I certainly share your concerns. I started with a P1 and spent a fortune (to me) upgrading it. Flew into trees and buildings too often and finally the gimbal was bent past fixing. So, I used that as an excuse to upgrade to the P2. Moved a lot of my expensive add-ons (ground station, bluetooth, better tranmitter, better gopro, FPV, etc) over to the P2 and had a blast for about 3 months. Then, after installing an upgrade and not having enough brains to check it out in a safe area, I flew it over a river getting some awesome footage of my friends in a ski boat. Some of the best video I have ever shot - at least based on the FPV. I'll never know since about 10 minutes into the flight the P2 went nuts and I had no right stick. It is now in the Brazos River and has been since June. I pouted for about three months (swearing off of UAV's) but started reading about the P3 which I eventually ordered. My wife has resigned herself to the fact that when it comes to flying these things my normally fiscal conservatism is missing. I'm trying to enjoy it but it is a little tougher given how much time and money I have poured into this hobby. I'm nervous almost every time I fly it. Reading all the posts about unexplained disasters really aggravates the issue - even though I have had almost none of the problems listed on this board. What has helped me the most is 1) if things are working well now avoid upgrading until the messages on this and other boards indicated the "bugs" in the upgrade have been identified and fixed. This seems to take 3 to 6 weeks as a rule. The upgrades have always been good - once the kinks are worked out. 2) Don't cut corners on the preflight. 3) Spend a lot of time learning the features of the system flying in a wide open safe place before you fly in risky environments. There is a tremendous temptation to fly over water, in mountains, in forests, and so on since the videos and stills are truly amazing. Unfortunately, the crashes are just as extraordinary. 4) Finally, as others have said, the risk of failure is part of the hobby given it's cutting edge technology. Although I still get nervous flying my P3, it is so amazingly cool that the occasional setbacks are worth it. Have fun!Hello all. I've had my P3P for 4 days now and have flown it twice without any issues. On my downtime I've been reading here on the forum to learn everything I can about the P3P. I've concluded that I've got the only working DJI drone! Now I'm afraid to fly because it may......crack, lose the FPV, have firmware issues, fly off on its own with no looking back, stall, lose its GPS signal, have battery lose power instantly, have battery not plugged in properly, have battery that's had too many charges, have battery not charged enough, have wrong app version, need iPad updated to iOS 9, no now iPad needs back to iOS 8, .......and the list is growing with every read! Maybe I'll leave it on the coffee table as a conversation piece. [emoji15]
Just get a tracker and go fly. These sensational threads crack me up. My birds have no cracks and I've flown hard for hundreds of flights. Have fun man.