Costco Members: DJI Mini 3 Drone Aerial Camera Bundle Expired

Glad you got your drone back. You know what you did wrong....right?

Without knowing all your details, commonly this is maybe what happened based on what you wrote without reviewing your logs. When you press RTH, the drone will climb up high so the return flight can overfly any obstacles closer to the ground. This may look like the drone is "flying away" but instead it could go very high first....and then come home. So where's home? That's where the drone took off from. As long as you established a home point which means you wait for a GPS lock, the drone will come back "home" when RTH is triggered. If you don't wait and you fly off and later while flying, a lock is established then your home point can be somewhere else far away. Also wait for full GPS lock and when you heard "home point has been established." Check it on the map.

If you hit the button and you trigger RTH and then you see your drone "fly away", hitting the button a second time will likely cancel the RTH and the drone will stop and hover. Normally that means the battery draining to near empty and the drone coming home anyway or the drone will land in place. You should check your flight logs to see what really happened. And you should also practice RTH in a small open field with your drone within sight and get use to this powerful feature and how it works and what to expect and which will save your drone many times down the road. RTH is essential to a working drone and practicing will help with the panic which even I still get sometimes.

HEADS UP

I bought the mini 2 on ebay with the Allstate protection warranty that I pretty much forgot about.

the gimble stopped working last week and I sent it to Allstate to try to fix it and they couldn't, so now they're fully refunding my purchase 2 years later.

although refurbished sucks, I will be sure to make sure whatever I buy from here on out has the extended warranty.

no deductable?

That's too risky a test for me. I've heard too many horror stories, albeit not DJI specific, where for whatever reason the "home" location for that flight was not properly stored and the drone would try to fly to the last flight which may have been many miles away in the wrong direction, and it would do so until it ran out of battery, and being lost at that point.

But being as this is a toy-class drone by weight and that the only rules that really matter are those that are enforced, don't do anything too obviously stupid like fly near an airport or buzz a whole bunch of people at a beach or wedding, and you should be fine.

After all, driving 1mph over the speed limit or changing lanes without signaling are illegal, but what are the chances you'll be severely punished for either if at all?