After my previous Mavic 3 had a nasty accident with a tree and subsequently a sad watery grave, I’ve been spending more time getting my head round it’s replacement. A lull in work combined with a bright but very cold snap in the weather here has given me the opportunity to fly, shoot and edit! (The holy trinity all within 48 hours)

There are still a plethora of options and abilities that the machine has that I haven’t yet got my head round and the controller requires such precise movements that I’d love to hear from operators who’ve actually managed this whilst wearing a pair of gloves. After 30 minutes flying, my fingers were almost white.

Sport mode is a feature that I’m unlikely ever to use (the previous one buried itself in the top of a tree with all obstacle avoidance enabled and then fell into a river and sank) as I’m terrified of this one getting drowned too. It’s not the hardware I’m overly concerned about because I use flycovered.com to insure it, but as I found, if I’ve shot some great once in a lifetime footage and the dinky micro sd card never makes it back into my grubby mits, then all is for nought.

On the flip side though, the bloomin’ thing is amazing. It’s ability to hover perfectly and capture perfect footage in windy conditions is incredible. Primarily I use a heavy £2000 Really Right Stuff tripod for still photography and there’s been really windy situations when I’ve had to anchor it to ensure a stable long exposure whilst the drone has been quite happily hovering perfectly nearby.

The latest software update now gives me the ability to plot a route but ice cold fingers prevented me from figuring that out last time out. Nor have a dared try Night mode yet. My biggest issue is that living so close to a busy international airport and the CAA’s very strict flying restrictions, I find it very difficult to find interesting yet safe places to play. Even whilst at 200ft over Salford Quays, I was getting warnings about the nearby grassy aerodrome which is a good 3 to 4 miles away (MIA was about 7 miles SE) and to be honest if a plane was at 300ft over the area, my pesky little drone would be the least of their worries! They’d be too busy bending over and kissing their tails goodbye to notice a “bird strike”!

Anyway, as this is my first post for a while (6 years!!??!) I’ll keep it brief. I’d hate for anything to think I was getting chatty….