Over the weekend I could not help myself and I took advantage of the nice weather Saturday to fly the little Mavic Mini a few more times.  The little thing is very impressive!  It handles better and with longer flight time than the Phantom 3 Standard, the other drone that BCC owns, and the video capture is very comparable.  The main difference is that the Phantom 3 has more manual settings, the video resolution is still 2K.  My main surprise is how easily this drone is to fly – almost too easy!  One needs to keep in mind that it has no sensors for obstacle avoidance, meaning that if you tell it to it will fly right into a wall (or a tree, or a building) without hesitation.

Here’s some of the video from the weekend.

You will notice that I took great care only to operate only over my own property and to not exceed 400 feet, 120 meters, in altitude.  It’s honestly a bit surprising that the new DJI software will allow you to set the max height higher than that.   I’m still studying to obtain my Part 107 Certificate, however one of the nice things about flying this drone is that since I was flying recreationally and with a weight at just 249 grams, the certificate is not required by the FAA in this case.

One of my favorite features of the Mavic Mini is that it puts subtitles on the video it makes with flight data, such as GPS location, height, and a few other details.  (You won’t see that in the uploaded YouTube videos.)  Perhaps other DJI drones do this, but this is the first drone I’ve used that does that.

My next project is to see if I can get DroneBlocks to work with the Mavic Mini.