Tom from Widnes

I’ll keep it short. I’ve got the Mavic Air as a retirement present from me to er… me. I’m very new to drones and have lots and lots to learn. I’m keen to find safe places to fly in the Widnes area.

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Let me know if you find anywhere, I’m only a few miles from you in halewood

Hi Tom, welcome to the forum.

Can’t help with places to fly but any other questions you have don’t hesitate to ask.

Hi. Bing from Halifax here. I’m also looking for good flying areas near me. Any suggestions people?

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Welcome to Grey Arrows @tommyQ :smiley:

How are you getting on with the Mavic Air?

A Mavic was my first drone too :+1:

@tommyQ @Abacus @Bing are there any locations nearby on our map that might be of interest?

The only place I’ve gone to so far is ‘The Dream’ by St. Helens. I want to go over the top of it when there are no people around.

Thanks.

To be honest, I’m still having trust issues with it. Yesterday for 1st time I took off guards and beginner mode. I flew it around and when I tried to land it, it stopped about 4 ft off ground and wouldn’t go lower. It started blurting out storage space empty and a high wind alert. Space I agree, but the wind…? My issue was the non responsive RC? Any ideas? Thanks T.

When you say non responsive, was it all controls or only the throttle to descend further?

Only thing I can think of is landing protection. It attempts to determine if the landing location is suitable and if not hovers.

Personally I don’t use it so can’t remember if it throws up a warning or not.

With it disabled you can manually land anywhere but using RTH or failsafe RTH it will only return to homepoint, descend and wait for your command.

To be really honest, I dont know if it was just the left down? I tried to land it and then went to close the popups. Then tried to land it again. I’ll have to be more mindful of sequences when I see these issues. I had one tonight that turned out to be the drone being clever and me less so. I was trying to bring it to me to land it on a path, but it stopped as I was the object it was trying to avoid. I stepped to one side and it came to the point where I wanted it to land. Changing the subject, I’m getting heavily pixelated video. I believe the SD card is fast enough, so I’m trying to see if its my lappy. I’ve not changed settings so its recording at whatever DJI set it at. Very jumpy too. :frowning:

I’m not sure what the default settings are.

If its a windows laptop,

Right click on file, properties and then details. It will give you the resolution and frame rate.

If its recording in 4k it could be your laptop just not up to it. If your not intending to watch in 4k a lot of people are happy with 2.7k, NTSC & 30fps. That may fare better.

If you have a 4k tv you could also try playing directly through that and see if its better.

Hello & welcome Tom.
What sd card are you using? a U3 is the best but I suspect it is recording in 4K and your laptop isn’t up to it as Callum has said above.

The card is:
SD%20card

Which I believe is one DJI recommend?
I tried to pop the card into my TV, but it doesnt like the underlying filesystem. I’ve seen this before. Some kind of weird DRM formatting so you can only play back videos on that one TV. The laptop is good, but the graphics side probably is naff. I’ll try the settings changes and report back. Thanks all for suggestions.

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Let us know how you get on mate.

Crashed it three times now. Tried to take off from a metal garden table. It took off ok but I lost control of it and it hit a gravel path quite hard. Hooked to it up to DJI ASSISTANT to re calibrate again. Can’t keep doing this. It’s a tough little piece of kit but there’s a limit to what it will take.

Will do Callum. It was set to record 4K @ 30fps, so I’ve dropped it down. I intended to go out today, but stuff got in the way. Will try tomorrow.

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I wouldn’t take off from a metal table, it will play havoc with calibrations when you start it up.

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Thanks to all for advising me to drop the frame rate for videos. It’s still a bit jumpy, but no pixelation at all and I didn’t drop it quite as much as you said. So :smile: One happy bunny.

Tom.

PS I’ve also got a solid excuse for a new laptop if only I had the funds!

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Hi Tom,

Digging up an old post of yours here after a google search of safe places to fly in Widnes flagged it!

I’m over in Halebank and recently purchase a Mavic Pro - did you happen to find anywhere suitable in the area to fly the drone?

J

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Hi @JJC, I’ve flown a few places near Widnes: Fiddlers Ferry power station, Mersey Gateway, the Dream, and Frodsham wind farm. Most of those should be on the Dronescene website, but let me know if you want any more details.