Drones

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Getting Started

Drones are a great hobby, but it can be difficult to know where to get started. On this page, I aim to give some advice and maybe some of my tips and tricks for getting started in the Drone world. The first thing to note is that there are two basic types of drones I'll refer to:

Photo Drones

Think DJI, Parrot, Autel, etc. These drones typically have intelligent flight modes and limit the pitch and roll (no flips). You might have flown one of these types of drones before. As long as you keep your eye on the drone when it's close to obstacles, they are very easy to fly. In addition, they typically include a built in gimbal and fixed camera.

FPV Drones

These drones use an FPV camera that feeds into goggles worn by the pilot to give a first person view. They typically don't have intelligent flight modes and most people fly in 'acro' mode which means they're in full control of throttle, roll, pitch, and yaw. Flying like this takes a lot more practice, but allows a lot more freedom and mobility in the air.

To decide what drone you'll want/need, you need to decide what you want to do. If your sole purpose is occasionally flying (once a month to a few times a year) or photo / video, you'll likely want a photo drone. These are cheap, work out of the box, and you can get warranties for them. They're fairly hard to crash, easy to fly, shoot great video (at least anything you can buy from dji.com), and come in a range of prices.

If video is not your primary focus, and you prefer to fly for fun/like projects to work on, you'll likely want to go the FPV path. You can shoot great video with FPV too, but it is a lot more work. FPV drones typically don't have gimbals, so you need to make sure your drone is mechanically sound, and even take some further steps to prevent vibration in your videos.

Getting Started with Each Type

DJI/Photo Drones

With these drones, you can pretty much go out on your own to an open field and get to it. If you have a friend or relative who owns a drone or has flown, they can help you out and save you a lot of time. Unfold your props, turn on your remote and make sure your phone is connected with the app running, then turn on your drone.

FPV Drones

With FPV Drones, the approach is a bit more involved. I'd recommend checking out a lot of the videos I've linked around this page to make sure that it's really for you as there will be some cost involved. First and foremost, you'll want to buy a remote before anything else, in order to be able to sim (simulate) on your computer.

Knowledge Resources

Pilots to check out!

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Useful Links

Contact Email: [email protected]