Well, 2020 will be the great Year of the Flyaway for many Mavic Mini owners, and with mine flying away at 00:14 on New Years’s Eve, I may have possibly been the year’s first 
But as ever, learn from your near misses and share the word, so here’s a collection of tips on why flyaways happen in the first place and what to do as you realise your drone is actually refusing to head home and is slowly being blown away.
Cheers as ever to all!
Ian
Thanks Ian, a helpful video for many. I’ve been slowing gaining more confidence in the wind applying common sense like positioning myself downwind from what I’d like to film.
Though yesterdays winds proved to be too much for the Mini. Generally speaking it handled very well indeed and I got some pics I’m very pleased with.
It was my return leg coming across the wind and at a too higher altitude that caught me out. Briefly losing visual did not help the situation with the Mini being so small and, well, camouflaged.
Having read countless fly away stories, it was simply a matter of regaining visual with help of the map, orientation indicator and camera reference point, popping it into sport mode and applying just enough descent to make continual progress. Good pre flight environmental scans pay off here. Where’s the powerlines, what structures are around, where are areas that look more sheltered etc.
I did have a few moments where the mini was actually forced backwards but again increasing descent rate and using the landscape prevailed. Great fun albeit a little heart racing being my first drone.
I can’t stress this enough. If you find yourself with a backwards drifting Mini, do not engage RTH! A cool calm manual return is going to be the best option, and if it looks like there’s no hope then as you say, just get the thing down on the ground in one piece and talk a walk to find it.
Here’s my inflight wind overview 
Great video Ian
Something else to consider, and this applies to any electric flying model.
In a perfect world a model will expect a constant voltage and constant current supply to maintain a constant speed Or power.
Power = Voltage X Current.
However all electric models rely on a battery and where terminal voltage drops as it is used. A higher C rating can offset this over a limited Voltage range. So to maintain thrust as the battery’s terminal voltage drops the current demands are increased to try and maintain a constant supply of power. Some Electronic Speed Controllers when detecting a current flow close to or in excess of its rating will purposely self limit to prevent permanent damage to the electronics, similar to a car engine going into limp mode when the engine management system detects a serious problem.
This emphasises the excellent point that @ianinlondon makes about ensuring your batteries are up to the task. Expect shorter flight times in windier conditions, especially at this time of year whereby the temperature will also impact the electrochemical performance of your battery.
Regards
Nidge.
@ManxJason Good going Jason; yep, unlike all the other Mavics, engaging RTH seems to be a bad option on the Mini; hoping they update the settings to engage or stay in Sports mode. Glad you got things sorted; you had some pretty strong gusts of wind there… Cheers, Ian
@Nidge That’s interesting to read Nidge. My school boy Physics taught me Watts = V x A and I wondered how the motors cope with a fairly signifcant voltage drop over a long flight. On my NYE flyaway I saw a new error message I hadn’t seen before along the lines of “Cell Voltage low - replace battery” and this was around 30% battery. Shame I didn’t screen-grab it but that seems to tie in perfectly with your point…
Ian
@ianinlondon. What you experienced was voltage sag. This ties into my mention of a battery’s C rating, the property of a battery to retain a current draw at a particular voltage. When the current demand becomes less the terminal voltage of the battery will increase a certain amount, a higher C rating will reduce this effect to a certain degree.
The ESC will attempt to maintain a constant voltage and current level to the motor when for a given thrust requirement, this will mean that the current demands of the ESC will increase as the battery voltage drops.
Most ESC’s have three DC Square Wave outputs, each 120degrees phase difference from each other producing the motor rotation. I don’t know what method the Mini uses but DJI started using Sinewave outputs on the Phantom4, Inspire, and their E series propulsion systems. Using a pure Sinewave, as opposed to the high harmonic squarewave, meant there was reduced, or more efficient, power demands and thus less heating of the ESC components and the motors making the overall propulsion system more efficient. As an example I switched the original 2212 motors and 30Amp Opto ESC’s on my F550 Hex to DJI’s E310 Propulsion system with slightly larger, more torque, motors and 15Amp ESC’s which has resulted in better stability (active braking) and improved flight times with the same battery packs.
Sorry for the long winded reply, I do tend to find tangents.
Regards
Nidge.
@Nidge Well fella, even with my degree in physics I barely kept up with that but it definitely makes sense… I had someone questioning why I thought a voltage drop should have any effect on the thrust. I’ll save this text and throw it at them the next time they try and get smart 
@PingSpike Rich, surely we have a Professor of Physics badge or something for @Nidge? Mighty impressive explanation!
Ian
It’s a shame that all the “Off The Shelf” Drones don’t show instantaneous current draw and milliamperes consumed in the telemetry. My Xugong V2 Pro uses the EzOSD which shows these values. Using a 3S 35C LiPo the values at take off into a hover are around 12Volt@15Amp, but overtime the battery will be at 11Volt and the instantaneous current draw will be at about 18Amp or greater.
As a comparison if I use a 3cell, 10c, battery of the same capacity the terminal voltage at the same point in time as the 35c pack will be at 10.6Volt and current draw about 22Amp, even though the same amount of the battery’s capacity has been used. Hence the lower the C rating the greater the voltage sag. Hence I use two 5000mAh 10C batteries wired in parallel to create a 10,000mAh 20C pack when flying my larger F550 Hex.
It’s more often than not trial and error to determine the optimal and safe flying time, even with off the shelf drones as in this case the manufacturer will rely on artistic license with their claims in an attempt to make their product more attractive over their competition.
As for an honorary professor? I also know a lot about neurology but you wouldn’t want me to perform brain surgery. I leave that to peeps like yourself whom have proven their competence with years of study and examinations. I’d say I destroy more than I successfully build 
Regards
Nidge.
If we haven’t, we need one 
Really helpful advice Ian, some points I never considered before such as returning down wind which when you think about it make good sense.
