning to home, and maintained a video feed. That is impressive, and I doubt that I would really like to take that risk. ...yet.

Legally you have to maintain visual contact with it. 200 - 300 m is
about as far as I can see my Mavic Pro (depends on light, background,
etc.) and about double that for the Phantom 4 Pro. 500m is the farthest
you're allowed to go in Canada.

Some people have flown some very long distances and back with the MP2.

BTW: Things got a tad scary on my training flight this morning, but it gave the obstacle avoidance a good workout. That saved me a retrieval hike.

I used iMovie to adjust the file size so it would fit the 3GB SmugMug file Max.

https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-NrS8zPB/0/ba28467b/1920/i-NrS8zPB-1920.mp4


Very nice. Been there.

TIP: Tilt the camera down a tad so the horizon is higher in the image.
I usually have the horizon in the top 10 - 20% of the frame.

In article ,
says...
In many parts of California, we have to wear insulators on our feet when we go outside ;-)

I once travelled to the Iranian desert in August. You had to
find a shelter (some A/C hotel or restaurant) between noon and
2pm, but no feet insulators were needed.
--
Alfred Molon

Olympus 4/3 and micro 4/3 cameras forum at
https://groups.io/g/myolympus
https://myolympus.org/ photo sharing site

On 2020-05-27 19:58, Bill W wrote:
On May 27, 2020, Savageduck wrote


https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-...cdhFnV-1920.mp
4

I noticed that when you rotate/pan, the image looks blurred or OoF, but when
stationary or moving forward and back, it is very sharp. I wonder if there is
a setting to fix the panning issue. How high was the drone for this footage?
Have you tried any stills yet?

I suspect that 'duck has not:

- put on ND filters
- set the shutter speed to about 2x the frame rate.

ie: 1/60th s shutter speed for 30 fps. That's why the ND filter is needed.

This will smooth things out considerably and remove that blurred look.

On 2020-05-27 07:34, newshound wrote:
On 27/05/2020 06:56, Savageduck wrote:
On May 26, 2020, Savageduck wrote
(in iganews.com):

My new Mavic Air 2 drone arrived just before noon today.

So most of my day has been taken up with battery charging, and
firmware updates. I managed to get out for a maiden flight around
14:00 hrs with the temperature hovering at 104F (40C). Needless to
say the heat drove me to shorten everything, and the one 4K 30fps 4
minute video I shot was OK until the midpoint when there was what
looked like a ripple running through the playback. It looked like an
imbedded heatwave.

Then I discovered that each of my 3 batteries had to have the battery
firmware updated to match the drone system FW.

Now I am waiting for things to cool down so I can get out for a
sunset flight a little longer than my first excursion in the heat.

Well it finally cooled down a bit and I tried my hand at what amounted
to my first drone flying, and more than a 2 minute iPhone video. I
have never flown a drone of any type before, and I am not yet fully
familiar with the capability, and features of the camera in the Mavic
Air 2. Definately not an example of the smoothest cinematography, but
a demonstration of the potential of this drone. So with those caveats
here is 5+ minutes of a hot, dry part of California.

https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-8XFHcrH/0/4bc77bdd/1920/i-8XFHcrH-1920.mp4



Pretty stable, then! Was there any wind?

These drones are remarkably stable in very stiff gusty wind. Between
accelerometers, gyros, altimeter (2 ea.) and GPS/GLONASS they can hold
position and height very tightly.

In effect the user doesn't control the drone at all. It's on autopilot
100% of the time. The user merely pushes the autopilot around. It does
all of the work.

On May 30, 2020, Alan Browne wrote
(in article ):

On 2020-05-27 19:58, Bill W wrote:
On May 27, 2020, Savageduck wrote


https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-...i-VcdhFnV-1920
.mp
4

I noticed that when you rotate/pan, the image looks blurred or OoF, but when
stationary or moving forward and back, it is very sharp. I wonder if there
is
a setting to fix the panning issue. How high was the drone for this footage?
Have you tried any stills yet?

I suspect that 'duck has not:

- put on ND filters
- set the shutter speed to about 2x the frame rate.

ie: 1/60th s shutter speed for 30 fps. That's why the ND filter is needed.

This will smooth things out considerably and remove that blurred look.

I don’t think either of us does much video, so we might have both learned
something here.

On May 30, 2020, Alan Browne wrote
(in article ):

On 2020-05-27 19:58, Bill W wrote:
On May 27, 2020, Savageduck wrote


https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-...cdhFnV-1920.mp
4

I noticed that when you rotate/pan, the image looks blurred or OoF, but when
stationary or moving forward and back, it is very sharp. I wonder if there is
a setting to fix the panning issue. How high was the drone for this footage?
Have you tried any stills yet?

I suspect that 'duck has not:


- put on ND filters
- set the shutter speed to about 2x the frame rate.

ie: 1/60th s shutter speed for 30 fps. That's why the ND filter is needed.

This will smooth things out considerably and remove that blurred look.

I have yet to dabble with the filters. They included a set of 3, an ND16, ND64, and ND256. So two are really only good for long exposures. They want you to buy the more useful set of an ND4, ND8, and ND32.

--
Regards,
Savageduck