Use These 15 Drone Training Exercises to Learn How to Fly a Drone

[Music] hi there my name is greg snow with uav coach in this video we're going to cover our top 15 training exercises for brand new drone pilots let's get started before we jump into the exercises i want to acknowledge that some new drone pilots will lean heavily on the smart tech that's built into their drone this is things like the advanced flight modes gps stability software the return to home function and many more in doing so these new drone pilots never really gain a strong sense of directional awareness while flying nor do they feel comfortable flying in tight spaces or comfortable flying with the gps stability software disabled or comfortable flying nearby subjects or objects you get the idea it can happen to all drone pilots we hit sort of a plateau of skills and comfort while flying and this is normal if it speaks directly to you you're not alone and these 15 exercises training exercises will definitely help the exercises we cover in this video may seem simple at first but they build on each other will ultimately help you to become a better and more skilled dual joystick pilot as well as a safer pilot who's better prepared for different emergency scenarios and finally a more professional pilot who can work with higher paying clients or be the leader of your department's drone team you get the idea you got to learn how to fly like an ace so let's get started the first exercise is hovering at eye level hovering at eye level it seems boring and i get that but even experienced drone pilots will hover at eye level between 10 to 15 seconds before every flight and this can be part of your pre-flight checklist and what you're doing is looking and listening for any abnormalities if there's any kind of weird vibrations that don't seem normal or if the drone is kind of moving around and it doesn't seem like perfectly locked to one specific gps location if this is the case and you think that something's off you may want to land your drone and recalibrate your system next up is hover and yaw yaw is one of the four main drone movements you've got thrust yaw pitch and roll yaw is when your drone rotates on one set access so the best way to practice this is to pretend like your drone is sort of rotating like the hands of a clock so if you take your left thumb on the left joystick of your controller and you move it to the left you'll see the drone rotate to say 10 o'clock you can then stop that rotation and take that same thumb same joystick and move it to the right and your drone will rotate on that same axis to say 2 o'clock so once you get comfortable with rotating on that yaw axis between 10 and 2 you can then hold it in one specific direction and do a full 360 on that yaw axis then change up that direction do full 360 in the other way this is your yaw movement next is something that everybody enjoys and that is target practice in this exercise we're going to practice targeted takeoffs and landings so i want you to set up two marked spots that are ten feet or three meters apart from one another and simply take off from one fly over at eye level to the other and land you can go back and forth doing this as many times as you like it's a good idea to think of them sort of like lily pads on a lake so you just want to hop back and forth from one to the other and what you're doing here is effectively getting better at throttling up controlling your drone at eye level and then landing on a specific location and as boring as this seems it definitely will help you if you need to land in a really tight situation or location when flying in the field number four is flying in a square pattern with no yaw and this is our first pattern test and very straightforward what i want you to do for this exercise is to hover with your drone at eye level with the camera of the drone facing in one direction and what you can do is fly forward say 10 feet or three meters and then fly sideways the same amount of distance backwards and then sideways again completing an equal square at eye level once you get comfortable completing this square you can try flying the same pattern in the opposite direction our fifth skill is flying your drone in a circular pattern so similar to the last exercise with the square you want to bring your drone up to hover at eye level with the camera of the drone facing in one direction and then unlike the square where you're flying on a very rigid flight path with very distinct turns with the circle you want to try and fly in a much smoother pattern keeping the same diameter of the circle at all times now what this helps with is isolating your right thumb to be able to focus more on pitching and rolling and it's really difficult actually to be able to maintain the same circle with the same diameter so i want you to practice this a number of times until you feel comfortable and once you feel comfortable flying that circle try and fly the same circle in the other direction six is the out back and land exercise and this will be the first time that we introduce a rotation into our flight training so for this exercise you want to have your drone once again hovering at eye level and this time with the camera pointing away from you and you fly forwards in that direction then rotate your drone 180 degrees using the yaw control and then with the camera facing back towards you you fly back and then land you want to repeat this a couple of times so you start to feel more comfortable operating your drone with an inverted control and what i mean by this is that if you're flying forwards and then you rotate your drone and fly forwards you're actually coming backwards towards you and it can get a bit confusing and make you even feel dizzy at times but the more you get used to flying with inverted controls the better you'll get at it now a very good obvious sign of a skilled drone pilot is someone that knows how to fly their drone and is oriented to their directional awareness while flying even with their controls inverted so this is really something to get used to and will help you control your drone with much more confidence in different situations all over the globe our seventh maneuver is the square pattern but this time with yaw so for this exercise what i want you to do is bring the drone up to eye level and complete a square but every time that you get to the corner of the square you want to rotate the drone 90 degrees so the camera is facing forward every single time you complete a new direction of the square once you feel comfortable doing that try and complete the same pattern but in the opposite direction number eight is flying at the maximum altitude of 400 feet or 120 meters now remember that this maximum altitude is how high your drone can legally fly in the united states now this may differ in other countries and it is even possible to set your max altitude higher within the app however remember that when flying your drone you always want to adhere to any local drone laws and regulations now with that said it is incredible to fly at the max altitude and the world looks absolutely amazing from this vantage point so in this exercise take your drone right up to 400 feet and have a look around take some photos and maybe even capture some amazing video footage our ninth basic flight training exercise is known as the bird's eye view or the top down and this is especially cool when you're flying at your max altitude of 400 feet or 120 meters so for this exercise what you want to do is tilt the camera of the drone 90 degrees down and you can do that by controlling the wheels that are on the controller under your index finger so one of those will tilt the camera 90 degrees down or even a little bit up as well and you can control this tilt axis ratio within the app however what we want to do is tilt 90 degrees straight down to give you a really cool perspective on the world below and this is especially good with any kind of aerial photography or videography our 10th exercise is known as the orbit effect and next to flying your drone without a gps signal enabled this is possibly one of the most challenging exercises that we cover in this video it's also however one of the most rewarding as the orbit effect can create some absolutely incredible drone footage so what is the orbit effect this is when your drone is circling around a subject and you're utilizing both the roll and the yaw movement at the same time now this is very difficult to do so when you're practicing this effect try and fly really slowly and smoothly this will help you greatly when you put this effect into use in the field now most drones that support intelligent flight modes should have an option built into the software that supports orbit effect with dji drones this is known as poi or point of interest and what happens when you choose poi is that you can actually select a subject within the app and the drone will automatically fly around that subject and while it's doing this you can control the altitude the speed and even the camera angle of the drone this is incredibly powerful feature and the poi option in the intelligent flight modes is probably the one that i use most often because it can create just absolutely incredible drone footage next up is triggering the return to home feature now remember that return to home is triggered in three different ways we go into a lot more detail on this in the video we created called how returned home works which you can find linked in the description below it is however good practice to always set your home point and check your return to home flight altitude before every single flight and part of this exercise is to manually trigger return to home in a controlled environment so that you understand and feel comfortable with how this safety feature works number 12 is a fun one and a surprisingly difficult maneuver this is the infamous droney adroni is when you're hovering with the drone at eye level with the camera facing towards you and you fly backwards and up at a constant speed while keeping you the subject in the center of the frame at all times this is surprisingly very difficult to do so i challenge you to practice this in the field good luck and have fun our 13th maneuver is flying close to objects now this is a bit of a tricky one and something you want to approach slowly and with caution and you also want to consider turning off your obstacle avoidance so you can actually get within close proximity to an object without the drone automatically stopping you so why would you want to fly close to objects it creates an incredible visual sensory experience for you as the pilot and for your viewer if you are recording your footage also if you're doing this for work you may need to inspect something visually like for say a roof or a power line or a telecommunications tower you want to be able to feel comfortable flying nearby objects within close proximity but at the same time you want to approach this slowly and with caution our 14th exercise is flying your drone in tripod mode and the idea here is to slow it down so your drone has three advanced flight modes and they're essentially fast medium and slow tripod being the slowest of the three and you might be asking yourself why would i want to fly slow and the fact is that it's actually really difficult for new drone pilots to fly smooth and steady and consistently and avoid having jerky inconsistent movements within their footage and these movements might actually ruin a shot so it's good to practice flying really slowly and consistently to be able to capture the best quality footage possible and tripod mode is sort of your secret weapon to do that it's something that i use all the time as a videographer especially if i'm flying within tight spaces or tight corridors or nearby subjects or objects so think of it as kind of like your get a jail free card when creating really slow smooth cinematic footage tripod mode is extremely useful and i would even encourage you to go back and practice some of these exercises that we've covered in this video in tripod mode because being able to capture really smooth buttery footage will absolutely change the way that you can record using your drone last but not least our final exercise in this video is flying your drone without a gps signal now this is extremely difficult to do and is only really necessary in certain situations for example like flying your drone indoors if you're unable to get enough gps satellite connections with your drone it's being blocked by something then this means that your drone will not be able to hover in a locked position if you do not do any action with the controls so therefore if you want to keep your drone flying you need to control the inertia to maintain that movement and this is a very different type of flying and it's really really challenging now with older dji models like the phantom 3 and before you could actually manually turn off gps by switching into addi mode and practice flying uh in this mode with no gps signal but nowadays it's really difficult to do that with the newer drones and i'm not even sure you can manually switch to non-gps to fly this way so the only really situations where you might need to practice this is if you're flying indoors or if you're doing like indoor inspections of say i don't know a giant oil tanker or some sort of giant storage or a factory or some sort of giant boiler where you're unable to connect with gps because you're being blocked by the metal structure so another example would be like bridge inspections uh or any kind of like maybe search and rescue around like a disaster area with uh rubble or obstacles that are getting in the way of the gps so obviously there aren't that many situations where this would be the case however if you are able to practice flying your drone without a gps signal this will help you become a more skilled and proficient drone pilot these are just a few examples of some of the basic flight training techniques that will definitely help you to become a better drone pilot now i know they may seem boring or kind of redundant at times but having this core knowledge of how you can control your drone will help you build the fundamental piloting skills that will go a long way in the future and once you've got these skills dialed you can start working on more technical maneuvers that would be things like forward dolly reveals or trucking close to the ground or flying backwards or even pushing your own comfort levels when it comes to flying in close proximity to objects or subjects all the while doing it in a safe and responsible manner so that's it for our top 15 drone training exercises for brand new drone pilots if you've got any questions or comments or if you'd like to share any of your own training exercises please put them in the comments section below and we can begin that conversation there from everybody here at uav coach team we're wishing you blue skies and safe line [Music] you

Channel: UAV Coach

Views: 173,608

Rating: 4.9592605 out of 5

Keywords: drone pilot ground school, uav coach, drone license, drone certification, drone certificate, drone, drones, remote pilot certificate, faa, part 107, drone laws, drone industry, drone pilot salary, drone pilot jobs, fly a drone, flying a drone, drone training, drone business, dji

Id: ixYnzcZZu9g

Length: 14min 18sec (858 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 22 2021