Chapter 10
Choosing When and Where To Fly
In This Chapter
Picking a good flight location
Flying your drone indoors
Preparing for inclement weather
Planning for night flight
Flying your drone in populated areas
Recreational flying with your new drone should be a lot of fun. Don’t get me wrong, it’s going to take quite a bit of practice to get used to remote controlled flying, but you will be rewarded with hours, days, even years of enjoyment. Whether you are a seasoned flyer or you are getting ready to take to the skies for the first time, the timing and location for your aerial antics require a little planning. You need to make sure you understand the different environmental variables that can affect your safety, the safety of your drone, and the safety of others. Flying indoors can present risks of damage to people and things. Flying outdoors has its own bag of tricks, as well. Obstacles, wind patterns, precipitation, and temperature, even the amount of light you have, can greatly impact your flying experience.
As you get more confident and experienced with flying your drone and taking advantage of all of the different navigational controls it offers, you will likely become more daring with when and where you decide to fly. Location won’t matter nearly as much to you as it will when you first start flying.
In this chapter, you see how to pick a good location for your first several flights. Stay safe and keep your drone airborne by picking a good location and time for earning your wings. Keep reading to learn more about how environmental variables can impact your flying experience. Flying by night and around people also require a stomach for risk and an understanding for how to keep people safe and your drone operational.
Most drones today are designed to fly under a milieu of conditions, but they require experienced pilots to navigate them successfully. Understanding what you are up against in different environments before you take off will set you up for success sooner than later. Then it all comes down to practice.
Choosing a Location for New Pilots
Learning to fly your drone will probably take a bit of time, and you and your drone will probably take some lumps along the way. For your first several flights, you get comfortable with how your drone starts, calibrates, takes off, and lands. You also get accustomed to the controls, flight ranges, auto features, advanced tracking, and even how the device handles with various weather variables. For these reasons, when you first fly, choose an environment that is as forgiving as possible. That means a place where you can recover from a crash with the least amount of damage to you, your drone, and other people’s property.
Following is a list of places and things that are not ideal for new drone pilots:
The backyard: Really, your front yard is not ideal, either. Unless you have a massive chunk of land in the middle of nowhere, learning to fly in your neighborhood is not ideal because of the possibility to hit trees, fences, your house (or your neighbors). Populous neighborhoods mean you also run the risk of crashing into people and their personal property. None of which is good for you or your neighbors. Of course, you can’t forget about power lines. Most city neighborhoods do not have the benefit of buried power lines and this can propose a potentially catastrophic situation for you.
Figure 10-1 is a picture of a typical city neighborhood. Most of the houses in the image have next to no yard and are very close together making this area not fit for beginner drone pilots.
Drones are still controversial because of the general public’s perception of them as being used to further erode the right to privacy. Many drones are being used with out care or consideration for others. Be thoughtful of your neighbors when flying your drone at or around your home.- Near any body of water: If you are flying near or over water, you are testing fate! A stiff gust of wind, bad battery, mishap with the controls, or an auto feature gone wrong could send your drone into the drink and render it useless. Even if the body of water is small, out of the way, and seemingly harmless, it could prove to be a great temptation as you become more comfortable with drone flight. Skimming over the water with a drone is pretty cool. But you might want to save yourself the temptation by avoiding locations with bodies of water.
- Public parks or other public destination: Anyplace where you are likely to be around other people that are engaging in activities other than drone flying is not a good idea. Chapter 7 goes into great detail on how to keep you and others safe when you fly your drone. Public areas like parks, sports fields, school yards, and so on are all places where people are engaging in different types of activities and won’t be tuned into the aerial acrobatics happening overhead. It only takes one badly tossed Frisbee, strong kickball kick, or Peyton Manning-esque toss of the football to mean disaster for your drone and the people below. Avoid these sorts of public areas. Figure 10-2 shows a great wide open space that is not ideal for flight because of all of the activities happening on the ground.
- Utility easements: A utility easement is a chunk of land that may be privately owned but has been commandeered by the government for public utilities like electrical lines. An area where there are overhead lines, easement or otherwise, is not a good place to cut your teeth as a pilot. A stiff breeze, slip of the thumb, or maybe an overconfident beginner can spell disaster for your drone or worse. Figure 10-3 is a picture of a utility easement that looks great for flying, but don’t be deceived. The lines in the sky can equal sudden doom for a careless pilot.
- Indoors: It goes without saying that learning to fly your drone indoors is simply not a good idea. Unless your house is massive and has 40-foot vaulted ceilings, or you happen to own your own private gymnasium, flying indoors is, well, actually, it is still a bad idea. When you are learning to fly, you want to leave yourself as much margin for error as possible. Take walls, ceilings, and expensive things (other than your drone) out of the equation so that you can increase the chances of success for your first few flying experiences.
- Wooded areas: You guessed it, like walls, trees are not good for drones. If you’re on a camping trip and your campground is nice and open except for the 70-foot hardwood trees everywhere, it’s probably not a good idea to fire up your drone for a test flight. No matter how cool the footage might be of your camera bobbing and weaving between deciduous monsters, steer clear of drone-killing trees.
Courtesy of Mark LaFay
Figure 10-1: Aerial view of a city neighborhood.
Source: Ingfbruno/ Creative Commons
Figure 10-2: Fun activities can equal disaster.
Source: Per /Creative Commons
Figure 10-3: Utility easements are not the best.
Now that you know where and what you should avoid for those first few flights, it probably sounds like you need to be in the middle of the nowhere. That’s not the case; you simply need to be mindful of things that can destroy your drone, or harm you or others and their property.
A location that is wide open, free of obstructions, and is not populous is ideal for beginning pilots. An added bonus would be if your location had soft ground. Soccer, baseball, or football fields are all great places (assuming they aren’t occupied). Flying at times when people aren’t likely to be around is also a good consideration. Parking lots after hours are a great option as well. Just watch out for the landings!
Tall grass can complicate finding a downed drone, but it can provide an equipment-saving crash medium.
If you opt to fly in a public place that is likely to be used by other people for other activities, consider planning your fly times at off-peak times. Also consider bringing in orange cones or flags, as shown in Figure 10-4, to denote the area where you intend to fly your drone. You can’t block people from entering your temporary fly zone, but you can use the cones or flags to notify folks of the activity within the cone zone.
Source: Chad Kainz/Creative Commons
Figure 10-4: Cones and flags are great for making others aware of your drone flying antics.
Flying Indoors
Flying indoors presents a unique set of risks and challenges, such as flying into people, furniture, ceilings, and floors. If you have pets, you have to be concerned with their curiosity with the flying chew toy. All of that aside, in case you want to fly inside, the following sections offer some tips to set you up for success.
Securing the area
Before you fire up your drone and take to the indoor “skies”, run through the following checklist to ensure a safe, and successful flight:
- Make sure pets are out of the area. If you are flying at home, make sure that your pets are secured so that there is no possibility of them coming into the room while you are airborne. If you are flying in a public place, post notices and markers indicating the area of your flight.
- Move or remove furniture from the room. In the event that your drone uses sonar to maintain altitude, this will save you the headaches of unexpected jumps and drops. If you need furniture in the room for a video that you are capturing with your drone, then consider rearranging the furniture so that your drone’s flightpath is free of objects that may interfere with your flight.
- Reset your drone. Don’t forget that modern drones are advanced machines with advanced computers. Your drone will remember flight conditions, settings, and other variables that, if left unchecked, could make flying your drone increasingly more difficult. Resetting your drone will erase its memory and set you up for a fresh start. Most drones will come with a reset button. However, you may want to refer to your manual to ensure that you are resetting the device appropriately.
- Adjust your flight controls. Many drones will allow you to have multiple control settings so that you can set different sensitivity levels for your flight controller. Make sure that your drone is either set to a pre-set for indoor flying, or manually reduce your drone’s control sensitivity. The last thing you want is to tap a directional control and have your drone go flying into something. Configuring controls is specific to the drone so be sure to refer to your drone’s user manual to learn how to adjust the sensitivity of your flight controller.
Knowing your drone
Every drone functions a little bit differently. For example, some drones use pressure gauges to determine altitude. Other drones use sonar to determine distance from the ground. Knowing how your drone functions helps you avoid disaster. For example, if your drone uses sonar to calculate altitude, when you fly over a structure like a coffee table, your drone may quickly adjust thinking that all of a sudden it lost 2 to 3 feet of altitude. Soft materials absorb more sonar than they reflect, so if your drone goes over a couch, it may autocorrect thinking it is higher than it should be. Knowing these nuances could save you from calamity.
Using an indoor hull
Some drones come with a hull that shields the propellers from impact. If your drone supports an indoor hull or some sort of propeller guard, use it. If you get too close to a wall or a person the hull or shield will reduce the likelihood of a drone, or human, casualty. Figure 10-5 is a picture of a Parrot drone with a protective hull attached and also without.
Courtesy of Tucker Krajewski
Figure 10-5: Parrot AR Drone 2.0 with and without an indoor hull.
Avoiding ceilings, floors, and walls
It may seem obvious, but it can’t be stated enough. For drones to get airborne they must move a ton of air. The propellers force air down, which causes the air pressure below the drone to be higher than average and the air pressure above the drone to be lower than average. This creates a force called lift, which takes the drone airborne.
When you fly very close to the ground, the air is forced more sideways than down, which causes the drone to become unstable. If you fly too close to the ceiling, air can’t flow downward to the propellers and instead comes in from the sides. The air pressure then decreases even more, creating a vacuum effect and thus drawing the drone closer to the ceiling. Avoiding walls is smart, as well, because the flow of air is impeded as you get closer to a wall, affecting the lift. Your drone will tilt toward the wall causing it to fly toward the wall and imminent doom. The rule of thumb is to fly in large, uncluttered rooms with high ceilings.
Stocking up on spare parts
This goes for flying in general but definitely if you are planning to do indoor flying. The odds are in favor of you crashing your drone, and it is a rarity to have a crash and not break something on your drone. Flying with damaged parts is not ideal because it can throw off your drone’s stabilization, causing it to fly erratically. For example, a damaged propeller, even if it is the most minute of defects, can cause your drone to be unbalanced. Propellers are highly refined pieces of aerodynamic equipment. Slight variances in weight can make them move differently. Cuts or breaks can cause air to move over the propeller differently. Both of which will cause your drone to not function as it would with un-damaged propellers. That’s not safe for you or for your drone. In addition to spare parts, have a first aid kit on hand just in case the hard object your drone crashes into is you, your pet, or someone else.
The most cost effective way to stock up on spare parts is to go to sites like www.amazon.com, robotshop.com or even on ebay.com. You can always go to your drone’s manufacturer’s website to shop for parts. This is covered in greater detail in chapter 11.
Flying in Sub-Optimal Weather Conditions
The best weather for drone flying is when it is sunny, a reasonable temperature (75 degrees Fahrenheit, for example), and little to no wind. The reasons for this are simple: sunny days are beautiful, 75 degrees is simply the perfect temperature, and flying in the wind is a pain in the rear. Besides being a more enjoyable experience, there is some science to flying in mild temps. Flying in wind can be difficult and will drain your drone battery faster than normal. Cold temps cause batteries to lose charge faster. Rain is detrimental to anything electronic and high heat isn’t because drones produce quite a bit of heat on their own. Extreme heat can put unnecessary wear and tear on batteries and computers. But the reality is that you will probably want to fly in weather conditions that don’t always fit this profile. Flying on cloudy days or days that are hot or cool aren’t so much a problem. It’s the days that are freezing, precipitating, or extremely windy that are particularly troublesome.
Rain and snow
Flying in precipitation is a surefire way to ruin your drone for good. It goes without saying that water and electronics don’t mix. Most drones are not waterproof, or water resistant. Think of your drone as being the Wicked Witch of the West. A little bit of water is going to bring your drone to a dramatic end. A good policy to have is that if it is raining, even just misting, you should keep the drone bundled up inside and away from its arch nemesis.
Flying a drone in snow is not as bad of an idea as flying in rain, but it can still result in damage to your drone. Flying in snow is great because it makes for great pictures and video. However, flying in snow is difficult for some drones that utilize cameras for stability and navigation. This is because the white snow provides little to no contrast for the cameras to discern movement.
Whether the snow is falling from the sky and onto a drone that’s airborne, or if your drone crash lands into a pile of the white fluffy stuff, snow is not friendly to drones.
Having reduced control of your drone in a snowy landscape could equal disaster for your drone. Snow is nothing more than frozen water, albeit pretty frozen water, and when snow hits warm batteries and motors, it melts and now you’re looking at potentially saturating your electronics and killing your drone.
If you crash your drone in the snow, remove the battery immediately and use a towel to wipe it off. Snow that makes its way into your drone can be blown out with compressed air. The key is to make sure there is no power connected to your drone if it has been exposed to water.
Windy days
Usually with precipitation comes wind, but not always. If you live in Chicago, wind is a normal occurrence and more often than not it isn’t accompanied by rain, sleet, or snow. You can fly a drone in wind but if it gets much stronger than 20 mph, you drone will be cruising for a bruising. Flying in wind requires a lot of practice, patience, and back up batteries. Your drone will blaze through batteries trying to maintain any sort of position on a windy day. If you plan to fly on a windy day, watch the batteries and the buildings.
Freezing temperatures
A lesser known environmental hazard is freezing temperatures. This seems counterintuitive because the battery and moving parts on a drone can get quite warm when in use. But the reality is that Lithium Polymer batteries, which are the common battery of choice in drones, drain substantially faster in freezing cold weather. A beautifully sunny winter day with no wind can be a wolf in sheep’s clothing so be sure to closely monitor your battery life when flying on a cold day.
Night Flying
Flying at night is a lot of fun and quite a bit more challenging for the obvious reason that it’s hard, if not impossible, to see your drone at night. Flying at night is a great way to force yourself to learn how to fly in ways other than by sight. You may also want to fly at night because you want to capture nighttime video footage or photos of landscapes or even nocturnal wildlife in their natural habitat. Of course, you could always fly at night with the assistance of artificial lighting to illuminate your environment, but what’s the fun in that?
Before you take to the moonlit skies, consider the tips in the following sections.
Knowing your drone
Some drones, like the Parrot AR Drone 2.0, use external cameras (usually low-quality) to calculate movement and maintain stability. Flying at night with little or no light renders these cameras useless which makes it difficult for the drone to be able to make calculations needed to fly in some necessary flight modes. If your drone is configured in this manner, refer to your manual to determine a way to temporarily disable these cameras. This simple adjustment may disable advanced flight controls, but at the same time, it will free your drone to be flown manually at all hours of the day.
If your drone’s orientation cameras can’t be shut off, or if you aren’t comfortable shutting them off, you can always attempt to attach downward facing lights on the bottom of your drone. Figure 10-6 shows a drone equipped with lights for night flying! Lighting the ground makes it possible for your drone’s cameras to see and therefore function as intended. Your drone’s altitude will, however, be limited by the strength of your lighting. The higher you go, the less focused the light will appear on the ground below, which will make the cameras less and less accurate.
Creative Commons Credit: Goldmann Jo, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/ Creative Commons
Figure 10-6: Night flying is possible with downward lights.
Downward facing cameras are generally used to calculate movement and distance from the ground. This is particularly useful when flying in an autopilot mode for maintaining a specific altitude. Not many drones use this technology and newer drones have implemented sonar for detecting distance from the ground.
Understanding advanced piloting controls
Flying during the day gives you, the pilot, the option to fly by sight. In fact, at the time this book was written, the standing FAA policy for hobby drone flight is that you cannot operate a drone out of your line of sight. However if you intend to fly at night, unless the area where you are flying is well-lit by parking lights or some other form of artificial light, you will need to get comfortable with flying by GPS or first person video. For first person video to be useful, you will need to make sure there is some sort of light on the front of drone that would function similarly to how headlights on a car work.
Attaching lights to your drone
Flying at night makes it nearly impossible to fly your drone by sight, unless you attach lights to your drone so that it can be spotted at great distances. Personally, I think this is a great solution because it makes your drone look like a UFO. If your drone does not come with, or support, a night-lighting kit, try wrapping your drone with thin strips of LED lights.
Flying at night without any sort of GPS locator or independently powered lights can be risky in the event you have a crash. A night of flying can quickly be turned into a frustrating night of searching the countryside for your downed drone. Make sure you know the area where you are flying and always give your drone your undivided attention.
Flying in Populated Areas
Flying outside in sparsely populated rural areas is great because you do not have to worry about accidents that could harm other people or their property. You, like many people, may live in an urban area where great open spaces aren’t very close by, however. That means you will either need to find the great wide open spaces of the rural world, in your urban setting, or learn how to cope with your surroundings.
Here are some tips for flying in an urban area:
- Always be aware of your surroundings. In cities, you have to worry about people, pets, buildings, and property that does not belong to you. Try to avoid flying over houses, cars, and other expensive items that do not belong to you. Definitely do not fly over people if at all possible and never for a second should you take your eye off your drone while you are midair.
- When you are taking off and landing, always announce your activity. This way, people in the area know what is going on. Loudly state something like “Drone take off” or “Landing my drone!”
- If your drone comes with the option for protective hulls or propeller guards, use them.
- If you haven’t bought a drone yet and you are trying to pick one out, purchase a lightweight drone. The lower the weight, the better it is for the person underneath it if it fails and falls to the earth.
- Respect your neighbors and other people in the area. If you are flying in a public space and someone expresses their discomfort for the activity, land immediately and go somewhere else. There is no sense stirring things up.
- Don’t break the law. Chapter 7 discusses the current laws and how to stay up on changes in the law. While you may be able to get away with flying above 400 feet in the air out in the country, if you break the law in the city and someone gets hurt as a result, the ramifications could be substantially greater.
Drones are a subject of major controversy right now, and while it is perfectly legal to fly a drone for fun, there are numerous people that are uncomfortable with them. Flying in an urban area exposes you to greater scrutiny, so be sensitive so that your actions don’t negatively affect the drone community.
Many people are dubious about drones. When flying your drone, you should be courteous, thoughtful, and inviting to those around you. If you are met with resistance, then consider going elsewhere with your drone. The drone community at large will benefit from your empathy for those around you.