Mavic Pro - "The Baltimore Run Test Flight" - Initial Litchi Test Flight

After about a dozen manual flights & a couple Litchi test flights over the bay it was time to put the Mavic through its first real Litchi test with the Baltimore Run. Test conditions were @ 35 degrees with winds 6-8 mph. The bird completed the mission & returned with 24% battery remaining.

First off signal is incredible. It blows away my P4 & even my venerable P3 Advanced. I had full contact & FPV for almost the entire flight. The only time I lost contact was behind the buildings & when the Mavic went down low in the Inner Harbor.

The gimbal stabilized things well with no glitching & the horizon was remarkably level. Like the P4 the horizon does roll a bit as the aircraft yaws around or flies sideways but this has been an issue since the P3 so nothing unusual or unexpected here.

The Mavic camera has a smaller FOV than the P3/P4. 78 degrees for the Mavic versus 94 degrees for the Phantoms. The Mavic was flying the P3/P4 optimized mission & will need some slight tweaking for the narrower field of view.

Originally I thought the Mavic's barometer to be a bit stingy like my P3 Advanced. I have since discovered it isn't the Mavic but my saved Litchi mission (which hasn't been altered in months) is the issue. Tweaking the altitudes back to normal now.

The Mavic's sensor seems more sensitive to light than the P4. I noticed reviewing the flight video that it is adjusting exposure settings at various points throughout the flight & not always in a good way. I may have to consider locking the exposure on launch to prevent this from happening during night flights.

I have noticed that the Mavic is not as precise in programmed yawing as my other DJI birds. There are points in the flight where it is clearly yawing to the wrong point. This may be because I have not performed an IMU calibration on the bird. I will perform a cold IMU & a fresh compass calibration & report back on results.

My real complaint with the Mavic is the focus. In bright light achieving focus is easy but it is extremely difficult to achieve a sharp focus at night & it is hard to tell it isn't focused properly while viewing a tiny phone display. During the flight I refocused a couple of times. When I was flying things looked great & it was only after I watched the full-screen video at home I realize the focus was soft. This is something I'll have to work on. I personally would have preferred DJI gone with a fixed infinity focus like on the Phantom series.

Overall I am a bit relieved because I seem to have received a good unit. Build quality is excellent & I have had no control, gimbal, or inexplicable drops to ATTI mode as reported by some users. With a bit of mission tweaking the Mavic performs well & should be able to secure some great aerial footage.