Hi everyone !
I recently purchased the Phantom 3 Advanced about a week ago. After reading through the DJI manual, watching countless youtube tutorials, stalking this forum, cruising the simulation, and scouring the internet for guides, I finally felt confident enough to take the Phantom out for a flight. So I scoped out an empty field this afternoon at Victory Park in Pasadena, CA and set up camp for my maiden flight !
Since this was my first time flying, I kept Beginner Mode on, set low battery warnings at 30%, and only practiced flying a few laps around myself. After I felt a little more comfortable I turned Beginner Mode off and took it to the 400 ft. height maximum (California-law?). I tested manual landings, RTH landings, and hand catch landings. No crashes !
Below are some key takeaways from my first flight:
1) The drone is louder than I thought it would be, although after about 30-40 ft it's barely audible.
2) I had a momentary panic attack when I flew it to the 400 ft. height maximum and I got a "weak connection" error (can't remember the exact error message). Could this be because I was not pointing my controller directly at the drone as it was flying? If so, I'll need to take note of this in the future.
3) My flight times were a lot shorter than I thought. I have 2 batteries and I swear that my first battery felt way under the 20+ minute advertised range. I think my second flight might have been around 15-20 min. Is there a way to pull flight/battery logs to see if I was doing something that was draining the battery quickly? What are some of your GPS-enabled average flight times on a fully charged battery? Also is it a problem that my batteries show only 95% and 97% after they've supposedly been fully charged?
4) I have prop guards and landing stabilizers (both PolarPro) installed. Upon reviewing the recorded videos from today, I noticed that sometimes the prop guards and even the landing stabilizer feet would come into view. Is this due to me flying too quickly? Do you all just cruise very slowly so propellers and such don't come into view? or do you just edit in post? I'm recording in 1080p @ 60fps.
Other than that I'm super excited for my second flight ! I do need to read more about battery maintenance though...that really is a confusing topic and I'm unsure what to do with 2 nearly drained batteries.
Next up ! Learning the Litchi app to make use of Waypoints and Orbit flights. I'm planning to bring the Phantom to the Maldives/Singapore/Japan for our honeymoon so I have about 3 months to train as much as I can haha !
I recently purchased the Phantom 3 Advanced about a week ago. After reading through the DJI manual, watching countless youtube tutorials, stalking this forum, cruising the simulation, and scouring the internet for guides, I finally felt confident enough to take the Phantom out for a flight. So I scoped out an empty field this afternoon at Victory Park in Pasadena, CA and set up camp for my maiden flight !
Since this was my first time flying, I kept Beginner Mode on, set low battery warnings at 30%, and only practiced flying a few laps around myself. After I felt a little more comfortable I turned Beginner Mode off and took it to the 400 ft. height maximum (California-law?). I tested manual landings, RTH landings, and hand catch landings. No crashes !
Below are some key takeaways from my first flight:
1) The drone is louder than I thought it would be, although after about 30-40 ft it's barely audible.
2) I had a momentary panic attack when I flew it to the 400 ft. height maximum and I got a "weak connection" error (can't remember the exact error message). Could this be because I was not pointing my controller directly at the drone as it was flying? If so, I'll need to take note of this in the future.
3) My flight times were a lot shorter than I thought. I have 2 batteries and I swear that my first battery felt way under the 20+ minute advertised range. I think my second flight might have been around 15-20 min. Is there a way to pull flight/battery logs to see if I was doing something that was draining the battery quickly? What are some of your GPS-enabled average flight times on a fully charged battery? Also is it a problem that my batteries show only 95% and 97% after they've supposedly been fully charged?
4) I have prop guards and landing stabilizers (both PolarPro) installed. Upon reviewing the recorded videos from today, I noticed that sometimes the prop guards and even the landing stabilizer feet would come into view. Is this due to me flying too quickly? Do you all just cruise very slowly so propellers and such don't come into view? or do you just edit in post? I'm recording in 1080p @ 60fps.
Other than that I'm super excited for my second flight ! I do need to read more about battery maintenance though...that really is a confusing topic and I'm unsure what to do with 2 nearly drained batteries.
Next up ! Learning the Litchi app to make use of Waypoints and Orbit flights. I'm planning to bring the Phantom to the Maldives/Singapore/Japan for our honeymoon so I have about 3 months to train as much as I can haha !
