I often fly in 15-25 mph winds and get decent videos and stills. The main thing is to reserve enough battery to get home safely. If your bird goes into auto RTH and has to fight a headwind to get home, cancel RTH ASAP and get to a lower altiitude where the wind speed is lower. Of course the same applies any time you have to fight a headwind. Go lower if you can. And of course switching to sport mode lets the drone go much faster than P mode,
Max sustained wind velocity you'll fly in?
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GadgetGuy
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Extremely high winds drastically reduce the distance you can travel into the wind on a full battery, which also reduces flight time. Fly upwind on your outleg with OA on to determine the headwind, as the 30mph max with full throttle will be reduced linearly by the speed of the headwind. Return downwind and hope the wind doesn't change directions, and switch to ATTI to take advantage of the tail wind, as needed.
GadgetGuy
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Obstacle Avoidance, which limits speed to 30mph maximum at full throttle. If your maximum speed shows 20mph, you are running into a 10mph headwind.
I often fly near or over lakes. My rule, a conservative one, is not to fly when I see white caps. That happens between 12-15 mph. I am usually doing some form of photography and see no need push any limit. I want to focus on (or worry about) the images I capture not the wind.
Maximum wind velocity is very much related to the purpose of the flight. I have two different thresholds before I will reschedule a particular type of flight. Keep in mind, you are going to have to make some compromises in what you can shoot and how you need to pilot, in any sustained wind over 15 mph. The judgement that needs to be made by the pilot is can you accomplish the goals of your flight safely, based on weather conditions and individual flight experience and ability. If you know both your limits and those of the aircraft, you can do quite a lot in marginal conditions. You will eat up a lot batteries.
For general video and stills, I have been able to capture usable footage in sustained winds of 25mph gusting to 30 mph. The compromise is you need to fly with the wind and shoot either to the side or facing backward, relative to the direction of the wind. Like looking over your shoulder. The trick is going back upwind. Even in flat West Texas scrub land, if you drop your altitude down to 10'-15' AGL, the ground effect will allow you to fly back upwind at a good 10-15mph, which would be impossible at altitude. The lower you can safely drop your altitude to fly upwind, the less wind resistance you will get. ALWAYS, take off from downwind and fly upwind to start shooting. Doing that ensures your RTH can be safely executed should something go wrong.
For mapping and volumetric flights, winds of 17mph sustained and above, is where I will reschedule a flight. I have arrived on-site and had 20mph winds and been able to get good results, but it is a lot more work. I have found that higher gusts at mapping altitude will sometimes push the drone offline and affect image overlaps. If you have to fly in high winds, you need to make sure the legs of your flight plan are parallel to the wind. The drone will not be able to fly an upwind leg and a downwind leg; you need to fly across the wind. The second trick is to take off from the UPWIND side of the area to be mapped. Doing that will ensure that every turn your drone makes will be downwind to get to the next leg. I have done this and then walked along with the drone as it flew. I would land when the battery became low, and then take off again from that same point. This eliminated an upwind RTH. I have only done this when an area was completely clear of people and equipment and the drone could land anywhere. In the event of loss of communication and an auto-RTH activation, the drone would never make it back against the wind to the RTH point and would auto-land when critical battery was reached. You dont want a drone to auto-land on top of a clients process equipment- it wouldnt be very good for your drone either. I would much rather walk a half mile to grab my blinking drone from the middle of an empty field than to have it crash into a clients stockpiles. If it is not safe to land anywhere on your site, then your home point needs to be downwind. I always plan on the worst case scenario- don't assume you will always have positive control of the drone in the event of a failure or emergency. It also helps to increase the maximum flight speed of your flight plan to make sure the aircraft has enough power to fly in the windy conditions. Keep in mind, a crash on a mining site will likely be a reportable incident to both to MSHA and the FAA.
Sometimes when traveling, it isnt possible to reschedule flights for another time. You either try to make it work or you have to cancel the flight. Best tip I have is to not overfly your ability. There is nothing wrong with telling a client that conditions are not good enough for a safe flight. I have had to reschedule a ton of flights.
Hope this helps someone. Love to hear any tips from anyone else.
For general video and stills, I have been able to capture usable footage in sustained winds of 25mph gusting to 30 mph. The compromise is you need to fly with the wind and shoot either to the side or facing backward, relative to the direction of the wind. Like looking over your shoulder. The trick is going back upwind. Even in flat West Texas scrub land, if you drop your altitude down to 10'-15' AGL, the ground effect will allow you to fly back upwind at a good 10-15mph, which would be impossible at altitude. The lower you can safely drop your altitude to fly upwind, the less wind resistance you will get. ALWAYS, take off from downwind and fly upwind to start shooting. Doing that ensures your RTH can be safely executed should something go wrong.
For mapping and volumetric flights, winds of 17mph sustained and above, is where I will reschedule a flight. I have arrived on-site and had 20mph winds and been able to get good results, but it is a lot more work. I have found that higher gusts at mapping altitude will sometimes push the drone offline and affect image overlaps. If you have to fly in high winds, you need to make sure the legs of your flight plan are parallel to the wind. The drone will not be able to fly an upwind leg and a downwind leg; you need to fly across the wind. The second trick is to take off from the UPWIND side of the area to be mapped. Doing that will ensure that every turn your drone makes will be downwind to get to the next leg. I have done this and then walked along with the drone as it flew. I would land when the battery became low, and then take off again from that same point. This eliminated an upwind RTH. I have only done this when an area was completely clear of people and equipment and the drone could land anywhere. In the event of loss of communication and an auto-RTH activation, the drone would never make it back against the wind to the RTH point and would auto-land when critical battery was reached. You dont want a drone to auto-land on top of a clients process equipment- it wouldnt be very good for your drone either. I would much rather walk a half mile to grab my blinking drone from the middle of an empty field than to have it crash into a clients stockpiles. If it is not safe to land anywhere on your site, then your home point needs to be downwind. I always plan on the worst case scenario- don't assume you will always have positive control of the drone in the event of a failure or emergency. It also helps to increase the maximum flight speed of your flight plan to make sure the aircraft has enough power to fly in the windy conditions. Keep in mind, a crash on a mining site will likely be a reportable incident to both to MSHA and the FAA.
Sometimes when traveling, it isnt possible to reschedule flights for another time. You either try to make it work or you have to cancel the flight. Best tip I have is to not overfly your ability. There is nothing wrong with telling a client that conditions are not good enough for a safe flight. I have had to reschedule a ton of flights.
Hope this helps someone. Love to hear any tips from anyone else.
Having less than 15 full flights to my name and being much less experienced than most here, it's one thing I have near or at the top of me preflight checklist (there's apps for these things now). Generally, I'll venture out in 10-12 mph winds. 15 is probably my max until i become more experienced handling the P4P....having said that, I also don't fly long distances from what I intend on shooting.
RoOSTA
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20 mph sustained, gusts to 30 mph max. That's what we wrote into our flight ops manual.
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I live in Florida and then winds change by the minute. So I just keep an eye out for wind advisories but I also dont like to fly in anything gusting at 12 or higher. sometimes even 10.
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