Getting better with your drone involves more than basic flying skills—small details matter. Adjusting settings, planning for safety, and preparing for the unexpected can significantly improve your results.
Coming to you from Billy Kyle, this practical video covers simple but critical tips to enhance your drone operations, whether you're flying for personal enjoyment or professional work. Kyle starts with the importance of adjusting gain and expo settings, something you might overlook. Changing these parameters directly affects how smoothly or responsively your drone flies. Too often, pilots accept the factory defaults, which may cause jerky movements or overly sluggish controls. Kyle stresses how customizing these settings lets you tailor the drone's behavior, making your footage noticeably more professional.
Another valuable tip Kyle shares focuses on an overlooked safety detail: setting your drone's signal-lost action correctly before each flight. This is a simple step that's easy to forget until it causes trouble. Kyle vividly illustrates the importance of this by recounting a personal experience where he mistakenly left the drone set to land after indoor use. Instead of returning to home when connection dropped, his drone landed itself in a distant parking lot. A minor oversight like this can lead to stress—or worse—losing expensive equipment. Choosing between hover, descend, or return-to-home isn't just about convenience; it's about protecting your investment.
Kyle’s advice about using the auto exposure bracketing function for drone photography is especially useful. With so many things to manage in flight—battery life, safety checks, framing—simplifying your camera settings makes sense. By taking multiple images at different exposures automatically, you eliminate the guesswork of manual exposure adjustments mid-flight. Kyle points out how difficult it can be to accurately assess exposure through a bright controller screen outdoors. Bracketing ensures you’ll always have properly exposed shots waiting on your computer afterward, saving you time and frustration during editing.
He also suggests practical techniques for managing cold-weather drone flights. Flying from your car might seem unconventional, but it keeps you warm, gives clear visibility of your screen, and provides easy power access. If that’s not possible, Kyle recommends gloves with removable fingertips—essential for maintaining precise control without sacrificing comfort. He even covers portable battery options to ensure you never run short on power, especially critical during extended shoots or travel scenarios.
Kyle wraps things up by emphasizing the importance of carrying extra propellers. Many pilots skip this, assuming they won’t need spares—until one breaks far from home, grounding the drone unnecessarily. It’s a cheap and simple preparation step that makes a huge difference.
There’s plenty more in the video, including framing techniques and how Vision Assist significantly improves flight safety and maneuverability. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Kyle.
