Flying a drone can be a lot of fun, but there are also some important things to know beforehand. Here’s an introduction to the world of drones. It provides information on how they work, what they do, the different kinds you can buy and where you can fly them. Finally there is an overview of some safety tips for using drones responsibly.
A ‘drone’ is a type of small flying machine. There are many different kinds of drones. Some drones are used for work by the military or in other important jobs, like checking power lines for problems. Nowadays there are also drones which you can buy to fly around in your backyard or neighbourhood, and some of these can be quite inexpensive – they cost less than $100 (sometimes a lot less). Check out this article on finding the best drone for under 150.
To fly a drone, you will need to understand what it is made of. A drone consists of 3 main parts: the body, the rotors (or propellers) and the electronics. We will look at all these in detail now:
The body of a drone is shaped like a round bowl. It has one or more motors attached to the bottom which spin the rotors inside it. In this way, the rotors can move up and down to give lift for the body to move around.
The rotors or propellers are what makes a drone fly. They are the spinning blades on the bottom of the body. They give lift by spinning around really fast – in fact, they spin at thousands of rpms (rotations-per-minute).
The electronic components include things like the flight controller, which is a computer that helps run things like forward/backward movement and turning left/right. The radio receiver receives signals from a transmitter. The battery is a power source for the drone and helps it to fly.
The next step is to get your drone airborne and flying around. This requires the following steps:
Starting up – Make sure that your drone is fully charged and that you have check wind speeds and that the area is safe to fly in. You can download the DJI app and wind speed apps to help with this.
Take-off (or liftoff) involves the following steps:
To keep your drone in the air, you need to give it power. This is done by giving it some throttle. The throttle controls how fast the motors spin – more throttle means faster rotations. Most drones have a button on their remote control that you press to give power (usually labelled ‘throttle’ or ‘power’).
You will have realized that there are two control sticks on your remote control – joysticks – one for each hand. You can move the drone around using these. Drones are usually flown using two sticks, but there are some that fly with one stick.
Flying the Drone:
To make the drone do something useful (like move forward or take a picture) you will need to decide what set of commands to give it. This is done by putting these commands into your flight controller’s ‘flight controller’ program. The program will tell your drone what to do using the information from the radio signals that it receives from your transmitter.
A safety tip – keep your fingers away from spinning propellers! You can get propeller guards for flying indoors.