Another one to check out, then; there’s a Go just up the road from me and I have their card…
Good luck with that, mine was in their bargain bin as “preloved”, box had been opened but item never used, regular price is about £250.
I have a smallish Anker one that fits in my back pocket, takes around an hour to charge mini 2 battery. A couple years ago I used it to recharge my batteries while documenting places to visit on my way home from work, Elgin to Perth. I also had the use of a car charger by the way. After an eight hour trip, god knows how many batteries or time flown, I can tell you that I was well and truly scunnered by the time I got home. Don’t think I touched the drone again for two weeks! I never thought I would tire of flying a drone, but I can tell you that the last hour was almost like torture. Be careful what you wish for
I think I might need to modify my requirements. Joe’s back pocket Anker will charge a Mini 2 battery, which is the same as those for a 4K (and of course I have a Mini 2 when I can be arsed to have it repaired, worth keeping because it is compatible with Maven), may well be a good way to what I’m after. I can see how several hours of flying would be tiring; it requires a similar level of concentration to driving.
This is, unintuitively, why I think flying is so relaxing; it is completely absorbing and distracts you from your other worries and stresses. But this sort of full-on interacting comes at a price, and it is paid in fatigue. So, a powerbank that will charge one or two extra batteries before requiring charging itself will extend my flying time from about 2 hours (allowing for changeover time and coffee/beer) to more like 3. Which is, if I’m being realistic, probably enough; including walking or buses to flying sites and food, it’ll be 4 hours or more out of the house, and if there’s shopping as well, as there sometimes is, you can add up to 2 hours to that. That is plenty for an overweight wreck of my age!
What model is your Anker, Joe?
Hang on a minute. I have 3 grey batteries for the 4K, one that came with the drone and two that came with the Mini 2, and, as of yesterday, a grey 2-way hub. I also have a Mavic Mini, which came as a fly-more combo with 3 black batteries and a black 2-way hub. The grey batteries are rated for 31 minutes and the black ones for 30, but I’ll come back to that in a minute…
The black batteries from the Mavic Mini will fit into the 4K and the grey hub, but the grey batteries from the 4K will not fit in the Mavic Mini or the black hub. Not only will the black batteries fit in the 4K drone and grey hub, the leds come on as well. I think this might mean that I can charge black batteries in the grey hub and power the 4K with them.
There has to be a catch, possibly shorter flying times than the alleged 30minutes with the black batteries in the 4K, but if it isn’t too serious we are now in a different ballgame altogether. Let’s say a realistic fly time of 20 minutes overall average, I’ve gone up from 60 to 120 minutes, which means my rolling battery plan can now be implemented in a powerbank that can take 2 hours to charge one battery.
It remains to be seen if there are any other issues with using black batteries in a 4K drone, but if it flies and does all the things it should, even if it is for a few minutes less per battery, this is a major advance, £150 worth of batteries have appeared by magic, and they can power my Mavic Mini as well. There might not even be any need for a powerbank, but there will be a lot of home charging.
But I’m less likely to come home with all 6 batteries depleted, unless it’s been a really busy flying day, so I can probably live with that. Might get some test-flying in tomoz, even if it’s only indoors hovering to time out the batteries for comparison purposes.
It also gives the option of using the black hub and batteires as a powerbank to charge grey batteries when I’m out. Or the other way around, but that will not be the usual situation.
Incidentally, the grey batteries will not fit into the Mavic Mini. Am I missing something; this seems too good to be true!
@TheJohnster dont overdose on flying John. Keep it fun and you’ll do it more, not keep doing it till your fingers fall off and marbles drop into your drone bag 
Maybe there is.
I don’t know where you fly John but if your flights are bound by the sub-250g regulations then do some research in to weights.
Some Mini models have light airframes and heavy batteries to stay under 250g. Other Mini models have heavier airframes and lighter batteries in order to stay under 250g.
There was even a genuine DJI battery that allowed for 199g flights, handy if you were heading to Japan and other more restricted countries.
Mixing and matching may put you outside the realms of sub-250g flights.
See, now this is the advantage of having a hive mind of people who know more than me like this forum on tap; that would never have occurred to me in a million years. My assumption was that all the Mavic Mini family of drones (Mavic Mini/Mini2/MiniSE/Mini2SE/Mini4K have I forgotten any?) using the same bodyshell would weigh the same, or at least very close to the same. As you say, more research needed.
I doubt if the black batteries put the drone over the limit (they are a little smaller and a slightly different shape than the grey ones, which is why the grey ones don’t fit in the Mavic Mini or it’s hub) but it is better to be sure! It is a matter of more than just the slightly different battery body casing though, as the grey batteries have a slightly longer burn time, and might be more intelligent, I don’t know their relative IQs but probably both more than mine…
Welcome to the world of DJI where very little works with anything else
More good advice! The weather and other matters have kept me mostly grounded the last week or so though, and I’m chafing at the bit to do more. But come summer, when there might be whole weeks when I could fly every day twice a day, it might get a bit overwhelming…
I’m old, overweight, not 100% fit, and tire easily, so have to ‘manage’ myself. Drones are good for me in general I think; gets me out in the fresh air and means I ‘engage’ with the outside world more than just going up the shops or the pub. I’m taking more of an interest in the weather and the tides when I’m planning flights. Also, while my other hobby (model railway) is ‘on hold’ while work is ongoing in the flat, it’s about the only thing keeping me from going nuts, by which I mean, even more nuts!
The advantage of being in a club with an almost immeasurable number of decades of combined flying experience among its members 
Still not seeing any mention of the controller or your phone John. Doesn’t matter how many batteries you have if your phone or controller conks out 
Should be ok if I’m looking at 3 hours flying with 6 batteries, Matt. I suspect the rolling charged battery idea is not going to be practicable at the prices I can afford for powerstations given that I don’t have a car.
My iPhone, if 100% charged at the start of a 3-battery 90-minute flying session, is down to about 85% by the end, so at that rate should be good for a few hours. And I have an old phone I can use as backup. The controller is claimed to be able to run for 6 hours in the user manual, which also seems adequate.
I had trouble with the initial Mavic Mini controller, which wouldn’t hold a charge for a half-hour flight, but have replaced this. Since then I have not managed to run a controller below 3 leds charge. If I am going to try and fly for 3 hours with the 6 batteries (I’m going to try out the black batteries in the 4K tomoz, btw, and will report back), I need to trial it at home before going outside to do it.
I need to try it and see, by flying through the 6 batteries (not neccessarily in one session) and not charging the N1 controller until all the batteries are discharged.
My life is going to degenerate into an obsession with charging batteries, isn’t it?
And if your phone does get low, you do know you can put power back into your phone power( charge ) via the RC ? If memory serves me right ( in the fly app ) you can toggle on a button to do this, just make sure you go out with a fully charged RC, I used to do this on 6 air 2 battery’s for my drone, if the phone dropped I used to do as above & I still came home with power in the RC so I don’t see a problem
Yes, I’m aware of this; in fact ISTR that the phone and the RC will charge each other once they are connected with the cable, effectively a combined reserve of power. The hubs can be used as powerbanks to charge the phone as well, but I am not certain that they will do this without the batteries being charged and loaded into them; there is no such thing as a free lunch! What is inside the bottom of the hubs; is it just charging control circuitry or is there any actual power stored in there when they are not connected to a charger?
A good bit of indoors hovering to time batteries and see if and how various charging methods work in practice is on the cards. The Squeeze will not be happy; the noise and whizzywhirlyness of drones indoors terrifies her, but she is calmed down a bit by prop guards…
I seem to recall remember ?
Yup.
Also:-
TTBOMK-To the best of my knowledge
AFAIK-As far as I know
Yep know those ones, you’ve used them so much you’ve worn a hole in the alphabet ! 
Slowly, at the speed of plate tectonics, my knowledge of the situation improves. The drone will fly quite happily with the black Mavic Mini batteries, but burn time is 17minutes; effectively another 45minutes flying time on top of a 90minute session with the grey batteries, 2hours 15 minutes total. The RC is down to 3 steady leds after flying 3 black batteries.
The next experiment will be to see how long it takes to charge a single battery of each type from the other hub with 3 fully charged batteries in it
There is a slight built-in safety margin in that this battery-testing session is being flown indoors with the prop guard fitted, not that this make a massive difference hovering…
More later.
What’s the weight situation like with the mix-and-match of airframes and batteries, John?