You may recall that when I wrote in this space about my recent trip to Chicago, I described how my DJI Air 2S drone went to a watery grave in Lake Michigan following a forced landing due to battery depletion while I was flying in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, taking my entire day’s worth of photos down with it. The good news is that I am now whole once again. I got a new DJI Air 3 drone, which, among other features, sports twice as much fly time per battery than the Air 2S, and then I also activated the flyaway coverage that I had with the Air 2S and got a new one of those, too. So all in all, I’m in good shape. I have new equipment that is faster and more powerful than my previous equipment, plus I also have some pretty solid equipment as a backup drone.
That also means that the Mini probably won’t see much action anymore. The thing about the DJI Mavic Mini is that it’s not a bad drone, but it’s not a great drone, either. It lacks collision sensors, so it’s not going to stop you from plowing headlong into an object. It’s also fairly slow-moving and gets kicked around in the wind a bit. It also uses wi-fi as a transmission protocol, and as such, it’s prone to interference. And now being the third one on the totem pole, it’s probably not going to see much use. I will use the Air 3 as my primary drone, and the Air 2S will be the drone that Elyse will use as well as my backup. So it’s like this exchange in the third episode of Roseanne:
Darlene: Mom, if Becky has a heart attack, I’m in charge, right?
Roseanne: Right!
DJ: Mom, if Darlene has a heart attack, I’m in charge.
Roseanne: Right, DJ! If both your sisters are dead, you’re in charge.
And that’s exactly the case with the Mini. If both of its sisters are dead, then the Mini is going up. And that’s okay, because things progress, and the Mini is older technology compared to the others. Plus with the Air 2S as the backup drone now, Elyse has indicated that she would be a lot more comfortable flying now. One of the things that Elyse said made her nervous about the Mini was the lack of collision protection. She has indicated that she would be far more comfortable flying the Air 2S for that reason. So that’s good, because there’s a lot of stuff that Elyse has wanted to drone but wouldn’t do previously.
So with the new hardware in hand, I had to take them on test flights before I could declare them fully operational. After all, this is not like the Air 2S and the way that it was quickly pressed into service in the middle of a trip. That drone’s first flight was an operational flight, with no testing, because I had plans that I wanted to execute, and nothing was getting in my way.
Generally speaking, whenever you see aerial photos of Montgomery Village on my Flickr, it usually means that I was testing something on a drone and came up with a few shots that I liked. This was no exception, as I flew over the house and the neighborhood to verify the handling characteristics on these new drones.
First up was the Air 3, on a late afternoon flight on November 17 in order to learn about its various functions and handling characteristics. Here’s what I got from that:
Looking straight down from my launch point.
Looking west towards the sun, low in the late afternoon sky.
Another view facing the sun.
The Goshen Road Safeway in Montgomery Village. It’s a decent destination for test flights when I’m evaluating cruising speed, because it’s far enough from the house for the drone to get up to full speed, but still fairly close by (I could walk here in about five or so minutes).
Intersection of Goshen Road (up and down) and East Village Avenue (coming in from the right).
More housing in Montgomery Village.
Mother of God School, a K-8 Catholic school near my house. These two photos were taken seconds apart, as I tested out the dual-camera feature on the Air 3. The first photo is taken with the regular camera, and then the second photo was taken with the camera that’s 3X optical zoom. This zoom function definitely has potential.
The dormer on the roof of my house.
The remote control for the Air 3, a DJI RC2. This is my first time with a remote that has a built-in screen. The Mini and the Air 2S both used a connection to a smartphone in order to provide a screen. This remote is basically a regular drone remote with a built-in Android device, so it’s not a huge leap, but all the same, that’s one less device to charge.
It does come with a few new features compared to what I’m used to. Those green lines show the return to home trajectory, and that yellow mark on the screen is the home point. The older drones did not do that on the screen, just flying back and landing. The Air 3 also takes a slightly different approach to the return-to-home function than the older drones do. On the older drones, when I activated the return-to-home function, it would raise its altitude to a predetermined level (100 feet for the Mini, and 328 feet on the Air 2S) if it was not at that height already, and then it would fly horizontally back to its launch point. Upon reaching the launch point, it will then begin its descent, flying straight down until it reaches the ground. On the Air 3, it makes a more direct flight to its launch point, arriving and landing with more of an arclike movement, as it descends as it completes its flight. I have the option to disable this sort of flight and do the straight-line movements like the older drones do, but it seems like it has some potential for increased efficiency.
Then a few days later, the replacement Air 2S arrived from DJI. This one was already a known quantity, as I’ve been flying an Air 2S for two years at this point. So while the Air 3’s test flight was to explore the characteristics of a new edition of the DJI Air series, this flight was just about verifying all of the flight characteristics, i.e. we already know how an Air 2S handles, and this was just a matter of making sure that this unit is the same.
That said, the test flight, which occurred on November 24, was pretty straightforward, just going out to the Safeway and back:
The Goshen Road Safeway, as seen with the Air 2S.
My street. If you look carefully, you can see me flying the drone while standing on my front step.
My part of the street.
Just before landing, I took a quick selfie.
So all in all, both drones passed their test flights, and are now considered fully operational. So that’s a good thing. The photos that I got during these test flights were kind of “meh” at best, but such is what happens when you’re shooting in the late afternoon just before sunset and mostly testing features and verifying handling characteristics than actually photographing like you mean it. Neither drone has been on its first operational flight yet, but I suspect that those will probably happen when I make a weekend trip down to Augusta County in a few weeks.
However it works out, though, I’m glad that the drones are flying again, because dropping the original Air 2S in Lake Michigan like I did really bummed me out, but I feel better about it now. Stay tuned for more drone shots in the future.