The mavic Mini – 5 things they don’t tell you!
So The mavic Mini launches and it’s suddenly an affordable masterpiece of a drone. Good quality drone shots are no longer that for the rich.
I got mine for 590 bucks from one of our big tech retailers here in Australia. No Combos left in stock. The first thing I would recommend if you haven’t bought yours already. Get the combo kit. There is a lot of value in that. Including
- Spare Propellers
- 2 extra batteries
- Propeller guards
- A case
- Extra screws
So I went out to film my review and get all the usual magic shots and filmed it. Deleted it, filmed it again, deleted it. Now I’m here. I have flown the drone several times and even compared it to another cheap one I bought on Amazon. I learnt that reviewing a drone is an art i havent mastered. However i have learnt what not to do and figured this is as valuable for you to learn as anything else. The things i learnt are:
1) Get your take off landing point prepared. It’s bloody easy to take off, but in the wrong situation landing can be hard, very hard. I took a chance and luckily didn’t break my camera or propellers. But you can see I was trying to land on one of these rocks at Burleigh heads.You need a flat surface with some room for error. Yes i crashed, yes i survived. Don’t do this.
2) Get a landing mat. On the 2nd occasion flying i picked a flat spot thinking, ha i’m not so dumb that i wont try and land on the round rocks again. Unfortunately the spot I picked had a lot of sand. Hit take off and boom, dust cloud and guess what? I had to land in the same spot again. Now if i had any type of landing mat this would not have happened. Make or buy a landing mat. OK, just do it.
3) Plan your trip, on three occasions i have gone somewhere to film some footage and i couldn’t. Why because I was in a no fly zone. This sucked balls. I know there are workarounds but that’s how you get banned from things, rules and regulations get added. I didn’t want to break the rules. There are many reasons you may not be allowed to fly a drone and these reasons vary from country to country. Examples are, Airports, military base, bushfire zones etc etc. Check the rules.
4) Consider wildlife – here in Australia there are a number of birds that like to attack humans. I have learnt quickly that they like to attack drones more than humans, so consider this. You don’t want to hurt or scare animals intentionally. It is only by chance my drone has not been hit by swooping plovers, doves, magpies, galahs and others.
5) The fifth thing I have learned is that these machines can give you incredible results. Enjoy flying, be careful and respectful.
Seedubs Media 