what's going on guys today I'm going to show you how to safely take off and land
your drone on a boat now I just got back from Grand Cayman Island where I was
flying my drone on a charter fishing boat and I learned a lot of things I
made a few mistakes and I'm making this video in order to help you so when
you're out there you don't run into any problems so today I'm going to give you
10 tips on how to take off and land your drone successfully and I'm also going to
show you exactly how I took off and landed my Mavic to drone on the boat so
that you're fully confident and there's no problems now although I use the Mavic
to drone you could do it with other drones as well and all these tips and
the way I'm going to show you today are applicable for other drones as well so
the first tip I'm going to give you is to make sure you do a compass
calibration that seems kind of obvious but sometimes people forget it so make
sure you do a compass calibration when you first take out your drone after you
do your compass calibration the second tip is to make sure you turn off your
Bluetooth this will help avoid interference from the boat that you're
on and from other boats and just give you a better overall signal I always
turn off my Bluetooth when I fly and you could ask the captain to turn off the
Wi-Fi or any other frequency that might interfere with the drone signal my next
tip is to ask the captain for another favor and that's to slow down or even
stop the boat if the captain can stop the boat that's even better now if
you're out there in the ocean of course the boats gonna be moving but
the more movement obviously it's gonna be more difficult to take off so if you
can stop the boat that's really gonna help out a lot now every boat is a
little different but they all have the same sort of similarities in the fact
that you're going to be exposed outside to the Sun and then there's usually a
part of the boat where you can go where there's some shade or cover ok so I
recommend when you fly you go on the part where they're shade or cover if you
can't do that you can put a hood over the screen of the device that you're
using while you're flying so being able to see your screen is a necessity
especially on a boat where you don't want to take any chances so either take
cover or get a little hood for your screen I'll put a link down below to a
hood that I've used before with my drone and if that works for you
go ahead or you could just build your own you can
take a piece of cardboard put it over your screen that works as well now when
you take off make sure you go nice and slow don't rush it because they're often
a lot of poles and things that you could hit so make sure when you take off that
if you're going to go straight up or in certain direction usually it's going to
be straight up there's no poles right above you or a
fishing pole or some type of antenna when I took off the second time after I
changed my battery I went straight up everything seemed perfectly fine and I
didn't notice this pole sticking out from the boat and my drone kind of did a
360 and then kept going up luckily everything was okay but I should have
checked that beforehand that was a mistake I made don't do that all right
guys we have a couple more tips and I'm going to show you exactly how I took off
and landed my drone so my next tip is to get a spotter what
I mean by a spotter is someone else to watch your drone at all times usually
you're not on the boat by yourself if you have someone else on the boat which
usually you're on a boat there's a captain there's you if you are the
captain it'd be wise to have another person and that person can just watch
the drone make sure they have sunglasses that way they can see the drone at all
times you're flying towards the Sun they can see it and if you're gonna fly
underneath the cover this is especially important because you want to maintain
eyesight with the drone at all times now flying a drone on a boat is so much fun
but you got to be aware of how much battery life you have so after you take
off just always make sure you look at how much battery life you have I would
say your first time doing it if you haven't done it before if you haven't
taken off and landed your drone on a boat then make sure you have at least 35
percent battery life when you're coming to land all right anything less than
that you don't give yourself enough time or room for error and often times have
the boats moving or the waves start moving really high or something
unpredictable happens you it's out of your control and then your battery life
is going to go way down and then things like wind - can also affect your battery
life so when you fly it out keep in mind the wind could change direction or the
boat can change direction so when you're flying back it could eat up way more
battery life so always be conservative especially your first time doing it and
this will ensure that you have a safe landing now some people say you can use
a buoy with your drone or a flotation device and
basically what that is they have them for drones whereas if you crash in the
water your drone will flow but for me I would say if you're gonna fly your drone
on a boat you could do that but I don't really like to have that mind frame and
my mindset is that I'm gonna successfully take off and land my drone
if you have too much apprehension or too worried about flying your drone that
maybe shouldn't do it but if you follow these steps you're going to be able to
do it and it's going to give you the confidence and really all that worry is
just in your head now my next tip seems kind of obvious but when you're in a
boat things can happen people like to party on the boat but make sure you
don't drink alcohol while you're flying your drone if you're an adult it's okay
to drink alcohol but make sure you do that after you fly your drone in fact I
even made a shirt this shirt right here that says don't drink and drone okay I
designed it myself I have it on my new store that I opened up today so if you
want to check it out pick it up this shirt is made in the USA and it helps
support my channel I do appreciate it I also have a new hat as well that's also
on my store and since I started wearing this t-shirt I have so many people
coming up to me and starting a conversation ask about myself as a drone
pilot and asking about drones and things like that
so if you do buy this t-shirt you're not only supporting my channel but you're
also gonna have a great conversation starter I'll put a link in the
description below and now we're gonna get into our last tip so my last tip
actually relates sort of to this which is keep all distractions away when
you're flying in drones so you're in a boat you can't really walk away unless
you're on a humongous gigantic boat and even then I would be very careful flying
on a huge boat usually drones aren't allowed but if you're in a smaller boat
like the one I was you can't really walk anywhere okay you're basically there you
got to keep distractions away so if the music's are allowed I would ask the
captain to lower the music because you need to concentrate and if something
happens you need to speak with the captain to let them know that you're
having a problem and the other thing is a lot of times on boats people are
partying or there's a lot of hot girls so make sure you don't get too
distracted while you're flying a drone you can do that afterwards before you're
flying make sure you maintain some level of concentration so you don't have any
problems so I used all those tips that I just gave you but I'm going to give you
a little more advice about how exactly I did it so it can help you out as well so
when I took off my drone I did my compass calibration I put my drone down
and on a boat there's often a lot of metal so it may not be on the boat
itself it may be underneath you may not see it and that happened to me so when I
took off the drone kept going like forward or sideways I thought maybe it
was the pitch of the bow or wind or some something else I mean I knew it kind of
wasn't that but people around me were saying that and it was throwing me off
and I was getting a little bit razzled and I was thinking alright what can it
be it's got to be the metal okay you never want to take off from a metal
surface this way you don't want to put your drone on a car hood or something
like this and the same thing on a boat so what you're gonna do is you're
actually gonna have to take off in most places on most boats just with your hand
now I know this can be kind of dangerous I didn't wear a glove if you want to you
can keep in mind there are many ways to take off and land the drone but this is
the way I did it I made sure when I took off if you have something like the
Phantom you can grab below but I don't I didn't have that luxury with a Mavic too
so what I did was I made sure that I held it down here to take off what I did
was I just held it down here and I passed the remote to my friend and now
my friend what he did he took the control and he just started the
propellers and then I let him know it was okay we were in communication with
each other and then he took off all right as soon as he was at a height
above the boat that he wasn't gonna hit anything then he passed the controller
to me and I started flying now make sure when you do take this off everyone is
away from you make sure you you look up and you can see you can tell him to go
straight up or her to go straight up that way you don't hit anything the
flight path of where your drone is gonna go is really important and if you have
someone who's never flown a drone before it doesn't have a lot of experience they
can press a different direction so you sort of have to teach them other person
before you take off it doesn't take too much time isn't overly complicated but
that's what I did now maybe you can take off on the boat but you do run a risk of
the drone doing something really funny because of
all the metal so my last tip for taking off is I suggest that you go as far away
from the boat as you can what I mean is you go to the edge of the boat and you
almost hold your drone over the water and you make sure the propellers are
good and they can just go straight up into the air and not hit anything if
this all sounds really daunting one thing you could do is with your friend
you could practice doing this on land before you go out onto the boat I didn't
do that I have a lot of confidence in my flying skills however this was the first
time I took off on the boat and I kept putting it down on the ground and it
kept running into the side of the boat and I almost damaged my drone and I did
damaged slightly one of the propellers and I had to change one of the
propellers so don't do that that's why I recommend holding it in
hand now to land it's a little more tricky because you got to make sure that
all the poles antennas are out of the way so make sure you take away the
fishing poles and anything else that the drone can run into and what I did is you
can go into tripod mode to make the drone go really slow and close to you
and then make sure the obstacle avoiding sensors are either off or you can leave
them on I left them on because sometimes when I fly in sport mode the drone does
some crazy things so I left it in tripod mode now with the Mavic - one thing I
know is that the obstacle avoiding sensors are in the front and back top
and bottom when flying normal on the sides they only work in quick shot and
active track mode and because I wasn't using that was just flying normal I knew
I could face it towards me from the side and the sensor wasn't gonna go off so I
had to bring it close to me where I could grab it so what I did was I flew
it close to me and I make sure it was angled like this so it's coming in at a
side so the drone is actually facing this way and as the drone is coming
towards me like this I'm holding the controller I'm getting it close to me
then I let go of the sticks the drone is just hovering here and I did the same
thing as when I took off I just grabbed it below really made sure I kept it my
hand really low because if you don't you could hurt your hand so you got to be
very careful with this and then as soon as I grab the drone
you can have someone kill the propellers but what I did was I just flipped the
drone upside down when you flipped most DJI drones upside down the propellers
are gonna stop so with a mattock - that's the case not all drones are like
that so that's why I recommend practicing this on land first just
grabbing your drone and then just flipping it over the drone stops
everything is ok everyone's happy nice nicely played
alright guys that's it I hope you take off and land your drone successfully on
a boat I hope this was helpful for you one other thing you can do one on a boat
you can use an ND filter that really helps with the glare of the ocean and
everything else out at sea during the day the Sun can get really bright
especially out on the ocean so make sure you use an ND filter and if you enjoyed
this video please give it a thumbs up share it with someone that might find it
helpful if they own a boat you share with them and if you haven't done so
pick up a t-shirt I do appreciate that and subscribe to my channel because I
make tutorials and videos like this about drones on a regular basis I'm
Brett Garamella with brettgaramella.com thanks for watching. Drones for Reel!