Congrats! You just bought your dream drone.
It’s still there, in its packaging, and you are impatient to open it, put the high capacity Lithium Ion batteries in their enclosures, and call all your friends so that they can witness your first flight.
Stop right now, and take 90 seconds to read the advice given in this article. Indeed, although today’s drones are manufactured and designed to be easily flyable, the hints you will read below can truly save you costly repairs, and more importantly, enable you to fully enjoy all the features and power of your high-end technological toy.
Drones might come in a large variety of flavors and sizes, but any flying device has a well-determined number of flying parameters that you can control. Once you learn them, you can seamlessly switch between devices of various sizes, and rapidly gain control of them.
Control Set
The very first item that you need to know about is the control set. Some of the essential controls are Roll, Pitch, Yaw, Throttle, Trim. You may find other terms, that are closely linked to those we just mentioned, but they will eventually be a combination of them.
Roll is achieved by pushing the right stick to the left or to the right. Doing so rolls the drone, which then maneuvers left or right.
Pitch is achieved by pushing the right stick to the front or to the back. Doing so tilts the drone, and allows it to maneuver forwards or backward.
Yaw, is achieved by pushing the left stick either to the left or to the right. Doing so rotates the drone left or right. This is a very important control, as it points the front of the drone towards different directions and helps when you need to change directions while flying.
One of the controls you may like may be the throttle one: once you engage it by pushing the left stick forwards, you will disengage it by pulling the left stick backward. When you use the throttle control, you will adjust the altitude, of the drone.
Lastly, the Trim control will allow you to fully rebalance your drone, should it have been put off balance by your previous tunings of the Roll, Pitch, Yaw, Throttle parameters.
Once you master those basic but essential tunings, you can have fun by attempting figures such as bank turns, hovering, or the very spectacular figure 8 pattern.
When you fly your drone, it is very likely that you will be provided with several fly modes, such as Manual, Automatic, or (if you drone has it) even the award-winning GPS hold.
In addition to knowing about those controls, it is really important that you thoroughly read the manuals of your drones and its remote control. Those remote controls can, for the beginner, be spectacular, given the number of buttons and tunings they provide. By reading those manuals, you will fully become aware of the power and the limits of your gear, and thus, become able to operate it within its limits, which will increase its lifespan.
When flying a drone, there is a process, that you should never skip… Ever.
That essential step is called the pre-flight checklist.
Here are the steps you need to follow:
- Check that your drone camera contains the SD memory card.
- Make sure the battery is inside and fully charged.
- Check every single propeller, and make sure that it is fully secure and functional.
- Check all drone parts and make sure that they are tightly connected, without any missing or loose screws.
- Should there be a need for calibration, make sure your drone has gone through that step
- Turn the transmitter on.
- Get away from your drone for a secure operation and make sure that wherever your drone is flying, you have a direct line of sight to it. This will avoid situations where the drone is far from you, and too small for you to locate it. Nowadays, there are high-speed drones that are very small, and when they are 300 feet from you in a cloudy sky, it is pretty easy to lose sight of them.
One Last Tip
Drone professionals give a pretty paradoxical advice: as a beginner, you should never start learning drone flying in a closed space, as that would make it pretty complicated for you to avoid your drone hitting walls and ceilings, let aside other objects, including your pets.