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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1256627
I still always fly with a folding landing pad). Mavic Air 2 only comes in a mid- gray, about the same shade as military aircraft. I had been hoping for a bright white option, to make it easier to keep in sight, something required in the U.S. There are very bright LED position lights at the ends of the arms and an auxiliary white light on the bot tom. These may help spot ting the drone under a dark overcast, but won't do much in daylight. On a bright, clear, day, I found that it was essential to keep the sun at my back and to wear polarized sunglasses. Still, the Air 2 still tends to disappear against any ground-level background clutter. DJI Fly – Good, Bad, but not Ugly The Air 2 shares the new DJI Fly app released with the Mavic Mini and that is a good news/ bad news proposition. The good news is that the Fly app has a much cleaner interface. All the controls and displays that are not absolutely essential to flight are tucked away. The map is simply an icon in the bottom corner that you can tap to expand. Beside it is altitude and distance information. Along the top of the display are signal strength and battery displays, however these can be difficult to read with a bright sky behind them. Missing is the darkened bar that gives them a bit more contrast. If you opt for manual exposure control, all the controls you'll need are at the bottom right of the screen and automated flight settings pop up as soon as you select a target on your screen. The other settings are in a single three-dot overflow menu. The Air 2 can be hooked into international aviation's ADS-B (Automatic Depended Surveillance-Broadcast) system in the form of DJI's AirSense feature. This will provide alerts, both visual and audible, when human-carrying aircraft are anywhere in the area. DJI's literature says alerts are limited to aircraft that may be on a collision course, but my experience was quite different. The alert was triggered by a small Cessna, miles away heading in a different direction, a commercial flight clearing 10,000 as it departed PDX as well as a Life Flight chopper transiting the area at low altitude that was indeed a factor. And now the bad. The advanced controls used to adjust control response and sensitivity are currently missing from DJI Fly and was something I spent a long time mastering to get the theatrical- looking camera moves that I wanted with the Air. The setting that adjusts the gimbal pitch speed is mentioned in the online documentation, but wasn't included in the software. As it turned out after I got in the air, the missing features weren't as big of an issue as I thought they would be for a couple of reasons.