Pushing the DJI FPV Drone Range to the limit

We don’t want to do it where we’re over top of somebody, so the only risk is going to be to the drone and it’s a big risk, because we’re not going to be able to get it back if something goes wrong, but there’s a point way down There that’s 2.2 miles away, and this thing claims they can do 10 kilometers 2.2 miles isn’t even 5k it’s like four three and a half something like that. But 2.2 miles is a long time, especially for batteries that probably won’t last as long as 10k. So i want to see in good conditions if we can at least achieve that two mile range, because that means you can take this thing long range. Do some mountain surfing have a really good time with something that has full manual control and some kick ass. Return to home features, so i think that this is going to be a great test, at least if we can go two miles, then if you guys see this video you like it, you want to see more range, then just hit that comment hit that, like and We’Ll get out and find some we’ll send it until it drops out of the sky. If you want, i don’t care, just you got to tell us that you want that let’s get the bird in the air and see if we can get it to go two miles before we get started, because we had to do a little bit of an update.

Today is march 2nd when the dji fpv drone came out, so it has that, like i didn’t, actually update it this morning, so we’re out here waiting for an update, the battery was depleted enough that i didn’t want to send it for the long range run. So before we go anywhere let’s just cruise it around here see what kind of shots we can get. I didn’t really think about using it, like kind of like a mavic, almost so i’m, going to try some like slow, cruisy or fast crazy. I don’t know we’ll see shots of the surroundings: Music, hi, hey Applause, Music, Applause, Music, okay, so i just got back from flying this, like as if it was a mavic, almost less of a racing drone. Just i kept it in sport mode like where i want to be in manual and just kind of let it eat cruising over the water near the dam. You know what i’m really excited to go. Look at some of that footage i didn’t think about like, even when we made the review video. I was strictly thinking about it as a racing drone. What if, instead, i thought of it more as a hybrid between traditional drones and racing drones and tried to use the best of both worlds rather than make it be an fpv drone or make it be a traditional like mavic style drone. So i that was really fun i’m going to keep experimenting with ideas like that, but that’s.

Not why we’re here we’re here to do some long range testing so swap out that battery put that camera on that tripod and send it across the lake. Okay, we are gon na go for our first of hopefully at least a few long range flights here make sure that the claimed range is at least some percentage of what it’s supposed to be. I think it’ll be fun to see if we can get it all. The way over to the other side of the lake and sport mode – ahoy, okay – i’m – not trying not to blast the speed here so that we don’t use too much battery on the way out. But it’s cool to be able to like look down here on the phone, so i have my phone just to actually just tape to this tripod, but i can look down. I can use this instead of just being in the goggles, which is nice because, like staring into goggles for a long time, especially when you’re flying like long range or fpv is kind of a pain. As long as i keep my antennas relatively pointed the right direction, we still have great signal both on the video and on the yeah we’re. Just on our way, i think what we can actually see right. There is the island and a little bit further beyond. That is the actual two mile point that we’re going for so luckily we’re far enough away from that island.

That our angle up is going to be high enough. That we’ll be able to clear over top of the island which doesn’t have any people on it, which is the whole reason we’re here over the lake and then be able to reach our destination. So we’re on track plan is going. The mission is going according to plan plan is going according to mission. What i was about to say, i know there’s a cruise control feature somewhere in here. I don’t know how to do it, but right now, i’m kind of just like keeping the stick. Not quite super pushed over so that it is still going fairly quick, still crystal clear, video i’m going to give it a quick nudge here and it’s it’s still responding to my controls, instantly there’s, no delay or anything like that, it’s fun. With the camera tilt, we can kind of like look down while we’re cruising out see what’s going on on this island. I kind of want to go to that island looks fun. Oh wait! There’S docks at the island there’s buildings on the island. What the heck that’s crazy, we might have to investigate that further. Okay, we are now over slash past. The island still have perfect rc link and video link. Video link is four bars instead of or three bars instead of four bars. I don’t know what that really means, but we are making good progress. Let’S slightly, adjust our distance or angle here, we’re at 3, 000 meters, so we’re, three kilometers out that’s a long way.

Okay, hd is down to two bars, but i tilted my head up and it came back immediately and we’re approaching these houses on the other side of the lake, so i’m gon na kind of hang her right here and slightly because we’re still high enough that we’re Not gon na go over any we’re, not gon na go behind any obstacles we’re at 100 meters, which we can go up to 120. So we’ve got some room to work with and i’m now at 3500 meters, and i want to go for that bridge over there. So we’re going to stay dude look at some of these places. Winston come around. Look at this house holy crap like what is that going on that’s a crazy cool little mansion line, isn’t that insane cruise control enabled? Oh, i figured out how to do cruise control. So if i there’s there’s, some tutorials okay, so i’m gon na go up to 15 meters per second click. That button and cruise control is now enabled low battery, not low battery it’s worried about my battery. So it’s gon na force me to turn around yep. Okay. It’S forced it’s asking me to turn around i’m, letting it turn me around i’m going to take it off of that, because i want to fly it back myself because i don’t want to go over the land, but so we’re at 100 and 100 meters height and Heading back at we’re, going too fast, let’s slow down a little bit.

15 14 meters per second that’s, actually really cool. The cruise control is sweet, so now it’s, just cruising at 14 meters per second we’re, getting attacked by geese and now again with the cruise control. With the screen, i can just take the goggles off look down at the phone, see where we are relative to what’s going on don’t have to stress too much. I know that it’s on cruise control and it’s holding 81 meters of altitude, and we have a pretty much i’m going in a straight line between the two, the island and the buildings which i’m gon na, have to come back for another flight for the island. Because that looks crazy, oh there’s, like a dock and everything it’s like a little party island like this that’s got to be what it is right: yeah, okay, so i’m gon na mind. My home point see my you can see indianapolis in the background there actually and make sure i don’t drop too low turn off cruise control, and now we can look down yeah there’s, just stocks hanging out there. I didn’t even know about this, and i live here. There’S, a water slide dude. I want to go freestyle that definitely want a boat. So one of the things that’s nice about using this for long range is that it helps you with battery management so like at that point that furthest point it said: hey we’re, going to start having you return to home, because we want to make sure that you’re, Not going so far that you’re not going to be able to get the drone back before your battery dies, so it said okay we’re putting into a return to home.

I could have overridden it. If, for example, i knew that there was a tailwind or a headwind or something like that, that was going to help me on the way back, but i just decided to acknowledge what it’s saying and go ahead and just bring it on back. So what that means is that this thing has an effective range of about four kilometers. So beyond that, beyond that distance, it’s gon na be putting itself into return to home and you’re, potentially not gon na, be able to return the distance, but i mean a 4k flight is pretty significant, so comment down below. If you want us to set up a one way flight where we fly it to someone at the maximum possible range, but maybe they’ll put a new battery in for us and we’ll fly at home if we can get it off the ground at that point. Okay. I’M gon na adjust my course slightly still tolerable battery we’re still only at 40, actually at 40 battery, so we’re doing pretty good. So, with my experience with the mavi, you can say, like you, want a low battery warning at 20 percent or x percent, so i’m, pretty sure the battery management takes that into effect to where it’ll land with that reserve on the battery, so it’s it’s nice, the Mavic, the battery management is a godsend. It lets you know where to go and when you need to get home so we’re about 500 meters from home now so we’re getting pretty close back to to our starting point.

After going four kilometers pretty easily like that, was the easiest long range flight i’ve ever done. I forgot how to turn off cruise control. That was scary, okay. So this little guy right here, Music just did a five kilometer or four kilometer round trip. So we flew 8k, we still got 31 battery remaining, so we could have potentially gone even a little bit further than that which is pretty cool that’s. That was super easy. I only flew it in like stabilized modes, but like what i my end goal for. All of this is to like be able to fly out a long way. Click it into manual mode and then take over in full manual. And then you know do some freestyle or whatever in a particular location. So the goal is fly out to like your mountain ravine or something and just take it easy on the way out there. You don’t have to be like super zoned in making sure that it’s flying nice and smooth and straight you just kind of lock it in like cruise control, get to the mountain ravine that you want to fly down and then flick it into manual mode and just Rip it and then, when you’re done or when you have a return to home situation, click it back into the position hold or sport mode and it’s going to be able to fly itself back like that’s. What i think is really cool about the possibility of drones like this.

While we were out there on that long range mission, we saw that island and i was like that looks kind of cool like it was just like totally abandoned, but filled with docks from like partying in the summer, or something like that, and i thought is there – A way we could get to it with this drone and then cruise along inside of it, maybe like almost like cine whoop, some shots in there kind of risky right. Because if i crash, i don’t have a boat, so we’re gon na have to figure out how to get it back, but i think that would be really that’d be a fun test, a fun mission to use. So we looked it up. We can see that there’s a bridge over here that has a perfect line of sight on the entrance to that island and so we’re gon na drive over there and give it a shot, give a shot at potentially being able to do a long range footage gathering Mission jump back in the car we’re gon na drive like pretty much halfway around the lake to a bridge that has like a walking path and there’s these little outcroppings. Where you could stand, we should have access to the island from there. So we’re gon na drive over there find a place to park, walk down the path set up on the bridge and go for it. This is the bridge that we’re looking for you can see over here on the right that there’s this little outcropping and that’s.

What we’re going for to stand on and then straight out? There is the island which there’s a little bit of stuff between it but we’ll see. So i think we can park over here in this boat launch, walk across that bridge onto the other bridge, set up shop and fly some drones. We found our spot it’s a little bit kind of incognito we’re hiding behind this box, but uh straight across over here is the island that we’re heading to but yeah goal is to get to the you can kind of start to see some of the white stuff Straight out there that’s, where all those docks were that we saw so the mission is to fly from here to there get some shots get back without crashing. Okay, so i’m gon na do this in manual mode, because i make wise choices, but i can always bail to non manual mode. Here we go i’m directly above the trees, above you, okay, so we’re doing a chase with the mavic no i’m getting choppy video i’m trying to cut in front of you here. Oh jesus christ, i’m just slowly moving forward. Okay, i see now okay, i’m headed out to the island. I don’t have that much battery. Well, i have a lot of battery, but i got you. I don’t want to burn it off. Okay, i’ve still got good rc and hd. We can always go to return to home if we need to.

We are approaching the mouth of the bay we’re gon na. If somebody is just out here hanging out we’re gon na freak them out, so bad, so i’m going to very slowly try to go around the corner of the trees and see if we lose anything, because i want to be able to explore around in there. Oh, this is so cool there’s, a lot of stuff back there holy crap. I know right, whoa, i’m, getting real bad connection. Now i got ta sit and hover. I can’t go any farther in i’ve still got a good, solid connection. I’M, lowering my camera tilt. So i can go through here: slow i’m just cruising around inside hoping that there isn’t scraggle. This is bizarre, doing some establishing shots real quick i’m, definitely getting worse, video but it’s, totally doable i’m flying through i’m hitting gaps. I am very dumb. Oh yes emitting gaps at a thousand meters on an island that i can’t get to so i’m, getting close to the opening of the bay on the right there’s, a structure in front of me close to the first pier i don’t know. If you want to do some dumb stuff around there, uh looking at your i’m gon na move to look at your video like this thing – yes, i’m! Looking at that right now, oh god! I don’t want to go through that. I see you i’m just going to go down the dock line city whooping along the way, hoping that there’s no wires i’m moving a little bit to the opening of the bay we’re good video got a little sketch there’s like a covered bridge over here.

This is cool recovered duck. I don’t know if i want to go under there, because it’s just metal i’m going to push out into the bay if you want to do some stuff around my drone. Okay. I’M. Just cruising right now, i’m. Out from that dock that you, i spotted you at okay, i’m, only seven i’m, just getting some city whip shots right now, i’m, good i’m, just making sure you’re where i’m at there’s that water slide. I see this looks like a party spot dude, this isn’t cool. Third person long range, i can’t believe i’m, a thousand meters away from home behind a bunch of trees and in amongst a bunch of metal, stuff city whooping right. So if you yeah, oh that’s, a tree Applause so i’m directly out from the main dock walkway. Okay, i think i’ve reached the point where i’m pushing my luck and we should get out of here. Uh if you want to get under me, i’ll call you hunger from chase, or vice versa, copy that i’m gon na switch it into position. I see you, let me get out of the mouth of this, so that’s above me yeah. I am. I just went past you turning around okay, now, i’m. Switching it into position. I see you: okay, i’m gon na hold 10 meters, okay, i’m gon na push forward and hit five meters per second and i’m in cruise control. I think i’m smart and don’t follow directly behind you.

Everyone is sport mode. Now, i’m gon na try cruise control there. We go all right now: i’m gon na try and get done. Oh geez, just what nothing! Okay, i’m, getting close i’m gon na try to put it right on the deck. So you know oh gosh, giving me warnings, it’s, not happy i’m above and behind you. This is this is gon na look awesome right here. Dude yeah i’ll take your word for it for now i’m, so zoned in right now, i’m good. All right do not slow down. I am it’s locked in cruise control, so if it does something it’s not me should i turn around and fly backwards. No, that was a good five feet behind you. There following. I am above you, so if you do stop it’s, not the end of the world, i wish i had cruise control. I have to hold left stick because of the wind, though oh mavic shots. Oh choppy, video is scary. Can you get like in front of me and follow backwards, uh if you hold still just pull back at a reasonable speed and i’ll just kind of chase all right i’m starting to pull back? Am i in a good direction? Yeah you’re good! Just go for a little bit here, holding you’re not in center i’m working on it flying in sport mode to sketch cool that looks good. Should i could i do i need to get closer when you can but it’s it’s plenty good, all right, i’m.

Happy now. I can’t see where i’m going. I don’t like this. You got a little bit left. Okay, go ahead, bail, cool, so it it throws me off that, like in sport mode, the horizon, doesn’t change and i keep forgetting that and it makes me panic. I probably unslightly this is how not to land your drone – i’m, not i’m, not doing this. I could probably do this better in manual mode. Oh gosh we’ll get everything covered Music, so much panic, bad thumbnails mission accomplished. I was able to take this thing. Fly it in full manual mode, all the way out to the island, which was a thousand meters away, which isn’t really that far but like when you consider that it’s, like behind the trees over there and we’ll, show you some shots from the mavic. So you can see just how sketchy that was like. I was getting some really good video like like signal, but then i also got some really nice shots too, because it was like all the sun was going through. The ice was in there. It looked really good. What’D, you see i’m looking forward to it. This thing i shot in 4k, so i should be able to punch in, but i could see you clear as day cruising around in there that’s pretty cool. It was kind of weird seeing a long range third person view close up long range third person, city long range, whatever you know crazy cool.

Well, i hope that you guys enjoyed that adventure. We were just testing out the penetration and the long rangeness of this thing. I hope that you enjoyed it.