Safety considerations

Rightly so this comes at the very beginning of the course the safety and legal considerations should be at the forefront of your mind for every single flying and filming decision that you make.

Safety must be your number one priority.

You could and should spend many hours learning about safety.

Additionally you should spend many more hours practicing to ensure that you can fly safely particularly before you start to do something more complex such as trying to film.

There are extensive resources available to teach you about safety.

I’m going to talk about a few of the areas that you should be considering when you’re trying to think about safety.

But my list is no means exhaustive on that point.

The focus of this course is not on safety.

You expect expected to come to this course knowing how to fly safely before you try to learn and do any of the suggestions that this course covers particularly important that you learn how to fly safely before you start trying to fly.

And film generally because filming is quite taxing mentally and you need to have automated as much as possible all of your safety procedures before you start trying to farooque filming into the mix as well.

It’s also important for all the suggested ideas in this course that you’re completely sure of your own ability to be able to perform them safely before you try to execute them.

And that includes considering whether you think you can perform them appropriately and safely in your local environment.

You’re going to get lots and lots of examples of flying in this course and you need to look at them and consider whether you’ve got the ability to be a fly in that particular way safely and whether you could do it where you actually fly in your country in locale and only try to execute the procedures if you think you can perform safely.

Additionally you need to be very sure of your own equipments capabilities and whether it can complete the suggestions in this course safely.

The equipment that people have that are taking this course is going to vary fairly significantly and only you know whether your equipment is up to the job.

So to be clear the focus of this course is not on safety.

You’re expected to learn and research and practice safe flying skills before you start trying to film and fly and follow suggestions in this course.

This lecture is going to cover a few of the points of what I think you should be looking at.

To fly safely.

Now there are many more things that you should be considering and the few I’m going to suggest here.

These are important ones for you to have a look at.

To start with make sure that you also consider your own safety as well as other people’s.

Rightly so people tend to consider other people safety first.

Make sure that you’re considering your own safety at all times as well.

The drone is most likely to cause any issues with you as you are going to be the person that’s the closest to it particularly during launching and landing.

I also highly recommend that you fly with a spotter somebody that stands next to you as an extra pair of eyes on the sky.

Looking for other air traffic incoming rain changes in weather helping to deal with passers by that might be having a load of questions for you while you’re trying to concentrate on flying.

It’s very important to be completely sure of your own equipment and its readiness to fly.

You need to be running constant maintenance checks on it and before every flight you should be checking it over for anything that looks out of the ordinary any loose connections that might be there.

Anything that sounds a little bit strange with it.

Additionally if you make any changes to your equipment even if it’s something as simple as installing a brand new battery with it.

I highly recommend that you go out and fly it at least four times.

Low and slow and in an open and remote environment where it’s not going to cause any damage to anyone else.

If there are any problems with it only after you’ve done that should you try the bigger more adventurous missions such as some of the ones suggested in this course.

You need to pay particular attention to your launching and landing procedures.

This is the time we were drone is likely to be the closest to you and you could have potential safety issues.

So make sure you’re very comfortable with launching in landing in a safe manner.

In all the different ways that you can actually perform this.

If your drone has something like a gpe flight mode where requires some GP satellite locks in order to help it stabilize your flight and you tend to fly in this particular way and it’s a useful way for flying for getting nice stable video footage and be absolutely sure that you’ve got a good satellite lock before you launch.

I’ve seen many instances where people have not paid close attention to this.

They assume they’re flying into u.p.s. mode and they discover that they’re not.

And the craft is a saving in a way that they’re simply not expecting.

So really make sure that you know how your craft says that it’s in GPL lock mode and do not take off and fly until you’ve got that lock.

If that’s the way that you’re intending on flying.

The radio link is one of the most important things to consider from a safety point of view.

You may well have two radio links between yourself and the drone.

One will be for how you control the drone and the other might be to send a video link back from the drone down to a set of goggles or a screen that you’re using to fly the drone in F prv mode.

Any breaks in the radio link can put some serious safety issues.

So there’s lots of things that you need to be thinking about to make sure that you’ve got the strongest possible link that you can.

For instance if you do have both a control link and a video link.

And it’s very important to make sure that your control link can outperform your video link.

The last thing that you want to happen is that where you can see clearly through the camera that’s on the drone you can no longer control it.

Then you’ll be in the situation where you might just be watching it sail off into the sunset.

No fun at all the sorts of things that you can do to ensure that you’re controlling is stronger than your radio link.

Include things such as making sure that your control link is working on a lower frequency than your video link.

For instance one of the most typical combinations is to have your controlling.

Gone.

Two point four gigahertz and then your video link on five point eight gigahertz and depending on the power the control link.

Two point four gigahertz should have better penetration capabilities and longer range and so this means that your video link is more likely to cut out the for your control link does not the case in every circumstance but it increases the likelihood of that situation.

Another very important concept to fully understand is line of sight.

You need a line of sight between you on the ground and your drone.

Then nothing gets in between you and the drone.

Then it could break the signal.

So this is very important when you consider where you’re going to be setting up initially before you start doing your flying to make sure you’ve got a clear line of sight for the entire flight path that you’re actually planning.

You need to learn what to do to start to recognize where there’s going to be a break in your line of sight.

You going to start to lose some of your signal.

For instance you might start to fly behind a tree and then this may degrade your video signal.

We might have to start to have drop outs in your control signal.

You need to learn about what to do to react in those situations so that you can bring your craft back into line of sight and regain control.

As well as breaks in your line of sight obstructions getting in between you and the drone that can affect your connection.

It can also be noise in the atmosphere where other things that are actually using the radio frequency may actually drown out your signal and make a break in your connection and you can get something called a radio frequency Explorer which will help you measure the noise before you actually launch.

And that will give you some warning as to whether you were in a noisy area.

If you do that you can either decide not to fly or that you can keep your range nice and short to minimize the impact of the noise that’s out there.

And it’s surprising when you actually start using these things where you can get a lot of noise.

You can be in some very remote areas and discover it’s quite noisy.

If you hadn’t had the benefit of using something like an RF explorer then you would never have known that you might have been running into trouble sometimes as well.

You get noise on your lower frequency controlling and there won’t be anything on your video link.

And so they were thinking that your controlling it was more powerful than your video link.

And actually that wasnt going to be the case at all.

So I strongly recommend an hour of explorer particularly if youre planning to do any longer range flights.

Make sure you consider the light that youre flying in.

You need a certain amount of light to be able to see out of your f TV camera.

If thats the way you control your drone or to be able to see the drone line of sight.

Additionally if there’s anything else out there you can find it particularly hard to see if it’s starting to get dark so get familiar with how much light you need to be able to fly and only fly when you’re sure that you’re going to be having enough light to navigate by safely.

Another key thing to monitor all the time is the weather that you’re flying in.

Does any rain in the air.

Don’t fly water and drone simply don’t mix.

It’s a recipe for disaster.

Additionally look at the wind and weather that might be creeping in.

Wind can cause you a few problems depending on how powerful your drone actually is.

It can throw you off course.

It can make you struggle to be able to get home.

If you do plan on flying in some light wind then it’s important to try to fly against the wind initially on your journey so that you’ve got a much easier route home and it’s going to be on less strain on your battery when that’s starting to run down.

Your most important consideration should be people you need to stay well away from flying near people or over people because clearly if they’re going to be any issues with your drone you want to make very very sure that it’s not going to affect other people in any kind of way.

Similarly you should be considering any other air traffic that might be up in the air.

Obviously you don’t want to get into any kind of collisions situation of any circumstances.

So don’t fly anywhere near any airports.

Be very sure that you know about flight paths in the air.

And also what to do if an aircraft does start to come into your flying airspace you need to take appropriate action to stay well out of its way which typically will include coming down low.

Then also considering your potential control loss issues when that actually happens.

So you’re coming down low to get out of the aircraft away as quickly as possible.

And he should be looking to land immediately and safely and stop flying in that area.

You should be planning before you get to the actual location.

To be absolutely sure that there’s going to be no air traffic in this area.

And remember the legal rules around this as well.

It’s not just going to be making sure that you’re no where near airports but whatever the no fly zones are in your country.

So we’ve said it all the time to its presentation safety must be your number one priority.

There are many different things that you can learn about to make sure that you fly safe make sure you know all of those and you’re very confident your ability to fly safe before you start trying to and fly.

And certainly before you start to try to cover any of the things that are mentioned in this course.

Some of the additional places where you can locate more information around how to fly safely will be places such as your local radio controlled flying club.

There are plenty of online resources as well that can point you in the right direction around this.

Additionally you’re likely to have information in the manual that came with the aircraft that you bought to operate.

Remember every flying and filming decision you make should be underpinned by safety and legal considerations.