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Flying your Drone at Night

Flying your Drone at Night

Flying your drone at night is great fun and most drone operators will want to have a go at a night flight at some stage.  Before attempting any flying at night you must be sure your can operate your drone to a high standard and are able to respond safely to certain situations should they arise.  Please see below some points for safe flying but it you are advised to use your own judgement of what you consider to be safe.

Before flying at night you should apply all your normal checks and safety precautions which are too numerous to list here but such things as making sure you have set the correct Return To Home altitude and checking the battery charge and temperature before taking off are a couple to note.  It is important to carry out a daylight recce of the area you want to fly over and note any hazards such as trees, pylons ect.  A companion or spotter is also recommended if you are going out at night especially if you have to land your drone away from the take-off point and you have to go to it. Some basic safety precautions also include being suitable dressed and carrying a torch and mobile phone.

Once you have carried out your pre-flight checks and proceeded to take off carry out some basic manoeuvres keeping the drone in line of site and get used to orientating the drone by using the lights on the arms of the aircraft.  Then practice judging the distance the drone is away from you by looking at it then checking the distance on the screen.  When you are ready you can fly further away and exactly how far you want to go is up to you.

You must be able to control your drone and return it to the take-off area if the image transmission signal on your screen is very dark or even completely black.  This means you must be able to use the instrument readings such as altitude, distance away from the homepoint and orientation to bring the drone safely back.  You must be able to control the horizontal speed of the drone just by using the instruments – you don’t want to be flying really slowly so it takes you too long to get back and you also don’t want to be doing 30 or 40mph without realising it.  You must also be aware of your altitude – you don’t want to be losing or gaining height without realising it.

You can get some really nice photos when flying your drone at night though you may want to consider turning up the exposure value and increasing the shutter speed of the camera.



 

Posted by Christian Smith