So when doing manual take off and you simultaneously pull the sticks down with two hands, how are you holding the drone? This isn't a criticism, I genuinely want to learn how to do this.
Hey Brent. I rest the controller on my arm (same arm as holding the drone), quickly pull the two sticks down and then take hold of the controller again. Hope that helps!
Good info, Matthew, but you did miss an important detail. When using the nudge method, ALWAYS make sure you release the sticks on the RC before you release the drone. If you're still holding the sticks together when you release it, the drone will immediately fly backwards, leftward and downwards. If you're releasing with your right hand it'll basically fly straight at your head. No need to ask how I know this!
I think the main advantage is that you don't get a load of dust & grit getting thrown up from the downdraft which can get into the motor windings which are exposed on the Mini 2. I always use one of those pop-out landing pads for the same reason. Going to have a go at hand launching/landing in future which will be less hassle. Thanks for the tutorial :)
I am hand-launching and hand-landing all my drones since years, beginning with Mavic Pro (1) over Mavic Mini until Mini 2 and never had any contact with props or other issues. I found a lanyard on the remote very helpful, as it makes the CSC procedure for takeoff far more easy. For hand-landing I am using a different method which is the most safe one in my opinion. I place the drone slightly above my head in front of me and pointing into my direction. Then I come with my hand from front side, slightly below and grab the drone behind the camera, near the front leg joints, so the downward sensors won't see my hand. Finally I push the throttle stick back for stopping the motors. As I have quite bad eyes the hand-landing method you have demonstrated is too dangerous for me as I might fail with placing my hand exactly below the drone. My method is safe as I have as much time as needed for slowly manoevering my hand into grabbing position. This works safely even in strong wind conditions.
What about bringing the drone to where you would grab it, and then switching to SPORT mode so the sensors are off and then grabbing it without the worry of it flying away?
Just recently tried doing this launch from my hand, on the third time flying my DJI Mini 2, and the drone started downward right away, upon which I thrusted out my hand to "catch" it, and the blades not only mangled my thumb with much bleeding afterwards, but I dropped it to the ground/pavement and the whole gimbal mechanism busted all apart! Now I'm looking for a repair shop, in case anyone knows of where to send it!
Awesome Thank you! I've had my Mini 2 for over a year now. I try to use a landing pad, as I don't want dirt in the motors, or the "propellers cutting grass..." I tried your Nudge Method, and the Hand Landing... Wow.!! I'm not perfect yet, but this is much safer than open hand landing, and, it is cool too! Muchly Appreciated!
I think as long as your hand is already sensed under the drone, bringing it down with the throttle stick is the safest bet. Just take hold of the body and don't let up on that down stick 😉
03:22 show us how u are doing it......i'm really curious how you can do it......do u have 3 hands?otherwise i cannot explain myself how can you manage to hold and push the 2 joysticks with your 2 hands and simoultaneously to hold your drone??????????????????????
I generally use my drone in remote areas with lots of vegetation or deep snow. Hand catching and hand launching are usually the only choices. Even with a choice, it's easy to do and it's always safer for the drone in my opinion. Turning the drone upside down is not a good idea though.
Great video. I hand launch and land all the time. When it’s windy I make sure to launch with my back to the wind. And when I land I do the same, using my body as a wind shield.
You seem to contradict yourself regarding stress on drone motors. You say you can grab from air and pull down, but causes issues.... Then when landing you say you can catch and invert drone for blades to stop, surely the later would cause more issues and stress on drone and blades????
Sorry I should have been more clear. When pulling the drone down it will fight against you with the motors - this could be an issue if happening for a long time. When landing you flip the drone very quickly meaning the motors only spin faster for a few seconds. Hope that makes sense.
@@TheDroneCreative I’ve recently seen someone advise catching a landing drone and whipping it upside down. This makes the props stop instantly. It does work but is it damaging to the drone?
From personal experience, the dji mini 2 propellers do hurt and do cut the flesh. My thumb ended up with two deep parallel cuts which produced a lot of blood and took quite a while to stop bleeding. It hurt like the bejesus. I grabbed at it because it kept rising away from me. I won’t do that again. I think it is wrong for you to suggest the DJI Mini 2 isn’t that dangerous, it sure is. Take care with any drone.
I have a bad story about hand-catching the drone.🙈 Normally if the surface is not even, I take off and land the drone in my boyfriend's hand. But this one time the drone started to be low on battery and I didn't want it to auto-return home, since we launched it from the patio. Anyway, so here I am, landing it on my boyfriend's hand as usual (whilst it's doing the crazy DJI beeping of "laaaand meee nooow!" 😂). But for some reason, after landing on the hand and grabbing it, the propellers keep spinning, even though I let go of the joysticks already. So we are all panicking, the drone tries to fly up, but my boyfriend doesn't want to let go, since we don't know what the drone is gonna do, and since it has low battery as well. Trying to press the joystick down again doesn't work, shutting down the remote doesn't work. So at the end one of our friends managed to open the battery flap and wiggle it out, so the drone finally stopped.🙈 Everyone around was in shock. Still to this day I don't know what happened. So since then we always turn the drone upside down after catching it as shown in this video, because that definitely stops the propellers.😅
I just got the drone yesterday, and had a couple successful hand-catches, but the third one it wouldn't turn off and tried to fly away as I was holding it. I thought that covering the sensors on the bottom with my hand made it think it was on the ground and so it would shut down, but I must not have had it in landing mode or whatever that time. Anyway yeah, the flipping-upside-down trick was what I needed to know at that time too.
@@daneast Yeah, we also thought that something was up maybe with covering/not covering the sensors. I read some comments here that say you shouldn't flip it too much as apparently it wears down the motor over time, so just FYI.
Hi Mathew - just recently discovered your channel - to go with my recently acquired (and first ever drone) mini 2. I've had my drone for 3 weeks now and am absolutely blown away with the footage I'm getting out of it already, even given my very limited experience of operating it. A limited experience which includes - trying🙄 - a hand catch already which didn't go too well. To put it mildly😕😕 Now, I should emphasize that 99.9 percent of drone users ( if not more 😄) are not absolute muppets like your's truly, so won't be attempting a hand catch in the first week of drone ownership, in near pitch darkness, when they haven't studied how to do it properly and have very little confidence before they try of being able to pull it off. I shouldn't have been flying the drone at dusk anyway when I was so brand new to all this with only a couple flights under my belt at the time as I'm supposed to be line of sight at all times and the lights on the drone aren't all that bright. But anyway, it was my last flight of the day and I was landing it after capturing some more amazing footage ( of the Hong Kong skyline where I live) and I was literally 5 feet off the ground and pressed the land icon on my phone to land it ( I now just push down the sticks like normal people but hey ho 😁). However for some reason the drone sensors didn't seem to like the landing spot, even though it was pretty much exactly where I took off from, a dead flat tarmac road which was the entrance to someone's ( someone exceedingly rich since actual big stand alone houses aren't exactly common in Hong Kong) home. It was technically a private road off a very quiet ( again rare here ) feeder public road to a few of these mansions. It's a spot I've gone many times before when I didn't even have a drone, as the view out over the city from this high up the Peak is absolutely stunning. And in all the times I'd taken my camera and tripod to this spot on some billionaire's driveway - I'd never seen a car come or go from the place one single time. But right now as my drone is hovering 5/6 feet off the ground a foot in front of me, a chauffeur driven Maybach ( well it would be 🙄) comes tearing up the driveway towards me with its full beam on blinding me for a second. Now it's pitch dark bar his headlights and one dim not too near lampost, so while he can clearly see me thankfully so doesn't run me down as I'm basically standing in the middle of a road ( his road 😬) , I can tell he hasn't spotted the drone at all as it's just like windshield blind spot height for him. So to the driver I'm just some nutter standing in his driveway holding a Nintendo in one hand for some reason and the other I'm holding up in a stop signal sign. Which he does of course as he'll have to run me over to get past me, but he obviously can't understand what I'm playing at so starts honking his horn repeatedly - and quite understandbly - for this rif raff nutter to get the hell out the way. Now if I'm you Matthew, or anyone else reading this, then all I do is take my controller push up the up joystick, instantly shoot the drone 15 feet up and well clear of car windshield height, and step out the way so he can pass me and then I can resume landing the drone in my own sweet time. But I'm not you, I'm a total tool, so I panic and having seen one thing briefly about a hand landing on RU-vid prior, I decide pitch darkness / blinding head lights with a guy threatening to mow me down if I don't move and agitatedly smashing his horn - would be the perfect relaxing moment in which to pull off my first ever hand landing. What could possibly go wrong ? 😬 From the video I had watched prior on RU-vid ( not one of yours) I vaguely remembered, since I wasn't planning on doing it anytime soon and so wasnt really paying attention, the one thing I did recall that is if you come up under neath it too slowly and too directly underneath it, it will sense your hand as an obstacle and so actually move up and away from it a bit. So smooth purposeful single movement from under / behind ( as the actress said to the bishop ) is what I thought I recalled. So anyway, I didn't do that, I thrust my right hand out directly at it and tried to snatch it out the sky from just above my head like it was a softball. But it's not a softball of course - it's got some sharp bits spinning at quite a lot of speed. Now I know you - and others I've seen in videos I've watched since - have said that if you actually accidentally catch the props on the mini 2 you'll most likely just get a nasty sting / bruise , but it won't break the skin. Well that wasn't - unfortunately - what happened to me. 😕😕 Nooo noo noo. What happened to me was some serious skin breakage coupled with an impressive amount of blood and searing pain as - out the corner of my eye - the mini two instantaneously fell silent and crashed to the concrete ground below it like an obese pigeon that had had a cardiac, except with a much more unpleasant and frankly concerning sound as plastic met tarmac. Well concerning for a millisecond until my concern went back to there of my finger tips that were now spurting blood all over my t shirt , jeans and the controller. The chauffeur of the Maybach had already got out of the car as presumably he'd figured out something had gone badly wrong. As did the passengers, an older local Chinese guy and his much younger - and absolutely friggin stunning - wife / mistress / girlfriend who was wearing a beautiful figure hugging silvery sequened gown to his formal dinner suit. Clearly they weren't off to Nandos for dinner. Well Hong Kong doesn't actually have a Nandos but I digress. I appreciate I've diggressed quite as a lot in this novella already so I'll get to the point. And the point is that if your as stupid as me - highly unlikely as I appreciate that is - you may not just end up with a sting and a wee fright. You may end up needing two actual stitches in one finger and butterfly stitches in two others. Putting paid sadly to the only possible consolation of pleasuring yourself back at home later on to mental show reel of the Gemma Chan lookalike ( but even hotter) in a low cut spray on silver dress. But unlike me if you are this stupid I can't guarantee you that youll be driven to A & E by some exceedinly nice people in the back of a Maybach with your mangled hand bandaged in a Hermes scarf and your blood soaked mini 2 in their boot. A blood soaked mini 2 I may add that despite its fall from grace with almighty clatter, suffered no permanent damage whatsoever thankfully, unlike it's owners hand it had a falling out with. So 3 weeks on an with my half severed digits healing nicely am I ready to get back on the horse and attempt this again having watched and absorbed your video Matthew? Ummm...no. No I'm not. I'm literally terrified of the thing now. But maybe in like 3 years time or something. If I'm feeling extra brave 😉
Reading this comment, I assumed and hoped it would have thousands of likes…to see it having less than 10 was a big surprise. Loved the story, im in the same position as you were, a new owner and considering hand landing. I recon i’ll get comfortable with other things first. You wrote the story amazingly haha, hope you’re better now
This may sound crazy, but hand launching and catching is actually the safest way of flying, because you can always reject a take off in case something goes wrong or not as planned during the take off. You can also emergency land your dji drone without a controller if its in hand reach. Grab it from below/behind at a 45° angle. To stop it from fighting, roll it to either side by 90°. GRAB it well while doing so, roll it away from people or things not towards them. Always hand launch and catch the drone with your arm ABOVE your head so that its impossible that it hurts anyone including yourself.
I once had to land back in a very small inflatable boat which was drifting with the current. Not an easy landing target! I ended up hovering the drone just downstream of us, waiting until we drifted up to it and then grabbing it and turning it over!
Oh boy. Just learning about the nudge method. Tried my first manual launch. I am clumsy as hell, so unintentionally did the nudge method and was wondering why my drone tried to pull away. Yikes. Close call. I was inside my home. Yep. Dumb.
You missed a step with the nudge method. IE: You can't be holding the drone whilst at the same time pushing both sticks down - please could you clarify? Thank you. The mini 2 will definitely cut fingers, as I found out today.
I do this easily with my A77 Chubory drone. The take off and landing button makes it rise and land perfectly on the spot - even hovers there all still. Great wee drone indeed.
There are situations where hand launching and catching would be a desirable option and that is why I searched out and found your video among others to further evaluate this option with the Mini 3/4 drone. With all things being carefully considered it seems to me that that best option would be to avoid situations where hand launching and catching is a necessity. The myriad of things that could go wrong outweigh, in my opinion, just moving to or waiting for the option of throwing your pad down on the ground and doing a proper home point launch/land setup. People that insist on trying to fly drones on and off of small boats where factoring in wave motion comes into play is among the most ridiculous things I can think of. I noticed in this video that the option you showed of launching with the two-sticks-down method to power up the props, that you used your two thumbs (per the normal way of doing it) which meant that you spun the drone props up without it being in your hand. I have yet to see anybody pick up a "powered up" drone. I saw another guy pull in his arm that he held the drone with, in close to his body to use his forearm to pull the right stick down while he thumbed the left stick and the drone was basically right under his face as the props spun up. It seems that DJI must have a disclaimer somewhere that states hand launching and catching is not recommended, i.e. you assume all risks (which there are many).
Getting your finger in the props of the dji mini 2 feels like someone slaps your fingertip with a ruler... it hurts a bit, but you won't lose any fingers or draw blood.
No....your logic about the mini 2 being small so chances of you being hurt are less is like saying a smaller hand gun has less a chance of hurting you if you handle it improperly compared to a larger gun !
Hello there I’ve watched all your video on here like and I’ve decided to for the dji minin2 it’s my first drone any hints and tips please dji 3 looks good but far to exspensive for the first drone
Thanks Matthewww. Interesting advice there. Couple of points though. Why not wear some or a glove to give you more confidence? Not a big clumsy mitten but a glove that gives you a certain amount of control. Those props can produce a nasty cut. Also I'd wear a good pair of glasses even a pair of safety glasses. If the drone flew into your face you'd be in big trouble. I chickened out of one flight on a steep hill climb recently because there was nowhere to land and hand catch would have sorted it, so it is useful to have the skill there as an option. Also to land on any rough surface invariably causes the props to hit the ground which cannot be good for them so hand catching is a better option there too.
I had a failed attempt at hand catching my dji mini 2 and it cut the hell out of me I got 15 paper cuts all the way up my finger and got blood all over the drone and my hand trust me it hurts and it can cause damage I got pictures if you don't believe me
I started hand launching my drone all the time. It is so much safer for you and for everyone else. It makes sute your drone wont get ran over and wont hassle bystanders that dont notice theres a drone on the groud. When uoy raise your arm in the air with the drone, everybody knows what you are about to do and to stay clear.
I grabbed the drone once and it started fighting back. In the end the drone won because I kept the stick down to land the whole time and I rushed the drone in my fingers.
i actually cut the tip of my finger with the mini 2 when i first got it, left a small cut and my finger was actually numb for a little bit lol learned my lesson tho
One thing I always make sure I do, is to make sure the drone front is facing away from me. If the drone goes into fault mode, like I had recently, then the drone will not fly into my head.
New to drones and am enjoying your content. I'm planning on flying my mini 2 from a sailboat this summer, so am particularly interested in how to land it while underway, not moving quickly, maybe 3-4 knots. But, that strikes me as enough time for the boat to move away while the drone is hovering in place for an auto-land (to hand). Have you any suggestions? I think I'll need a second person to grab the drone while I pilot it with two hands, but am interested to hear about alternatives.
I was told that when hand catching the Mini 2 it was not a good idea to flip the drone upside down to stop the engines as it puts a strain on the motors. I would welcome others thoughts on this. (I find it easy enough to hand catch my Mini 2 and just hold the left stick down to cut the motors - I have my transmitter on a lanyard.)
I have read similarly. In my opinion, if you do it quickly - the strain would be negligible. I guess that's a decision for each owner to make if they feel comfortable doing it. Thanks for watching, appreciate it.
@@TheDroneCreative I find it just as easy to hand catch it and then just pull the left stick back to shut the motors off. I did it this afternoon to show a friend who is thinking of getting a drone and he was sure I was going to chop my fingers off - Obviously that didn't happen or I wouldn't be typing this now. The same goes for hand or "nudge" launching. lol
I still don't see how you can hold the drone in one hand and start the props with the other. You need two hands on the sticks, but with only two hands available, how do you hold the drone, too? If I am holding the controller in one hand, how do you get to the sticks to push them down and in? I didn't see a demo in your video that showed all elements of this.
Sorry - I should have shown this. I hold the drone with one hand, rest the controller on my arm quickly and push the two sticks with my other hand. Hope this helps - thanks for the question!
@@TheDroneCreative - okay, thanks, I can visualize this. Should have thought of that myself, actually! The other day I was trying to juggle the drone with the controller holding a full tablet, and it was very awkward -- so this method is best performed using a phone, not a tablet.
It's amazing on the manual release, you have both hands free to engage the drone and in the next shot, you instantly have the drone in your hand. How did you do that?
At 3:02 you talk about stating the motors first, you are clearly using 2 hands, so where was the quad? Then you shown yourself holding the drone and taking off.
Nice video, I made a small wooden bat style catching aid that looks like a small cricket bat but flat. I can place this under the drone between the arms and it lands or takes off from it. Fingers are clear as the handle is extended clear of the drone. You need to be a little more precise but it works.
Wow, I did not know about the turning up side down trick!!! I learned something new! I usually just do the one before that, put my hand under it, wait for it to detect the surface and then pull down on the left stick and let it land on my hand and once it touches my hand, I pinch it. My son tried to get it out of the air the other day and cut his finger on a propeller because he did not consider how big they were. After that, no other accidents so it is fine to land on my hand, I usually do that. I take off with the nudge most times. Thanks Matthew.
Just for the people to know: I did a mistake and my middle finger had a collision with the propeller. that thing has great power! i got some deep cuts, like kitchen knife. Be careful out there!
I got too confident to do this at some point I didn't think about positioning my finger in a safe manner, I brought the drone down too far and the blades reached my fingers. It really hurt! I was bleeding a lot and thought I had deep cuts, but it was only blood, so just little scratches in the end (the drone didn't have any damage and was still flying after the incident). It was a harsh reminders to keep your finger at safe when doing those methods.
Second time I tried this my middle-finger got caught in the props. Hurt like a mofo. I had 3 cuts that were bleeding and a fourth one that didnt open the skin but it resulted in a speck of blood under the skin that turned hard and black and thAt one took weeks to disappear and heal. I became very insecure catching the thing since then. Need multiple practice sessions. My #1 tip: make sure none of your fingers are extended, except for the ones that catch the drone.
I just hold the stick down to land with my hand underneath. You get the bounce and then it lands easy. Totally agree with not hand catching In wind, I've had a few ouch moments with the propellers.
Hi Matthew, everytime I am watching your channel, I am learning something new: just tried the "nudge take-off" on the the Mini 2. Works like a charm 🙂. Thanks for your helpful insights and advice 👌👍
I take the drone by hand and land it by hand every day. I'm comfortable and fast. because I have to fly back come to the same place in a timely manner because i want battery saver In shooting surfing videos, I think your video clips are really good.
Been flying a P4Pro for some years on a PfCO - got a mini today for the greater flexibility. Really like your calm way of doing things. You have a new subscriber :)
