You guys ever do this to practice?

[Huskerfan]

Just a hint.

Put the p3 in non-gps mode and fly around with a small breeze. It's good practice cause the drone will just drift off if you don't work at controlling it. It's also good practice if you ever lose your compass or lose your gps which I've done before. You'll need to be able to control the drone without gps at some point.

 

[BigAl07]

Just a hint.

Put the p3 in non-gps mode and fly around with a small breeze. It's good practice cause the drone will just drift off if you don't work at controlling it. It's also good practice if you ever lose your compass or lose your gps which I've done before. You'll need to be able to control the drone without gps at some point.

You are 100% correct. Every UAS operator should be able to fly their aircraft w/o the training wheels because you never know when they are going to fail.

Few people practice this and even fewer are proficient at it.

 

[Numone]

I had a few mins of "inadvertent" practice the other day. I'd completed a POI and thought I'd switched if back to P, but had put it in A. It was actually all ok, until I noticed I was having to make hard corrections to what I thought were wind gusts to hold the AC in position and it kept coasting-on when throttling back on forward and back passes. Then the penny dropped! I'm definately going to try practicing more A mode flying.

 

[rocketflyer]

Yep - practice on a Syma X5 especially for nose in. That way I don't have to worry about crashing.

 

[Mozzie67]

Had a syma x5 first..spent 12 months flying it before moving to phantoms...
There a great learning curve

 

[Numone]

Yep - practice on a Syma X5 especially for nose in. That way I don't have to worry about crashing.

I have a Syma X8 and have used that as a practice aid too. The only frustration is in an open area with a slight wind, it struggles to hold its own. Good in the garden though. Use one of those tiny Hubsans indoors....

 

[fastsmiles]

It's great practice, but it still makes me nervous every time and I could swear the local trees lean towards it as soon as I throw the switch

 

[whoreable]

Luckily for me my first 100 flights were with my malfuctioned P3A, she looses GPS lock all the time and I end up in Atti mode no vps. So I gained the skills to fly pretty fast and early and now I have another P3A that works like a charm and its almost too easy.

 

[Mike_Flys]

I have a little ARES ETHOS QX130 I fly around for practice. It is a ton of fun and helps keep my skills sharp.

 

[Bluebouye]

I haven't bought a DJI product yet as I'm doing my research on all the pitfalls and idiosyncracies of the things before taking the plunge but I have flown other similar sized quads and very rarely fly GPS enabled. I think the problem with these things is they are so easy to fly when everything is going well and you have GPS but if you can't fly it manually you significant increase your chance of something going horribly wrong when you lose GPS or you're in a situation when you are panicked and have to take control. Things seem to happen very quickly when you're in a panick and this is is not a good time to start learning to really fly your quad.

 

[Vertigo]

I think the problem with these things is they are so easy to fly

Quite right. Reminds me a little of full scale aviation where all the modern airplane automation features designed to prevent pilot error rather often end up causing them because the pilots rely on them too much (or don't understand them fully).

Flying without GPS assistance should be considered an elementary skill. Just like you have to be able to drive your car without all the fancy assists like autopilot / lane assist / adaptive cruise control / auto parking / ..

I still find it strange I cant turn off attitude mode or altitude hold. I guess baro and accelerometers are less prone to problems than the compass or GPS signal, but still, Id prefer to have the option.