last year i traveled a ton for drone work so today
i want to give you some tips on how you can travel with your drone
hey my name's jake and i create content here to help solo creators on the go so i do lots of
drones camera lens reviews tips and tutorials on how you can use them so if that's something that
interests you consider subscribing today i want to give you five tips on how to travel with drones
don't travel with drones if you don't have to because drones add a lot of extra stuff
so that also i guess sort of falls into tip number one is that you need to plan on taking
a lot of extra stuff with you because there's not only just the drone but there's the extra
batteries the charger the remote controllers all of the accessories that you need to take
with you to be able to use your drone wherever you might be going so my basic advice is if you
can travel without drones travel without a drone because it's a lot of extra stuff you have to pack
you made it past tip number one so i assume you're committed to traveling with the drone so let's
talk about how to pack your drone well so that it doesn't get damaged on the flight now there
are two different ways to pack your drone one is carry on keep it with you which is what i always
recommend but even if you're gonna carry the drone on i recommend getting a good case either
a good camera bag which you can carry on as a backpack which is what i generally do
or a good hard case that you can carry on i use a couple of different hard cases depending on the
type of trip i'm going on and uh this is a good one for the mavic 3 here and the other case i use
a lot is the pelican 1535 with trek pack because it's really customizable and it actually fits a
lot of gear in there for my backpack of choice i love the think tank 26l it's a great size it
fits a lot of stuff and it protects all my camera gear well plus it has a little bit of extra space
for my laptop some clothes some toiletries other things i might need to take with me so a good
case or a good camera backpack will help you if you're traveling with your drone and you're gonna
carry it on but sometimes if you travel with large drones or you just have a lot of drone stuff you
got to take with you you might have to check it on for that i highly recommend putting it in a really
good hard case i use the pelican 1615 air if we're traveling with an inspire we use cases that are
custom made for the inspire a really good hard case is essential for checking on your drone into
the check on luggage but there are some things you have to avoid if you're gonna check your drone on
airline might have slightly different rules about batteries but in general
all of your batteries have to be with you in your carry-on luggage they can't be checked
on to the check-on luggage that's a very big no-no and it will in some cases get
you called back to the ticket counter so that you can go through your luggage
and take all of your batteries out of your check on luggage but there are some other ways to make
sure you can travel safely with them and to help ease maybe the airport people or the airline
people's concerns and that is make sure your terminals are taped off so there's no exposed
contacts that makes the batteries safer obviously make sure they're charged to about fifty percent
that's a good storage voltage anyway for batteries and it also is a good safe way
to travel with them and the biggest and most important thing is in almost every case you
are not supposed to fly with batteries over 99.9 watt hours or 100 watt hours or higher
for whatever reason that's considered the limit the cutoff for large batteries now some airlines
allow you to take one or maybe two batteries that size or larger with you but most do not and then
some airlines actually have a limit on how many batteries you can take with you so depending on
the airplane you're flying in or the airline you're flying with you can check and figure
out what size and how many batteries you can take with you safely it's much better to figure that
out before you get to the airport and then you realize you have to dispose of a few batteries
my next tip is packing everything well so that everything can be seen and easily accessible
most the time security doesn't bother me they let me go through it's not a big deal but occasionally
they do want to check the batteries and make sure they're under the right watt hour limit
or they want to just check and make sure that's all i've got in there because if you have a lot of
batteries packed closely together and then maybe an ipad or a laptop on top or on bottom of those
it makes it harder for them to be able to see everything clearly so they want to just
visually inspect the bag so packing everything so that everything can be seen clearly and easily
makes it much easier for them to see it in the x-ray machine and for them to see it visually if
they decide to do a visual inspection not a big deal you don't need to be combative
just say sure this is a bunch of drone batteries i'm a traveling videographer
photographer or whatever and generally they're like okay cool thanks have a great day
but if you want things to go smoothly and easily then it's important to remember not to stack
tons of batteries on top of each other because they're dense and it makes it hard for them to see
through and so generally even though i don't have to because i'm tsa approved or known traveler id
approved i still pull my laptop out and set it out so they just have an easier time seeing everything
that's in the bag every time i've done that i've never had an issue the couple of times i haven't
they've either asked me to pull my laptop out and re-send the bag through or they've
asked to do a visual inspection so do yourself a favor and pack everything so it's easy to see
it's easy to visually inspect and it obviously makes sense to whoever's looking at things now
when it comes to checking on luggage with drones that might be a little bit different obviously
if you're using a custom fit inspire case or something like that most people are familiar
with those kinds of drones no big deal but in my case i travel with some pretty big fpv drones or
sometimes a lot of fpv drones that are all made by me and a lot of other electronics crammed into
that check-on case so i will oftentimes just leave a little note in the check-on case that says hey
these are drones that are built for filming purposes whatever they're custom built that's
what you're seeing you know feel free to take a look but please make sure everything
gets put back the way it is because it's all packed carefully to make sure it travels well
my final tip and maybe the most important is check the rules about flying drones wherever
you're going to be traveling or wherever you're planning on going to fly drones because
if you get there and you find out that drones are not allowed or if you're going to other
countries where maybe drones are totally illegal without special permits or anything like that
you may lose your drone at customs they might just never give it back the best thing is check
the rules check if you need to register your drone before you go check if you need any special
permits or any special permission or anything like that before you leave so that when you get there
your paperwork your customs work your work going through into that country or into that area is
not a big deal or at least hopefully not as big a deal as it could have been now here in the united
states we have lots of places you can fly on lots of things you can do but there are places
you might be going that you might not be able to places like national parks places like wilderness
preserves wildlife preserves things like that you've got to be careful and make sure you know
that you are allowed and it is okay to fly there and you're not going to be breaking any rules
by flying in that area or you might be traveling somewhere where you think it's great there's no
national park no wildlife preserve but you get there and you find out that
the whole thing is a big huge area of restricted airspace because of
airports military bases whatever so checking the rules before you get somewhere will make a
big difference on how things go when you arrive and whether or not you brought a drone for no
reason at all or whether or not you have to have special permits will make things a lot smoother
for wherever you're going when you arrive now if you want to learn other ways you can
improve your drone videography or photography click or tap right there i put together a small
playlist i'll see in one of those videos as always if you have questions ask me in the
comments below or you can join my live stream which happens wednesday nights at 4 pm alaska
time 8 pm eastern that's all united states time i will see you again soon in the next video cheers