When you are a drone owner, you must worry about losing your drone. Drone flyaways are the most common things that can happen anytime, whether you are a beginner or an expert drone pilot. It is one of the frightening and heartbreaking incidents for a drone owner. What if you are unable to fly your drone back and lose the connection? Pretty terrifying, right? When this happens, it is more likely to lose your drone. To avoid losing your expensive and favorite drone, here we have listed some tips on how to prevent losing/flyaways a drone.
Reasons Behind Drones Flyaways
Before preventing your drone flyaways, you must know and understand what causes drone flyaways and what happens when a drone goes out of range. Knowing the causes can help you to prevent it from happening. The drone’s sensors, smart features, and transmission technology of a drone are designed to avoid flyaways. In a normal situation, they work fine and work together to prevent losing your drone. Anything that comes between the system can lead to a flyaway. One of the most common causes behind a drone flyaway is the loss of signal between the drone and the remote controller. Usually, the return-to-home (RTF) feature of a drone can prevent a drone flyaway. The problem occurs when the drone can’t get a GPS to fix for the RTF function to use.
Anything can weaken the link between the drone and the controller, such as flying too far away, near sources of electromagnetic interference, flying near large structures, big trees, flying on a rainy or windy day. All these can cause connection drops in signal strength.
However, now drone flyaways happen less than before. Because the transmission systems have been improved and Wi-Fi communications dependence has been reduced. But still, as a drone owner, flyaways can be pretty frightening for you.
How To Prevent Losing a Drone
Prevention is better than losing your precious drone. The majority of flyaways occur because of some common pilot errors. Here we are presenting some tips to prevent your drone from flying away. These safety precautions may help you to prevent losing your drone.
Pre-flight Check
This is an essential task to do before you fly a drone. You should never fly your drone without doing a pre-flight check. Check the batteries if they are fully charged to do a flight, the controllers are correctly responding, and all other components are working just fine. Do not forget to check the weather before flying your drone. Bad weather like sudden rain or strong wind can cause you to lose your drone. This may seem irritating to you at some moment, but this is one of the most important steps to prevent drone flyaways.
Know the Range of Your Drone
Your drone is less likely to crash or get lost if you keep in mind your drone range. Knowing the highest range of your drone is the safest way to fly. When you do this, you will be able to understand how far your drone can go. Sometimes flyways are accidents, and it results from the drone being invisible.
Fly in the Beginner Mode (Even You’re a Pro)
Beginner mode provides you with a lot of features that prevent your drone from losing or flyaways. When your battery gets too low in this mode, or when you lose signal, the drone will automatically return from where it started flying. Moreover, when you are in beginner mode on your drone, it’ll not fly above a certain altitude. So it becomes easier to maintain your drone in beginner’s mode.
Ensure Your Battery is Fully Charged
Ensuring your battery power can prevent your drone from flying away. Remember, when your drone is far away and you choose the RTH option, you’ll lose the flight time, and your drone will lose power when it’s only halfway home.
Nowadays, many drones like DJI drones don’t take off if they are not at least 30% charged, and they will return automatically if the battery is less than 20%. Most drones provide around 20-25 minutes of battery life. But it is always a nice idea to monitor the status of the battery. You can check the battery life in the top right-hand corner of your screen.
Enable Return to Home (RTH) Mode
Before taking off, ensure your home point where the drone will automatically return when the batteries get low or not connect to the signal. Remember to double-check if your drone has registered the home point. This is a must if you’re flying over in the water. If the home point is incorrect, your drone can be drowned with a big splash. You can check the home point in your app or remote controller.
Get Enough Altitude
Many countries have strict guidelines on how high you can fly your drone. However, you should still ensure your drone is high enough to avoid any obstacles while returning to its home point. This is very important for drones that are not featured with obstacle avoidance. If you live in an area with high interference, it would be best to fly your drone somewhere else to be safe.
Also Read: How to Find a Lost Drone
Monitor the Compass
Compass interference can be a significant reason behind drone flyaways. If the compass doesn’t direct accurately, your drone can fly off in the total opposite direction. So you must check the compass interference before taking off. Always check on your compass because GPS isn’t 100% accurate.
Keep the Drone Line of Your Sight
If you fly your drone line of sight, it is less possible for the drone to be crashed or lost. Monitoring your drone through your live video feed is not a good idea because you won’t be able to see what’s behind or on either side of the drone. If the drone is not visible, it can cause a flyaway. Flying within line of sight and is the best idea to stay safe and avoid any obstacle.
Conclusion
With better and improved technology, drone flyaways are now less common than before. But this does not mean that it won’t happen to you. There are still many drones flying away for various reasons, which leads them to crash after a mile or two. Don’t ruin your drone adventure with a flyaway situation. Prevent your drone from losing or flying away, as we have mentioned all the tips on how to prevent losing a drone. With proper knowledge and taking preventive measures, you don’t need to be afraid of losing your drone.