Launching & Landing – different options

When you first get to a flying site you’re about to start launching and the first thing you should do after launching is called a hover check.

This is where you hover the drone in the air you check your controls to make sure it’s responding correctly and also that the drone isn’t drifting about anywhere particularly if you’ve launched in gpe mode.

You’re expecting it to stay nice and still.

You can do this if you want to.

Before you do any additional launching You may choose to land afterwards and then relaunch quickly to get some good footage from that point of view things to look for in your hover check or when the quad is hovering in the air.

Listen to the motors and make sure they’re all sounding nice and smooth and haven’t got any strange ticking noises.

Also check your controller and make sure that it has any trims on it which would normally permanently make it moved to the left or the right.

You haven’t accidentally nudged those that can sometimes be a cause of drift.

If you check out the pre-flight planning and flight day management section of this course you’ll find many other suggestions launching and landing is one of the key.

Basic flight skills to master.

I suggest that you aim to do any complicated launch and landing after you’ve done an initial hover check at your flight so that you can make sure that your machine is behaving appropriately.

What you can do.

You can then just reach land and then launch again particularly if you’re planning on trying to capture any video footage of the launch in landing moment to have hover in the air as well.

It’s clearly going to mess up the footage a little bit.

Launching in landing remember is a key safety moment.

It’s a time when your machine is closest to you and potentially other people if you’ve got a spotter and there are other people around as well.

The first way that we can look to launch and land is the most common way you’re likely to be doing it.

And this is simply where you launch and land off or onto the ground.

For this you’re likely to need a level area.

So somewhere that’s relatively flat that you can at least make flat with some stones or what have you.

If it’s not already flat then you can launch off that depending on where you end up flying.

Sometimes these flat spaces might be hard to come by and so if this is the only way that you know had a launch or land then it can restrict your flying sights.

But in most of the world this is not an issue at all as long as you can find a small flat space.

That’s one of the main advantages of multi rotors.

They don’t need any kind of runway.

Better get off up into the air.

Some advice around this.

Be careful of any obstructions near your blades.

So that means any blades of grass at all that are sticking out that might hit your propellers.

I initially used to never pay any attention to this.

They thought it was fine as they would slice through and slice off some of the grass.

What I discovered was they would seriously impact my video footage because the point where it actually struck the propeller would cause tiny little nicks in the propeller.

And this would introduce vibrations which of course is very bad for the footage.

This method of launch more landing off the ground is without doubt the safest way to go about it.

You should try and do this all the time.

If you’ve got enough space to do so because when you’re launching a landing off the ground you’re standing quite far away from the quad and all those nasty spinning propellers additionally you’ve got a good view all around the quad so you can see if anything’s going to come into its way and stop launch your landing and warn the person or the animal or whatever it might be to get out of the way.

I also recommend that you try to bring in something flap with you if that’s at all possible to help you quickly with your launching in landing.

I used to sometimes bring my travel case and then just pop the cord on top of that.

The second way to consider launching an landing is an in first person view mode.

So this is where you put your goggles on and launch while you’re bowls are actually already on.

Typically when I’m flying first person view I’ll launch first do my hover check.

And then once I’ve decided everything’s fine from a hover point of view of then put my goals on and fly off.

That allows me to check round the launch area as well.

However for this method I would actually put my goals on Initially I’d have done my hover check out then go back in and land then put my goals on and then launch straightaway.

It allows for more flow in your footage.

I only ever do this if I’m planning on getting some of the actual launch footage into my own production.

It means that you can get some more direct footage of that launch experience you want to try and do some close call flying straight afterwards because this whole experience is about the flight dramatics you share in the experience of what it’s like to just be able to go off and fly.

Here’s an example in this raw unedited footage.

See how well it flows from the beginning right towards the end.

So there’s no way I could have pulled off that shot without a flying and first person view mode and be having done it by flying and first person view mode right from the actual launch moment.

I needed to fly in first person view mode to be able to stay so low.

I tried to do that line of sight.

I would almost definitely have ended up in the water.

So you are going to launch in first person view mode then aside from having done your hover check first and then landed once you’re sure that everything’s okay and then go into first person view mode or to try and do this to get the best footage straight after you’ve launched.

Try and stay low because this will really increase the impact of the flight dramatics of having just launched.

It’s also a little bit more dangerous for other people that might be in the area.

Because that point when you put your goggles on you can no longer clearly see what’s around you.

So be very very sure that you’ve looked all the way around that there’s nobody in anywhere nearby for you try this also engage your spotter to help you with this process.

A third possible way to launch on land is by hand.

But I have to be clear here I do not recommend this.

It’s extremely dangerous.

It’s going to bring your quad with it’s very far spinning very sharp propellers extremely close to you.

Even worse it’s going to bring them close to your face your eyes your neck or your spotters face eyes or neck as well.

The reason I bring it up is you’re likely to see other people attempting to do this.

I really want to stress how dangerous it can be yourself and your spotter are going to be at a lot of risk.

Reason people go for it is a means they don’t need to find a nice flat location and they think that it’s going to increase the flying spots.

They can fly from there are plenty places in the world fly from.

You just need to go off and find those with a nice flat safe location to do it from instead.

One of the recommendations you’ll get is that it’s all nice and safe to do because you can do it.

GP test mode would CPS mode is not exactly 100 percent reliable either.

Certainly not at that very close range.

So that’s not necessarily going to be one of the things that’s going to make it any safer.

So I stress again though handheld is an option I would avoid it at all costs and go find a nice flat area to fly from instead to viable different ways to launch and land and how they can impact your footage.

And one third way that you may hear about one I would avoid at all costs.