Flying in windy conditions questions

[Jim Bercik]

Just updated mine last night. I used the big panel and added the tripod mount due to the weight


Sent from my iPad using PhantomPilots

 

[JWH]

I assume the drone is the same as my plane. Steady winds are less of an issue as the gusts, at least until it reaches the max. I don't have enough experience with the drone yet. I will say that I had it out on a day when the "official" readings were winds at 9 gusting to 15. The drone rocked a little, but the videos were steady. The gimbal does a great job. I learned from traveling in my plane that the winds get stronger the higher you go. I fly low in headwinds and higher in tailwinds.

 

[David Cooke]

My experience . . a nice steady 20 . . even 25mph is not too hard to deal with, if you are not near any significant obstacles . . anything more than grass. But if it's gusty . . like even 15 gusting 20-25mph then it's a serious risk if you are not on top of thing every second . . it will get blown around . . it will come back to it's original position and height given a few seconds to react in open spaces . . but if you and your controls are not well calibrated or you look away for more than a second or so, you may wish you hadn't taken off so near those trees or fence line. I had been carefully navigating some tree trunks towards open water 6 feet above the grass, with an on-shore wind of about 10-15mph . . .as I cresting the shoreline ( a 15 ft down slope to the water) it literally took-off . . UP and BACK . . in the gusty updraft possibly 20-25mph. Fortunately I was in SPORT mode and only full forward stick kept it below the branches long enough to clear them.

That got my attention . . and I was very glad I had re-calibrated the controls before that flight. Just the day before full forward stick had only given me a leisurely pace so I took the time to fix that right away.