Panic sets in, you've lost sight of your drone. This may or may not happen to you, but chances are it will. This can even occur when you are in a wide open space and your confidence level is greater than your visual level. There are several reasons why you lose sight of your drone. The obvious reason is you take your eyes off of the drone. Changing the camera settings, or other functions on the controller is another reason you will lose sight. Maintaining Visual Line of Sight (VLOS) without the aid of binoculars or other visual enhancing devices, is required by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) https://www.faa.gov/uas/. This can be especially challenging if you are flying your drone without the assistance of a Visual Observer (VO). When I first started flying my drone, I lost sight a couple of times, because of inexperience. The first time it occurred, my worst fears were running through my mind. The longer I could not regain visual sight, crashing; or losing my drone seemed to be an inevitable outcome. When I finally regained VLOS, I realized I had flown my drone overhead and to the rear of where I initially launched. There are several steps you can take to regain sight of your drone. One would think the most obvious step is to press the return to home button, however, not all drones have this feature. Also if you lose the link from your controller to the drone this may prevent it from returning to home. So depending on where you are flying, and your drone's capability, it is critical that you have a plan.
First step is to release the control stick and let the drone hover. This will allow you to pause and reduce your anxiety. Next use your camera and find a nearby prominent terrain feature. With the assistance of your camera, point your drone in that direction. Fly your drone to an altitude higher than any obstacle between it and the prominent feature, and fly to it. Once you have regained VLOS you can breath easy and return the drone to your position or continue flying. I suggest you return the drone to your position, so you can analyze why you lost VLOS. During my escapade I did not follow these steps. I was fortunate after some panic driven moments to regain VLOS. Experience is the best teacher, but a little planning and a lot less eagerness will help you avoid the mistakes I made. Drone flying can be enjoyable, but as operators in the National Airspace we need to educate ourselves so we can smoothly integrate into the system. This article is not meant to be the tell all, but to emphasize the importance of education. So whether your intentions are to fly commercially or for recreation take the time to learn. "I Learned From That". Thanks, and as always you can follow me on twitter @DannyBaker0 Until the next time.
Comments
Post a Comment