The Basics

If you’ve ever flow RC vehicles before this section is going to be somewhat of a review. If you haven’t flown RC before then well just keep reading.

Basics #1 | Familiarize yourself with your drone

So you just got a drone for Christmas, great let’s take it outside and immediately crash it into a tree! Oh, that’s not quite what you were thinking? Well unfortunately, if you’re new to aerial RC, there’s a high likelihood you’ll do exactly that (I know I did). Fear not though as most manufacturers have some sort of simulator that you can use with your controller to get the hang of things before you fly for the first time.

DJI Inspire 1 Simulator

Take a little time to familiarize yourself with the controls of your drone in a simulator before flying it real life. It’s not exactly the same but it’s close enough to save you from hitting a tree!

Basics #2 | Understand that GPS can fail.

Almost all higher end drones today have a GPS guided flying mode. This makes hovering and flying from point A to B a cinch. However, don’t get too reliant or confident in that GPS mode as chances are good you’ll find yourself in a situation where it fails and now you have a drone sliding around in the air like a hockey puck on ice. This is solved by again by being familiar with your drone, and in this case knowing the situations where it struggles with GPS. For mine I could fly under a bridge without any trouble but for some reason when I’m flying through wooded areas it likes to fail and send my drone sliding towards a tree. some of this knowledge is just going to come from experience but another thing you can do to minimize the risk is practice flying in the simulator without GPS assistance. That way even if you do lose your signal you’ll have no trouble guiding your drone to safety, and honestly flying without GPS is more fun anyways.

Basic #3 | Understand the weather limits of the drone.

Most drones out there today are able to handle wind without much trouble (in GPS mode) but that’s no excuse to go flying in the heavy wind. Below is a Gif of a photography job gone wrong when I decided “My drone can handle the wind”… it could not.

You win this round wind…

Seeing as it was windy, I was flying in GPS mode to keep the drone in one place. however, along came a gust of wind just strong enough to send my drone into a futile self-correcting death spiral (it ended up being fine, just had to clean some mud off of it). The point is never underestimate wind. At best it’ll just push the drone around, but at worst it could send your drone into buildings, the ground, or even people. Research the manufacturer’s max wind ratings, look up the weather for your area paying careful attention to the wind gust speeds not just the average wind speed, and don’t fly if it looks remotely like it could be an issue.

Great we’ve got some basics figured out, ready to go fly? Well tough because if you don’t keep reading you’re probably going to get yourself in legal trouble. So take a break, check on the things we’ve talked about so far and come back for section 2… or just lawyer up and go fly (don’t actually do that).