so i was out at this coastal headland spot ive been wanting to shoot for months, got there early morning and conditions looked perfect on the ground. light breeze, clear sky, the whole thing. launched and climbed to maybe 80 meters and it was a completely different story up there, the aircraft was getting pushed around pretty hard and i could see the wind resistance warnings starting to pop up.

i kind of panicked for a second because the return to home would have taken it right over the water to get back to me, and i wasnt 100% sure it had enough juice to fight the wind home if it went that way. ended up manually flying it back low and slow along the cliff edge which worked fine but my hands were sweating the whole time.

came away with some actually incredible footage because the light was so good, but man. i check windy.com religiously now before i go anywhere near the coast. also kind of want to upgrade to the mavic 3 at some point because i feel like the air 2 struggles more than i'd like in those conditions, though it might just be pilot error on my end for not checking properly

yeah coastal flying is a whole different thing, the wind speed on the ground near cliffs tells you basically nothing about what its doing 50-100m up. ive had my mavic 3 in some pretty gnarly conditions and it handles it better than my old air 2s did, but even that thing has limits. windy.com is essential, some people also use UAV Forecast which shows wind at different altitudes which is actually more useful for this kind of thing.

glad you got it back safe. that low slow manual return along terrain is the right call in that situation by the way, fighting the wind at altitude burns battery way faster

this is literally my fear every time i fly near water lol. did the footage turn out good at least? sometimes the slightly chaotic wind conditions actually add something to the shot when the camera is moving around a bit