if you just bought a drone and you want to learn how to fly it safely today i want to
give you some of the basics so you can go out and have a great first flight and hopefully not crash
your first drone now if you want to go really in depth and dive into how to fly your drone well
and learn some advanced moves how to take care of your batteries how to take every drone all those
kinds of things i do offer a paid course it's linked in the description but for now we're going
to jump in the basics of how to fly pretty much any drone that's come out on the market in the
last few years now when you take off or when you go fly for the first time make sure that you're
in a place that you're okay to fly and there's a lot of different ways to look at that i use an
app called air map there's before you fly there's a few other ones that you can check and make sure
you can legally fly wherever you're gonna go fly and make sure you're in a big wide open area where
you're not going to be really concerned with running into any trees any poles any buildings
anything like that could get in your way so make sure you go out to a big field big open field
big open space and fly there for the first time before we jump into flying the drone for the first
time the first thing you want to do is turn the controller on and we want to understand how the
controller works so you double tap and hold the second push to turn the drone on once it beeps
turns on then it's on open up the app plug your phone in whatever device you're using
and then be ready to go now there's a few basics that we need to understand is
this stick on the left side here is the one that basically the drone stays in the same position
but moves uh up or down or turns left or right but it stays above the position wherever it's hovering
at that time so if you push up the drone will go up if you push down it'll go down you turn
to the left it'll go left if you turn to the right it'll go right so that's the basics of movements
on this side this side the right stick is a little bit different this is the one that actually makes
the drone move forward backward or left to right relative to whatever the position it took off of
so if you push left the drone is going to slide left if you push right the drone will slide right
if you push up the drone will move forward and if you push down the drone will move backward
those are the basics of all the controls and everything we're going to do today revolves around
those things now there's a few other things that you might want to familiarize yourself
with if your remote has a pause button or return to home button like this one does that's good to
know just in case you get in trouble you can push it and have the drone come back i always recommend
flying the drone back to yourself don't just use the return to home function because sometimes that
can go wrong depending on the settings that you've used and then in the middle we have a switch here
that selects between three different flight modes the one furthest on the left cine mode
or sometimes called tripod mode is the slowest and the drone everything about the drone will
will respond slowly to the controls so that's a good mode to start with if you've never flown
drones before normal means that if you have obstacle avoidance that obstacle avoidance is
also active just like it was in the city mode but everything is a little faster the drone will move
faster it will go places faster up down left right all of those things will happen a lot faster and
the gimbal will move faster and then sport mode or the fastest mode ludicrous mode depending on the
drone manufacturer will move the drone at the absolute maximum speeds that it is capable of
but if your drone has obstacle avoidance there will be no obstacle avoidance available so then
it is 100 dependent on you to not crash your drone and then on most dji drones on the back of the
remote here is a record button so you can take pictures or start and stop the video recording
and a gimbal control wheel so if you push the wheel one way the gimbal will tilt down if you
push it the other way the gimbal will tilt up so now that we've gone over some of those basics
let's jump into unfolding our drone taking off and flying for the first time some drones might
unfold differently than this but you should be able to find your directions in your manual or
there's probably videos out there about how to do it the first thing you want to do is definitely
take the gimbal cover off so that the gimbal has free range of motion before you turn the drone on
and then usually you unfold these two legs the front two legs or the top two legs
by moving them forward first and then the back two legs fold down and back now the drone is unfolded
you don't have to straighten out the propellers if you don't want to but you can
most drones will have a like soft start to be able to get the drones going or get the
propellers going and spin them out before the drone actually takes off and then power
it on by double pressing and hold the second press until it beeps or you hear it turn on
once it's completed its boot up process you'll hear that tone everything's ready to go so let's
take off for our first flight i don't recommend that you hand launch and hand catch if this
is your first time using a drone i'm going to because that's how i do it a lot of times i do
have a whole video about how to hand launch a hand catch it'll pop up here and it'll be linked in the
description but for the most part just take off of the ground something hard some surface area that
won't get your drone too dirty and that will give you safety to be a little ways away
so first things first if you are going to video record this you want to make sure that
it is in auto that may not be the best for all situations but it is good and it will certainly
get you through most things and will give you pretty usable footage in most conditions
so make sure that you're in auto and everything's ready to go and record the way it is and then what
we're going to do is turn the drone so it's facing away from us and perform our first few
flights up down turn it left and right back or forward backward left right all that with the
drone facing away from us if you remember this is up down and left and right so if you push
up the drone is going to go up if you push down the drone is going to come down and then if you
push it to the left the drone will turn left if you push it to the right the drone will turn right
but all of that is staying in the same position that the drone took off in it's not moving forward
or backward and then when we come to the right stick if you push left the drone slides left
if you push right the drone slides right
i'll get it back here in the center and then if you push forward the drone moves forward
and if you push backward the drone moves backwards now that's relatively easy but
when you turn the drone around and have it facing towards you everything on this stick
and the left and right on this stick has just become the opposite and so this takes a little
more time and a little more practice but that's all you need is a lot of practice if you've never
flown drones before so again remembering that when you push these sticks this is forward backward
left right and then turning right and turning left on the left side here you just want to
remember that it's going to respond the opposite of what you think because it's now facing you
so the way to do that is just very slowly and very gently move the drone to the left to the right
maybe a little forward a little backward
up down is of course still the same but and then turning left to right
all you're really doing is building muscle memory and so the way to do this is keep an
eye on the drone don't get stuck looking at your screen all the time but keep an eye on
the drone as it's flying and do these motions over and over and over again and you'll be a
pro in no time because what you want to do is build the muscle memory so that you don't have
to think about it as much and that just takes a little bit of time and a little bit of practice
and then as you get more practice you can combine the motions together to do things like orbit
like what i'm doing right now which is where the drone is moving around me the subject and
keeping me somewhat in the center of the frame or on a third because that's kind of where i want it
as i'm moving around i'm keeping my subject and this is where you do want to keep an eye on the
screen but also check on your drone to make sure you're not going to run into anything because
obstacles do appear out of nowhere and just get a nice smooth motion around your subject as you
go takes practice you're combining two different controls don't try this until you've gotten a lot
of practice with the single controls and now i get a lot of questions about how to make your videos
look good how to get good photos if you don't do a lot with videography and photography there's some
really simple ways one is just use the auto mode on the drone that will get you good photos and
good video in like 90 percent of situations especially if you're just doing it for you
for friends for family just for fun don't worry about it we talk a lot about using nd filters
and there are times and places to use those but if you don't know what those are you don't know
how to use them just don't worry about it go out and shoot a lot of stuff in auto you'll get some
great footage and have a really good time as you can see here i'm recording in auto and that means
the drone is managing everything for me now if i switch it to pro which is where i have set all the
settings you can see that it's dramatically over exposed that's because i have the shutter speed
set to what i would use the shutter speed at and the iso is set at what i would use
the iso at but because i don't have an nd filter on there that means there's too much light coming
in so i would have to raise the shutter speed up until i get the exposure to about where i want
now the rule of thumb if you're going to use the manual settings is you want to keep your iso
as low as you possibly can you want to keep your shutter speed at two times your frame rate
and then you want to keep your white balance set to whatever your white balance is supposed to be
so on a sunny day it would be 5500 or 5600 on a cloudy day it might be more in like the 64 to
6600 range uh just depends on what you're shooting this is where nd filters come in essential because
you can't really do anything but adjust your shutter speed when you're flying to get the
proper exposure now even though a lot of drones have obstacle avoidance i never recommend relying
on obstacle avoidance 100 of the time because it will fail it will miss things small branches
things like that it can't see as well and it might run into something and in addition to that not
a lot of drones have 360 degree obstacle points where they can see objects around them completely
and so like this one does not have side obstacle avoidance which means if i'm moving sideways it
could run into something don't rely on obstacle avoidance learn to fly it manually and you will
be much better off and then obstacle avoidance just becomes a nice added safety feature or added
benefit something that's really neat about drones today is most of them have smart features built in
which means they have pre-programmed flight paths that they will fly those are a lot of fun to use
they will give you some really great footage of yourself of your family of you doing whatever it
is you do whether you're hiking out in the middle of the wilderness or you're just on the beach
having a good time so use those i did put together a video about how to use those it's up here
up there it'll pop up in one of these corners to master anything it just takes time and it takes
practice if you go out and fly three five six seven eight batteries fly a couple batteries every
day for a week you'll see massive improvements and you'll get a lot better like i said i do have
a full paid course that really goes into depth on not only how to do the basics of flight but
how to take care of your batteries take care of your drone and also do more advanced flying more
complicated maneuvers and how to use that in video a little bit drones are an incredible tool they're
a lot of fun but you do want to use them correctly and use them safely so please take your time and
learn to fly smart and learn to fly safely as you go about exploring this new world of drones
now if you want to learn how to film great videos and take great photos with your drone i've put
together a short playlist right here that will take you through some great tips and some great
ways to learn how to fly your drone as always you can join my live stream wednesday nights at 4 pm
alaska time 8 pm eastern if you have questions i will see you again soon in the next video cheers