I spent some time in a job which required me to analyze the capabilities of various air forces, and one of the measures we used to use was annual flight hours. The US standard was at least 250 annual flight hours ensured safety and also combat effectiveness. Once flight hours dropped below 200, we considered those pilots dangerous-- to themselves and to others and to have limited combat capability. My question to the forum is, for the very complex Phantom 4 Pro and the various software options available for us to fly it, what do you think are the minimum annual flight hours a pilot needs to 1) not be a threat to his/her own drone, and 2) a threat to the world below?
Flight Hours
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I think DJI actually cover this in the manual, I’m sure I remember on my phantom Vision it advised 2-4 hours of flight in a local area before venturing further in the manual.
As for Joe Public, some people still fly badly months after getting a drone, hence the videos which cause offense to some
I’m not sure you can put a figure on it, it’s down to each person but if you want a number I would say 8 batteries about 4 hours with someone else who is capable
Hard question......I got well over 150hrs but that not going to save anything if malfunction occur and they do,,that's why as safe as we can be it's hard to say how many hours,,,these things pretty much fly themselves, a complete novice to a trained pilot,,hours are good but knowlage to comes from reading so it's remembered ,,,you can learn to fly on first batt it's easy as but the info needs to be know by whoever flying to keep it in the air,becomes second nature,
I don't think there is a "reasonable" # of hours because let's be honest.. these things fly themselves. Once you've mastered charging the battery, inserting it into the aircraft, and going through the usual PowerUp procedure most people are just watching the aircraft and banking&Yanking anyway.
In our Emergency Services role we require a min # of 10 total hours in the TYPE of aircraft flown and 1hr of logged flight time in the last 30 days in order to be deployable.
The P4P isn't a complex aircraft to fly by any stretch of the imagination.
Like others I don't think a P4 is all that complex, but of course "intelligent" flight modes, Litchi, etc. can paint that picture differently.
And yes, not everybody is cut out for this, just like some drivers really have no business behind the wheel. I flew my P3 into the side of my car within fifteen seconds of my first ever flight. Only damage was broken props, prop marks on a quarter panel of my hooptie, and a bruised ego. Future flights went better. Attempts to fly my friend's little chopper all ended in misery. Thankfully he stocks lots of spare parts and is good with his hands. Those things are truly an art form to master. But I'm never gonna be the kid who does acrobatic loops with his Phantom.
I work for one of the Big Three television networks. Recently I had the opportunity to get some technical training that was being conducted in our ENG (electronic news gathering) facility. This is where we stock all the stuff that gets sent out and used at remote locations to get on the air with news. While being trained on intercom stuff, a woman at a bench nearby was prepping a P4 kit to be sent somewhere. After the class I struck up a conversation...
Turns out that of course we require our remote pilots to have a 107, but also require them to maintain a minimum number of documented flight hours monthly, and they have to pass a test that we administer! I was very impressed. In light of Big Al's comment, I did not at the time think to ask if that was all bird by bird.
We also have a variety of birds of every size, depending on the job. Mucho cool.
And yet in spite of all that, and sorry if anyone's nose gets tweaked here, I've seen some flying for our shows that just wasn't all that impressive, and that also displayed a lack of sensible settings on the birds for "cinematic quality" video.
No matter what, skill sets will vary.
And yes, not everybody is cut out for this, just like some drivers really have no business behind the wheel. I flew my P3 into the side of my car within fifteen seconds of my first ever flight. Only damage was broken props, prop marks on a quarter panel of my hooptie, and a bruised ego. Future flights went better. Attempts to fly my friend's little chopper all ended in misery. Thankfully he stocks lots of spare parts and is good with his hands. Those things are truly an art form to master. But I'm never gonna be the kid who does acrobatic loops with his Phantom.
I work for one of the Big Three television networks. Recently I had the opportunity to get some technical training that was being conducted in our ENG (electronic news gathering) facility. This is where we stock all the stuff that gets sent out and used at remote locations to get on the air with news. While being trained on intercom stuff, a woman at a bench nearby was prepping a P4 kit to be sent somewhere. After the class I struck up a conversation...
Turns out that of course we require our remote pilots to have a 107, but also require them to maintain a minimum number of documented flight hours monthly, and they have to pass a test that we administer! I was very impressed. In light of Big Al's comment, I did not at the time think to ask if that was all bird by bird.
We also have a variety of birds of every size, depending on the job. Mucho cool.
And yet in spite of all that, and sorry if anyone's nose gets tweaked here, I've seen some flying for our shows that just wasn't all that impressive, and that also displayed a lack of sensible settings on the birds for "cinematic quality" video.
No matter what, skill sets will vary.
As stable and easy my P3P is to fly, I don't think I really felt comfortable flying it routinely, especially over water, around trees, and in my backyard, until I had about 20-25 10 minute flights. But those came after I had flown about 60 flights with the trickier and less stable P2V. Please note that I said "routinely," which means anywhere under any sort of legal but not wet or very windy, conditions.
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In the UK I need to keep a record of the number of flight hours and other details of every flight. Without it we could not get a renewed PfCO. They donor specify the total number of hours but it must be two hours minimum for renew. Two hours is insulting and will certainly not be adequate to keep skills up. I aim for at least two hours a month.
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fnelowet: I'm a relatively new drone pilot, having started in late 2017 with the P4P+. I only fly for work purposes, not for pleasure.
Our initial filming project took almost three months to complete, so the learning curve of flying a drone and filming with it was relatively intense (albeit cautious). We probably flew on at least fifty days, if not more, of this time period - usually during the golden hours around sunrise and sunset. I then didn't fly the drone again for six months. By then, yes, I had to re-think a few controls before the first flight of the second project - but I'd already accumulated quite a bit of "muscle memory" from before, so it all rapidly came back. Since then, it's been "automatic" to fly again after breaks of several months.
As has been said above, the P4P+ more or less flies itself. And I almost always have a spotter, so "two brains are better than one" is another relevant factor.
Whatever I do, I do to very high standards. Most people, by contrast, prefer a more casual approach and accept a lower threshold of behaviour. This psychology factor is huge and is still underestimated in most areas of life - even in aviation, despite attention given to "human factors". Despite a lot of public information being available for the past 15 years or so on error-focused learning, the vast majority of people bumble along doing less than their best. Normalisation. Within a tighter professional field, especially where high costs are involved - such as flying military aircraft - the scope for disaster is more clearly defined and policies are taught/implemented so as to minimise things going wrong. Perhaps one of the best examples of minimising unnecessary errors is within F1 pit-stop changes - where fractions of a second can win or lose a race.
It's highly likely that the majority of crashes of drones are caused by pilot error. We're back to psychology. I know of a current Emirates airline pilot who has crashed his DJI drone several times, including once into a swimming pool.....and cutting into his girlfriend's fingers on another occasion. The trouble with people is that they don't want to know what the trouble with them is. Contradictions and hypocrisy are swept under the carpet, minimised or otherwise avoided.
Our initial filming project took almost three months to complete, so the learning curve of flying a drone and filming with it was relatively intense (albeit cautious). We probably flew on at least fifty days, if not more, of this time period - usually during the golden hours around sunrise and sunset. I then didn't fly the drone again for six months. By then, yes, I had to re-think a few controls before the first flight of the second project - but I'd already accumulated quite a bit of "muscle memory" from before, so it all rapidly came back. Since then, it's been "automatic" to fly again after breaks of several months.
As has been said above, the P4P+ more or less flies itself. And I almost always have a spotter, so "two brains are better than one" is another relevant factor.
Whatever I do, I do to very high standards. Most people, by contrast, prefer a more casual approach and accept a lower threshold of behaviour. This psychology factor is huge and is still underestimated in most areas of life - even in aviation, despite attention given to "human factors". Despite a lot of public information being available for the past 15 years or so on error-focused learning, the vast majority of people bumble along doing less than their best. Normalisation. Within a tighter professional field, especially where high costs are involved - such as flying military aircraft - the scope for disaster is more clearly defined and policies are taught/implemented so as to minimise things going wrong. Perhaps one of the best examples of minimising unnecessary errors is within F1 pit-stop changes - where fractions of a second can win or lose a race.
It's highly likely that the majority of crashes of drones are caused by pilot error. We're back to psychology. I know of a current Emirates airline pilot who has crashed his DJI drone several times, including once into a swimming pool.....and cutting into his girlfriend's fingers on another occasion. The trouble with people is that they don't want to know what the trouble with them is. Contradictions and hypocrisy are swept under the carpet, minimised or otherwise avoided.
This. Especially the last part about the Emirates pilot.
I find the flying part easy. The stuff that I concentrate on are the "when things go bad" part. I always want to recognize early on if I have a problem, determine the best solution to the problem, and have an out that is not going to damage people or property. If I can do that, 9 times out of 10 I can get the aircraft on the ground near me safely.
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