If you are into content creation, photography or survey mapping, a drone is what separates an okay shot from a mind-blowing one.
How? The angles and clarity from a drone aerial shot make all the difference. It is challenging or impossible to achieve this level of clarity and coverage from ground-level views.
However, you need to fly your drone carefully and safely.
If you don’t, you could end up hurting others, negatively impacting your goals, and attract hefty fines and penalties.Nonetheless, with the help of this guide, you will understand the legal requirements, regulations, and safety guidelines, allowing you to fly your drone safely in American.
Even though you don't have to take a class to fly a drone for fun in the US, you still have to take a basic 15-minute knowledge test and, if your new drone weighs more than 249g, register with the FAA. Neither is a huge burden—the TRUST test is free to take and impossible to fail. It's more about making sure that you understand the content.
As for registration, the FAA charges a reasonable $5 fee for hobbyists. This gives you a registration number to add to your aircraft and covers as many drones as you own. You'll need to remember to renew it every two years.
There are some very basic rules of the sky to follow—we have a separate article that goes over them in detail. In short, keep your drone at least five miles away from an airport, keep it at or below 400 feet of altitude, don't fly over crowds of people, and keep it within visual sight range.
Chances are you did some research before spending a few hundred dollars (or more) on a quadcopter. But if you're not sure about what your drone can do, it's time to figure that out.
The latest top-end models pack helpful safety features, but you need to understand what they do and how they work before you can rely on them. Obstacle avoidance is a big one—a lot of drones have it, but it doesn't always work the same way. Is it always on in your model? Will it automatically navigate around obstacles, or will it simply freeze the drone in place when it detects something blocking its path? Are the sensors on the front only, or on multiple sides of the aircraft?
You should also understand how the automated return-to-home function works. Pretty much every drone with GPS will fly back to its takeoff point if it loses the control signal, or on demand. You can typically set an altitude for the home flight. This is especially critical if you are flying in an area with trees or other low-altitude obstacles—make sure the drone is set to ascend to a safe height before the automated return.
You should be intimately familiar with the location of the return-to-home command, whether it be a physical button on your drone's remote control or an icon in a companion app for your phone. You should also see if your remote has a Pause button that causes the drone to stop and hover in place.
And, although it's a last resort, you should also learn how to cut power to your drone's engines in the event of an emergency. I've seen some models fly away unexpectedly, and I'd rather pick up the pieces of a crashed drone and recover a memory card than have the aircraft fly away, never to be seen again.
One of the FAA's rules for recreational flight is that you place a sticker with your registration number on your drone. If you do lose a drone in the wild, there's a chance that someone could look up your registration details and get the aircraft back to you—though I wouldn't hold my breath on that happening.
In addition to controls, you should be aware of how long your drone can fly on a full battery charge. There are typically on-screen indicators of battery life in the app that can help you plan out flights. Most consumer models fly for between 25 and 40 minutes on a fully charged battery.
You should also note where your drone's control app shows telemetry data. Typically, you get a real-time feed of airspeed, altitude, orientation, and location on a world map, in addition to the live feed from the camera. It's important to be able to recognize and process this information while you fly.
So, you know how your drone works, how to activate its emergency safety features, and how long it can fly on a battery charge. All set? Not yet.
The next step is to actually learn to fly the thing. You can get started in a few different ways. If you're cautious, consider working with flight simulation software first. Some control apps include the feature, but if it doesn't, consider grabbing a drone flight sim from the Android or iOS app store to practice in a virtual environment.
If you're more likely to do better in a classroom environment, consider an online training course.
If you want to skip the simulator, I recommend restricting early flights to areas without a lot of people, as well as keeping the drone close to you and at a reasonable altitude. Start by getting familiar with the control sticks—the left stick adjusts altitude and rotates the drone, while the right control stick handles forward, backward, left, or right movement.
Once you get the manual controls down, you can work with the automated flight modes included with many modern drones. You can practice automated shots, including perfectly circular orbits and reveals in which the drone flies up and away from a subject to show its surroundings. Different aircraft have different automated flight modes, so you should spend some time checking out each option.
My final piece of advice is to follow a checklist before every flight. Here's the one I use:
Day Before Flight
Day of Flight
Those are the basic steps I recommend performing before every flight. You may find that you want to customize the list a bit. For instance, if you use filters, make sure you have the right ones. Or if you have a drone that supports interchangeable lenses, make sure you to pack the right optics.