Hey! In this video i'm going to show you five things you need to do before you fly
your drone and i do these every time i fly so let's go outside and i'll show you how i do it
all right so this isn't my first tip but i do recommend finding a wide open space
like this it's always nice to fly your drone with plenty of room it's good to practice
in a wide open space if you're just starting if you're more experienced you go into smaller space
but it's nice to have more space here all right so the first thing i do is go into my phone on an
app called a loft or before you fly it's owned by the same company i use the app aloft which used to
be kitty hawk all right so you just press on the app you got to sign up if you haven't done so so
i've already signed up so recognizes my face and i get into the app now great thing about
this app you can see where you are and then you can just move it around and you can see
the different air spaces so i can check to see all right i can't fly here this is like a no-fly zone
obviously an airport you can double check all the different places and then you know whether
you need permission from the faa to fly in certain areas so i just checked the area where i'm at just
double check to see there's no airports no flight zones restricted areas things like that all right
the second thing you need to do before each flight is to go into your phone again and this is another
app so obviously we want to fly legally and now we want to check the weather now normally i do this
at home but here i'm on site so i'll show you how i do it so i go click here and i go into this app
called uav forecast now in uav forecast it's a tremendous app because it's designed for drone
pilots so at the top it says good to fly and it'll be green and all you have to do is type
in your location it automatically sees my location so it's already there but then it says good to fly
you can see the weather's partly cloudy i can see when it's sunrise when it's sunset i can see the
temperature and i can see the wind how fast the wind is gusting and then if i just click on the
wind profile i can see how i fly and what the wind is going to be like so for instance if i wanted
to fly 250 feet i can see that the wind is 6 miles per hour but it's gusting to 12 miles per hour the
wind gusts is what you really have to watch out for because that's what could cause problems for
your drone now today is not a windy day obviously so it's not really a factor but if you're close to
the ocean or on a real windy day this comes in handy you also get to see the visibility cloud
cover the direction of the wind now i'm flying the mavic 3 city so it's not really an issue this
usually isn't never an issue but when i'm near the ocean i always take note of that okay at
this height the wind is gusting to this many miles per hour so it's a great thing to check before you
fly and then the other thing that i look at is the forecast so i just press the forecast button
and i can see at the different times what all the different things are going to be like gus
temperature precipitation cloud cover visibility etc etc great app recommend you download it and
you'll know right away whether it's safe to fly and how high and where you can fly what's it
going to be like at what time all right so the technology is getting better and better but i
still do a compass calibration before every flight so i'm going to show you how to do that right now
another tip bring mosquito repellent because these mosquitoes are killing me right now
back to tip number three turn on your drone and controller once you have that and you're in the
dji fly app you're gonna see a little number of satellites you want that number to be at least
up to number nine it's usually gonna start a little lower right now it says like 10 11
which is great so first thing you do click on the three dots in the upper right hand corner
and you're going to be under the safety tab and just scroll down to you see compass normal and
then what you do is you press that calibrate button so you press the calibrate button and
then you're gonna see it says start so now we're gonna press the start button and as soon as we
press the start button it's time to calibrate the compass now i make sure i'm away from my vehicle
make sure you're not near any metal near a vehicle near any signs near a building where there's any
type of metal or interference that might prevent you from doing a proper compass calibration so
away from my vehicle i'm just going to hold out my drone and just turn around and do a circle
hard to do a circle since i have this in my other hand what i'm gonna do is just do an actual circle
so i go around like this it tells me to turn the drone like this okay vertically and then
i just go like that and it says calibration successful and you're all set to fly now and
that's really important before you do it every time you fly that way you don't get flyaways
and you have a good signal strength okay so make sure you do that all right guys so
the next thing we want to do is start the drone's propellers always place the drone
facing away from you because it's just easier to control that way if the drone is away from
you these don't have to be out it doesn't matter you just leave it as it is and what we're going
to do is i'm going to take my thumbs and press down and in at a 45 degree angle so as soon as
i do this you might get a warning the first time this is just to make sure the propellers are on
correctly so that you don't take off and one of the propellers falls off and your drone crashes so
it's better to start the propellers first to see if one of the propellers is not on correctly and
then you'll know before taking off so what i do just hold 45 degree angle and the propellers are
starting so you could press the takeoff button on the actual screen but doing it this way is a lot
safer this is the way i start my drone every time and then you just press up to fly normally
just hold your thumbs your fingers like this 45 degree angle just down and in like that
to start the drone and then to stop it you just press down on the left
stick like this and the drone will stop that's how you start your drone safely so my last tip
is to use nd filters i always carry a bunch of nd filters everything from nd4 all the way up to nd
512 i have here or even nd1000 if i'm gonna do a really slow shutter or do a hyperlapse
nd filters come in real handy freewell also sent me these nd filters for the mavic 3 which i'll put
in the link below and these have a polarizer on them so they're an nd filter and a polarizer two
in one so the polarizer really makes the greens and the blues pop out and the nd filters kind
of like sunglasses for your camera lens in very simple terms it allows you to properly expose
the image without having choppy footage so you get cinematic smooth footage while following the
shutter rule which is the shutter speed is double your frame rate so if your frame rate is 24 frames
per second your shutter speed should be about 1 48 of a second or on cameras it's 150th of a second
if you shoot at 60 frames per second you need 120th of a second or one slash 125th of a
second so the shutter speed is always double the frame rate but a lot of times that's not possible
because there's too much light out even after you lower your iso so what you're going to need to do
is you're going to need to get some nd filters and that's why i always use these now a trick for
using nd filters i just take off normally and see how the exposure is without them on so i just take
off a few feet maybe 30 40 feet if i need to i can see right now that's overexposed and the way you
do that just look in the lower right hand corner and you see the exposure you could even hold your
drone up in the air so even as i hold the drone up i can see it's already like a plus one okay so if
i just put down the drone then just put on an nd filter so i think right now maybe like an nd4 or
an nd8 because right now it's not too bright and there is a lot of cloud cover so probably like an
nd4 and the 8 would be good now most of the time i shoot in d log or d cine-like mode but i'm just
shooting in normal mode as an example here because a lot of people are shooting in normal mode they
don't want to do any color grading so when you shoot in normal mode you're going to want to get
the exposure like spot odd even in d cine-like or d-log you want to get a spot on normally i use the
aperture about f4 but sometimes i go all the way up to 5.6 but i like to stick between 2.8 and 5.6
usually about f4 is what i use now one thing about using the nd filters is you want to turn off your
drone when you put these on never put on an nd filter with your drone on when you put on these nd
filters you got to be very careful so one thing i like to do is just turn it upside down so i
like folding up the drone because it's a little easier to put the nd filters on hold this the
gimbal so you don't damage the gimbal take off the normal filter put on that nd filter right there
just twist like that and we're good then we start the drone and see if it works
and i can already tell it's looking a lot better so let me just take off
and i notice it's a little too much probably nd4 would be good but the
other thing i could do is also change my aperture
everything looks great make sure i get my focus and then just start flying
all right that's it for today you've enjoyed the video give it a thumbs up and share it
with a friend also if you want more training like this i made a free dji drone training
just click the link below. I'm Brett Garamella, and remember, Fly Like a Pro!