So Dan just called and said he needs a little help getting a clip for a video he's making
about alternative energy.
I think it has something to do with windmills.
And luckily,
my Mavic Air has arrived.
[Intro]
So this is my first time playing with the Mavic Air, and the reason I like this one
so much is because it's a kind of combination between the regular Mavic Pro and the Spark
that was released last year.
It's basically a Mavic Pro that can fold up and collapse into the size of a Spark.
So I got the Fly More package which should come with a couple extra batteries and some
prop guards which is good because we're taking more than one drone and I don't think they're
both going to make it back.
When you're flying around windmills...things can get dangerous.
Here are those prop guards I was talking about.
And the drone should be in one of these bags.
Got the batteries in here.
These look a lot different than both the Spark and the Phantom and the Mavic, so I don't
think they're interchangeable anymore.
Remember with the Mavic Platinum and the Mavic Pro, those batteries were interchangeable.
These ones are not.
This should be the Mavic Air.
Wow.
That is sweet.
They're actually calling this the Flame Red, and it is a completely different design than
what I was expecting.
I was expecting something a little bit more like the Spark.
I'll make a video where I show all these side-by-side and stuff a little bit later, but right now
we got to get going.
Let's just keep our fingers crossed that this one comes back, and if one wrecks, it's Dan's.
So initial impressions...this is about as small as I anticipated it being.
One thing I was expecting was that the propellers would bend...you know, fold in half like they
do with the previous Mavics.
The propellers have no flex to them.
The front arms pull out just like normal, and then the back arms fold out like they
do with the previous Mavic, and that's pretty sweet.
And it's got these little tiny legs right here as well for the landing gear on the front,
but not the back.
I imagine that's to keep the camera a little bit elevated from the ground.
I feel like everything's redesigned just a little bit different.
So with this front gimbal protection thing, you unclip down here at the bottom and then
it pops off the top.
That's completely different than all of the other gimbals on all the previous DJI drones.
The 4K sensor inside is stabilized on a gimbal and it looks like the batteries eject in a
similar fashion – it's got these little pull tabs down here.
You can tuck it back inside and it's locked and loaded.
It doesn't come with a charge.
That is a problem.
So not only is this a smaller form factor than the previous Mavic, but it also has more
safety features.
It has sensors on the back and the front.
So if you're flying backwards, you can't crash into anything, which is a plus because I fly
backwards a lot getting that shot as you're backing up and panning around is perfect.
Someone put these prop guards on just for kicks and giggles in case it bumps into anything,
it slips right down here through the bottom and then this top latches and closes.
And that way, when this is spinning around, nothing can come from the bottom and hit it,
and nothing can come from the side and hit the props and stop them because once one of
these stops, the whole drone just plummets and we're trying to avoid that.
It looks like these bumpers actually snap into each other giving a little bit more protection.
Not too bad.
That is quite the cage of protection right there.
Okay, we're set.
I'm going to charge some batteries and we'll get out of here.
One thing I don't get is why people are kind of opposed to wind turbines.
I mean, I get that they kind of like block the view, but they're pretty sweet looking.
And if you think about it, the reason they're called renewable energy is because they're
sustainable.
We can keep making more of it.
I mean, I haven't seen any dinosaurs walking around recently, and oil is a thing of the
past.
It's not coming back.
Which includes gasoline and coal and everything else that's taken millions of years to develop.
So getting the drones ready to fly around those wind turbines.
We have the regular Mavic – this is the Platinum.
And this is what I was talking about with the wings that fold open and shut.
One thing that is interesting with the Mavic, I mean, obviously there's the size difference.
The Mavic Air is considerably smaller than the Mavic Pro.
But the gimbal as well.
So the gimbal right here is pretty free floating.
And the gimbal inside of here is protected on both sides.
When we're looking at the controllers, we can see that the Mavic Pro has a little bit
of a display right here which gives some information while you're flying which is incredibly nice.
The Mavic Air is more like the Mavic Spark controller where it doesn't have the display
and it's more just everything is one your phone.
Okay, so the goal of today is to not lose either of the drones as we're flying around
these wind turbines.
I think there are 9 turbines and each of them can produce 2.1 megawatts of electricity.
[Dan] Sounds like a lot.
Like something out of Back to the Future.
So thanks Zack for helping me out.
I am not the greatest drone pilot.
I tend to crash my drones, and so I just need a few b-roll shots for a video that we're
making with Bill and Melinda Gates on sustainable energy.
So I asked Zack and he said let's go by this giant wind farm and fly the drones around
it.
So we're going to be careful, we're going to be safe.
We are in a safe location.
We'll try not to get too close or dangerous.
It doesn't look like these things are moving all that quickly, but in reality, they are
huge.
They are so big.
So we're going to try to keep our distance and not get too close just to get some good
b-roll.
I just need like 3 seconds of footage.
[Zack] And the way we're going to do this is that if you look at all of the turbines
over there, remember that each of these propellers are like the size of a semi.
But there's one tucked behind the mountain over that that's not moving.
So the drone can probably get a little closer to that one than it can all the rest of these.
[Zack's Drone] “Take off.”
[Flying sounds]
[Zack] So it's super windy right now, so the drone is compensating a lot for the air movement
in this canyon.
[Dan] I do think it's interesting though, your drone is more shaky than the Mavic.
You can....oh, where'd you go?!
[Music playing]
[Zack's Drone] “Maximum flight distance reached.”
[Zack] What the heck?!
Super annoying.
[Music playing]
[Zack's Drone] “Landing.”
[Music Playing]
[Zack] Dude, I can't get the drone to go more than 193 feet from me.
Disappointed DJI.
So all the footage you just saw, none of that was from the DJI Air.
It has a limiter in it when you're first starting out.
So you can't fly too high and you can't fly too far.
I adjusted both of those and even turned off the distance limiter and it still would not
let me do what I wanted to do, which is extremely frustrating.
[Dan] This one is working really really well.
I was quiet the whole time.
He's over here, I don't even remember what he was saying, but he was super frustrated.
And I'm over there just silent just like look at these shots, they're amazing.
So if you see any shots right here, these are my shots.
I'm pretty proud of them.
[Zack] Dan did better today with the drone than I did.
[Dan] So I know that you have skills.
It definitely was not user error on this one.
[Zack] It is really frustrating, and like this isn't my first drone.
Like I've had basically every DJI that's come out, so like I know what I'm doing when I'm
flying around with these things.
But the settings on this were just...even though the settings were correct, the drone
still would not fly farther than like beginner mode.
[Dan] Oh man.
[Zack] So if you haven't seen Dan's video yet, head over there and leave a comment saying,
'I came here for the windmill' and we'll see how many people go over from my channel.
So that just goes to show not every project goes as planned.
I had a completely different idea of how this video was going to go, but that happens.
Tech doesn't always act the way you want it to.
And that's my review of the Mavic Air.
Alright, so I'm going to try this again because I've never gotten a bad product from DJI.
Like everything I've gotten from them just works and so it's weird that this one is not
working and it won't fly farther than just a very short distance from me.
So I'm going to mess around with the settings a little bit and see if I can figure out what
is going on with this and reach a final verdict right here, once and for all.
So it has been about 2 days since I last flew this, and there is yet another update.
So it's updating the Mavic Air right now and maybe that will fix the problem.
But to be honest, I feel like every time I turn on one of these drones, there's some
kind of update going on.
Okay, the moment of truth.
It may need to calibrate the compass one more time.
But I think we're ready to fly.
Alright, let's see if we can get farther than 200 feet this time.
And it did it.
So we are currently 600 feet away and there are no warning messages at all.
So it must have been that last firmware update that it needed to perform, but the funny thing
is that I did all the updates before I left and everything was fine and said it was ready
to fly.
But then it just never did anything.
So a couple days later it finally pushed that last update and now we're good to go.
So I take back most everything bad I said about DJI previously.
I'm happy that this is now working, and I will keep you updated on whether or not it
continues to function as we go along.
So it really must have been that last update cuz now you can see it is entirely stable,
but when we first started flying around, it was wobbling around in the air.
So even though it said there were no updates left when I first started flying, apparently
there was one and now everything's fixed.
Kind of makes sense.
I'm glad we were able to update this and figure out what was going on with the drone.
Thanks a ton for watching, and I'll see you around.
[Music playing]