10 Tips to Better Control Your Drone
- mrsalehi5
- Jan 25, 2022
- 5 min read
When you consider purchasing a drone, take into account:
1. What is the right drone for the job?
Today there are numerous drone options available in the market. Different types of drones have diverse features, specs and pricings. You should ask yourself:
What do I want to do with my drone?
How much time will I spend flying it?
What is my budget?
To give you some perspective, recreational flying will get you a completely different drone than a commercial flight for inspection. Better understanding what you want to do with your drone will help you narrow your choices and make the right decision. Some drone options include:
Ready to Fly Drones - RTF shelf drones can be used immediately after taking it out of the box. The drone will most likely be equipped with an advanced built-in stabilizer and safety sensors.
Do It Yourself Drone Kits- DIY kits are customizable to your personal needs so you can ultimately build the drone from scratch to your liking. This means that the basic kit won’t have any safety features and it is up to you to pick the safest, most efficient parts for your drone.
After understanding the drone options and deciding what you want to try out, you should consider:
2. Getting proper training & practicing regularly
Becoming a professional pilot will not happen overnight. When you start operating drones it is important that you get initial guidance from a professional who can cover the essentials and introduce you to more complex techniques. Even after your initial training, continue to practice and test yourself with camera-drone movement, take-off, landing, and avoiding obstacles in various speeds and altitudes. Before investing in a more expensive drone, it is recommended that you gain experience and practice with a cost-friendly drone.
3. Familiarizing yourself with rules and regulation
Before you taking your drone to the sky, make sure that you are up to date with the local and federal rules and regulations that apply to you.
Expert pilots, this part is for your too.
Once you are getting ready to fly, you must always remember to:
4. Put safety first and be prepared
If used in an unsafe manner, drones can disturb numerous things in the air and on the ground. Before flying, perform a maintenance test to make sure that all the drone parts are working properly. While everything may be currently intact, it is important that you are equipped with spare drone parts and accessories in the event of a malfunction. If your drone experiences a fried motor, a bent propeller or a dead battery, having spare parts in advance will save your time in the long run and allow your drone to make a quick recovery.
Focus on your safety, avoid any and all dangerous situations, and always use your best judgment. While creativity may spark new uses (maybe one day a drone will keep an eye on your kids as a nanny cam) keeping a high standard of safety and reason is crucial, mainly for your own sake and image as a professional drone pilot.
Lastly, always start flying your drone at a slow speed and resist the temptation of speeding.
5. Understand the weather
Checking the forecast is crucial when planning your flight. While drone technologies are extremely advanced, they can still not compete with harsh weather conditions. Rain, snow and heavy winds can damage your drone in a way beyond repair.
Now that you are brushed up on the most relevant safety procedures, you must address the risks. Once you have invested in your new drone, it would be a shame to encounter unnecessary crashes and mishaps. that will compromise your operation and damage whatever work you are engaged in. The SkyWatch.ai app can be useful here too because it can inform you in real time about the weather, and if it’s a good day for flying.
You can prevent risks and collisions by:
6. Performing a pre-flight physical check-up
Always conduct a structural integrity test before flying. This will allow you to see that all the rotors, cables and mounted equipment, such as camera and safety sensors, are working properly and that they are not damaged. Make sure you don’t have any broken ports or loose cables that will disconnect you from your radio transmission. This is also the time to check that your battery is at a full charge so that you know how long the drone is capable of flying.
7. Ensuring that you have a tuned compass and a GPS
Your drone’s compass may become detuned if it comes into close contact with any magnetic disturbances. Keeping it away from such magnetic forces (found in car speakers, phone lines, and powerlines) will help avoid detuning the compass. Additionally, monitor your flight via a GPS in order to stay clear of any obstacles. Note that flying your drone indoors decreases your chances of accessing a GPS signal.
8. Flying in safe areas and maintaining a visual line of sight (VLOS)
Doing a thorough terrain, road-map, and satellite analysis (as seen in the images pictured earlier in the article) will help you better understand your flying area and show you possible restrictions. Flying beyond visual line of sight is against the FAA’s regulations and if your drone is too high or far you are risking in losing direction and control the of your drone. You must always be able to see your drone in order to detect and avoid hazards and obstacles. . If you decide to fly over water, notice that often times the reflection of the water disturbs the visual positioning system of your drone and can potentially throw it off track. In order to avoid doing so, do not fly less than 15 meters above a water surface.
9. Do not hit the Return to Home button too soon:
When most drone operators lose control of their drone, their instinct is to press the Return to Home (RTH) button. Unfortunately, most consumer drones cannot avoid obstacles without their pilot’s control. Immediately hitting the home button after losing control could make it more likely to collide with a tree, electricity pole, or anything else in its way. It is important to stay calm and first try to figure out what caused the drone to lose control and how to get it back under your direction smoothly.
10. Teamwork makes the dream work
Having a co-pilot is one of the best preventative measures for complex flights where you need to perform a precise flight and at precise camera movement at the same time. You'll have to upgrade your setup but if one person focuses on monitoring the drone in the air, while the other manages the controller, the chance of having any accidents will significantly decrease while you manage to secure the shoot.
