Review Pre-Flight Checklist
There are many little tasks that need to be performed before even leaving your office or home to the flight location. Following this checklist will help ensure a successful capture. The further away the flight is the more important it is that you perform a pre-flight check meticulously.
- Make sure all batteries are fully charged. See here for more information.
- Make sure you take enough batteries
- Pre-plan the flight with flight planning software
- Open your flight planning app of preference and use the map to navigate to the location where the flight will performed
- Draw a polygon around the area that will be captured, and select a flying altitude relative to take-off, 40 meters or 120 feet is a good standard.
- When you get to the location you will want to make sure there are no tall objects higher that the flying altitude within the flight zone. Look out for cables, water towers, cell towers, trees, buildings, and lighting posts that could potentially be collided with.
- If a hazard intersects the flight plane, it is best to design the flight around it or above it. The best approach will depend of the height of the objects. If the object is too tall (greater than 60 meters), the detail in images might suffer.
- Read the estimated flight time, battery use. Make sure you have enough batteries to complete the flight.
- If not, setting a higher flying altitude might save flight time.
- Check for acceptable weather.
- Most drones cannot fly in rainy conditions.
- Good light conditions are important for photogrammetry. If the lighting during capture is too dark, precision suffers.
- If you do not expect the flight location to have cellular signal or your device does not have cellular data, you must pre-load the satellite imagery for the location before leaving. Otherwise, your flight will have to be designed without being able to see the map.