Novice impressions of the DJI Mavic Air 2

So the process was a little bit complicated due to 1) the whole living near an airport thing, 2) the fact that there wasn’t much time after work and before dark and, 3) it was a windy 37 degrees out. However, we officially were airborne today! For the record, I was not at all disappointed and would have happily gone through all three batteries if my hands weren’t going numb already. My wife and kids were kind enough to indulge my fun and I even invited my parents, which allowed my dad to snap that great photo of my youngest son and the drone itself. Here are some photos and a few quick observations.

It’s really easy to fly, but also surprisingly fast. Again, this was really my first time flying and it was a really easy process getting up and running. However, I was also caught a little off guard by how quickly you can send that little drone zooming into the distance. Also, trees come up pretty fast too, but I was paying attention in that case so avoided any problems. I need to get used to flying using the camera and not glancing back and forth between camera view and visual flying.
Getting flight authorization was a little complicated. Remember that who living near an airport thing? I kept crashing Airmap on my phone and ended up using Kittyhawk to get authorization. Of course, while the FAA was happy, I couldn’t get the drone to authorize my flight at first. I also found that I had to export the authorization to the drone multiple times to get the geofencing that prevented flight without authorization unlocked. It was a relatively fast process to authorized, but just keep in mind that there are a couple steps before your drone is fully able to fly in geofenced areas.
The DJI Mavic Air 2 handles wind really well. We were well below the wind speeds that I saw people testing on YouTube (I don’t think that it exceeding high 20s mph), but I was still surprised at how stable it was. It definitely burned through the first battery much faster than I expected, but I never had a concern that it was going to blow away or anything.

I only snapped a few photos, but thought I would share. I definitely need more practice before I’ll be comfortable both flying and taking photos or videos and I look forward to getting more flights under my belt soon!