Tips for Your First Flight
INFO
If it helped even one person, it’s already worth it) @skipta
INFO
Broken/lost due to not following these rules: 2 drones, one VTX, a camera, and one and a half antennas
Here are some tips that may help you avoid negative experiences on your first flight. Beginners typically experience a lot of stress during their early flights, which often leads to memory failures and a strong urge to “push full throttle,” resulting in crashes and lost drones.
Regulations
First of all, it’s worth familiarizing yourself with the regulations. In addition to legality issues, there is a lot of non-obvious but useful flight information there.
WARNING
Flying without knowing the rules, or while violating them, can lead to a very unpleasant experience — up to and including prison.
Choosing your first location
For starters, it’s better to choose a simple, unpopulated spot.
No people or structures nearby Simple terrain — hills can heavily block signal, and bushes are painful to search through No water — water is the most reliable way to lose your drone
An ideal option would be an open field, of which there are plenty in Cyprus.
WARNING
There are snakes in Cyprus. Some are venomous, some are deadly. Be prepared and stay alert.
First flight
Fly with someone experienced, or at least someone who can visually track the drone
From altitude, familiar landscapes look completely different, and at first it is very difficult to orient yourself. It is easy to end up “somewhere else”.
In goggles you only see what is in front of the drone, not the surrounding environment. People, aircraft, etc. can appear unexpectedly. That’s why it is very useful to have someone nearby who can see the drone and monitor the surroundings. Additionally, this person watches the drone from the ground and can clearly indicate where it crashed (see paragraph above).
They also significantly help during search operations. After a crash, panic often sets in, which severely reduces your ability to remember where the crash happened and coordinate a search. A calm person nearby dramatically increases the chance of recovering the drone.
Don’t fly too far
Long-range flights require high concentration, control skills, proper setup, knowledge of the area, and always carry the risk of crashing somewhere far away and losing the drone permanently. This is not suitable for a beginner pilot. Long-range flying is definitely an interesting experience, but it should be left until you fully master drone control and gain sufficient skills.
Don’t fully drain your batteries
Always monitor voltage. At around 3.6V (for LiPo), you should already be preparing to land. If you have a calibrated current sensor, also track consumed capacity. A battery discharged to 3.4V will, with ~90% probability, not fly properly again.
Don’t forget to disconnect the battery
Even an unarmed drone will still slowly drain the battery and may bring it to a dangerously low voltage. Additionally, when the drone is not flying, its electronics can overheat, which may cause component failure.
Always enable DVR
No pilot who ended up losing a drone somewhere did so intentionally — it always happens unexpectedly. That’s why it’s useful to make recording all flights a habit and, if possible, always display GPS coordinates on the OSD.