Comfortable minimum altitude.

[etr102]

I'm new to the world of drones and out of fear of hitting trees, power lines, etc I tend to fly around 350ft. This tends to be too high to get a lot of shots that i want so i need to work up the courage to fly lower. Where I live, the land is very flat but Im in a suburban area with lots of trees, (maple, spruce, oak, pine mainly). I stay away from Downtown highrises ... but there are lots of power lines. With these obstacles in mind, what would the lowest altitude you would feel comfortable with in situations where you might not always have perfect line of sight?

 

[Andysmith6575]

I never set my rth altitude to less than 50m... but I live in an area where there ain't many tree or power lines that are above 30m... i live in the uk so I'm comfortable with 50m

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[Diaz2010]

I'm new to the world of drones and out of fear of hitting trees, power lines, etc I tend to fly around 350ft. This tends to be too high to get a lot of shots that i want so i need to work up the courage to fly lower. Where I live, the land is very flat but Im in a suburban area with lots of trees, (maple, spruce, oak, pine mainly). I stay away from Downtown highrises ... but there are lots of power lines. With these obstacles in mind, what would the lowest altitude you would feel comfortable with in situations where you might not always have perfect line of sight?

First off if you are in a state where State Farm will insure your drone, get a policy from them to cover damage in the event of a crash.

I routinely fly at 75-100 ft and rarely encounter anything that requires higher altitude. My Rth is set at about 300 ft just to be safe.

 

[Drone Master]

I'm new to the world of drones and out of fear of hitting trees, power lines, etc I tend to fly around 350ft. This tends to be too high to get a lot of shots that i want so i need to work up the courage to fly lower. Where I live, the land is very flat but Im in a suburban area with lots of trees, (maple, spruce, oak, pine mainly). I stay away from Downtown highrises ... but there are lots of power lines. With these obstacles in mind, what would the lowest altitude you would feel comfortable with in situations where you might not always have perfect line of sight?

It depends on your location and what you estimate to be the highest object within your flight plan. Most power lines at max height on average should not be more than 10 meters unless going over large power utility poles or cell towers.
Longer range at lower attitudes is difficult unless you have a good antenna mod. LOS with remote will be essential with out a mod!

 

[Mark The Droner]

If you're in a flat area with no significant elevation changes, launch and elevate to a particular height, say 100 ft, then yaw or rotate slowly and make sure you can see the horizon with nothing in between. Change height and repeat. Go up or down until you find the perfect height.

 

[Warden]

I use Google earth to plan my flights then import in to Litchi. You can make it show a wall of your flight then rotate around and look for obstacles.

 

[efer]

I use Google earth to plan my flights then import in to Litchi. You can make it show a wall of your flight then rotate around and look for obstacles.

View attachment 60589

Cool! How do you import google earth maps into Litchi?



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[WilsonFlyer]

Yeah really. A tutorial would be great. I'm intrigued.

 

[Warden]

Cool! How do you import google earth maps into Litchi?

You don't, you just save the waypoints you created in Google earth as a .KML file then import that in to Litchi. It will help you fly at the same height relative to the ground even if the ground is steep terrain. Once you import it in to Litchi all the elevations will be set. So no guessing by having to put minus elevations and getting it wrong.
I got the info from this video on youtube.

 

[efer]

Excellent! Thanks.


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