All right, I admit it, I’m not the world’s best drone pilot. I always got confused by twin-stick PlayStation controllers, so a twin-stick drone controller was always going to be a worry.
But even though I can now remember which stick moves my DJI Mavic Mini in which direction (with about five seconds of massive mental effort), it didn’t help me much here.
What a beautiful, slow-moving, mirror-like stream (I thought) and what a perfect subject for a little low-level drone flight (I also thought). The birdsong and water-sounds soon gave way to the mad buzzing of the Mini’s little rotors and it all started out so well.
Until I was half way across.
That’s when the Mavic started sinking towards the water. I may have said some words which I can’t repeat here. I manually increased the altitude and carried on, but by the time I reached the other side, only about 20 feet away, the rest of the controls were getting vague, so that I couldn’t move forward and back properly and could only turn. I ended up under some low-hanging branches about three feet above the water on the opposite bank, with a great shot of a very worried man on the other side of the stream saying some very bad things to a controller.
Video: watch my drone horror movie!
So what happened?
On the upside, I did learn that if even a little Mavic Mini gets into an argument with some riverside foliage, it will probably win. So with a bit more altitude and a bit of unintended vegetation trimming, I did get my Mavic Mini back to my side of the stream.
It turns out that I should have switched off the VPS (Vision Positioning System), which would have been confused by the still water and its reflections. I also should have maintained a minimum altitude of 2m (about 6 feet).
So basically I need (a) more flying time and (b) more research. Because the difference between a PlayStation controller and a drone controller is that if you make a mistake on a PlayStation you just get to restart, but if you make a mistake with a drone, then it’s game over – for good.
