DRONES: FLYING, FOLLOWING AND DOING IT LEGALLY

The Technique

1. There are two broad categories and they are not interchangeable. A standard camera drone hovers on GPS, carries a stabilised gimbal, senses obstacles, holds position in wind and will return home if it loses signal. It gives smooth, controlled, repeatable moves and it is the right tool for establishing shots, reveals, orbits, top downs and gentle follows. An FPV drone is flown manually through goggles, has no position hold worth relying on, no obstacle sensing and no safety net, and in exchange it goes where nothing else goes and moves in ways nothing else moves. Most trip films are mostly standard drone work with a small amount of FPV as punctuation.
2. Following a moving rider is harder than it looks because the aircraft has a top speed and the rider has gravity. Automatic subject tracking works on open ground with a clearly separated subject and fails on white snow, in trees, in dust and whenever the subject is small in frame, so learn to fly the follow manually. The reliable version is to fly at a constant height and speed on a smooth line while the rider crosses through your frame, rather than trying to glue the aircraft to them. Stay on the outside of turns so your path is longer and smoother than theirs. Sit slightly behind and above and let them run away from you into the frame, which reads as speed, rather than sitting ahead and reversing, which is harder and rarely worth the risk.
3. The classic moves each have a rule. An orbit needs a subject that stays roughly in one place and a radius you hold constant, so it is for stopped riders, machines and camps, not for a rider on the move. A reveal works by hiding the subject behind something and then moving to expose it, so fly low behind a ridge, a tree line or a rock band and rise or push through until the scene opens. A pull back starts tight on the rider and retreats to show how small they are in the terrain, which is the single most efficient way to communicate scale. A top down flattens the world and is useful for showing lines, tracks and geography, not for making anything look steep. Keep every move slow and let it run long, because a good drone move needs several seconds to breathe.
4. Launch and landing are where most drone damage happens. In deep snow, there is nothing flat and the aircraft sinks, so hand launch and hand catch, taking care that the drone is above your open palm and you grip from underneath. Snow and sand thrown up by prop wash goes into motors, gimbals and lenses, so use a landing pad or a pack on the ground where you can. Sand is the worst of all because it finds gimbal bearings and never comes out, and salt spray is corrosive on top of that. Water is unrecoverable, so treat any flight low over water as a flight you might lose. Launching from a moving platform such as a boat or a sled confuses the compass and the home point, so if you must, know that return to home is now aimed at a place that no longer exists.
5. Wind and cold both eat your flight time, and they combine badly. Cold batteries deliver less, sag under load and can drop from a comfortable reading to a critical warning very quickly, so warm them before flight and treat the percentage on a cold day as optimistic. Wind is usually far stronger a hundred metres up than it is where you are standing, and mountains produce rotor and gusts near ridges. The trap is flying downwind, which is easy and fast, then discovering the return leg into the wind takes triple the power. Fly the upwind leg first, keep the aircraft upwind of you where you can, and set your return threshold much higher than you would at sea level in still air.
6. Signal and terrain interact in a way that catches people out. Radio needs line of sight to work properly, so a ridge, a stand of trees, a rock face or even your own body between you and the aircraft cuts range dramatically. Fly the aircraft over a ridge into the next valley and you may lose both video and control. Return to home flies a straight line at a set altitude, and if that altitude is below the terrain between you and the aircraft, the automatic return will fly it into a mountain, so set return height with the terrain in mind every single time you move location. Know what your aircraft does on signal loss and never rely on it as a plan.
7. People on the ground are the reason drone rules exist. Spinning props at close range cause serious cuts, and a falling aircraft is a hard object arriving at speed. Never fly over people, never fly over a group, and never fly between a rider and their fall line. Keep meaningful distance from the subject you are filming and increase it as speed increases. Brief the rider before the flight so they know where the aircraft will be and are not surprised by it. Watch for people entering the scene from outside your frame, which is the most common cause of a flight going from legal to illegal in seconds, and which is why a spotter is worth having even when you are not required to have one.
8. The legal picture is real and it differs by country, so treat this as a framework rather than a rulebook. Most jurisdictions distinguish between recreational and commercial or paid flying, and paid work generally requires a licence or certification and often registration of the aircraft. Common principles include keeping the aircraft in visual line of sight, staying below a maximum altitude, keeping clear of controlled and restricted airspace around aerodromes and helicopter operations, keeping set distances from people and populous areas, and not flying at night or in cloud without approval. On top of aviation law, land managers have their own rules: national parks, state forests, ski resorts and private land frequently ban drone flight entirely regardless of what the aviation regulator allows, and heli ski operations run aircraft in the same airspace you want to use. Privacy law can apply separately. In Australia the aviation authority is CASA, and wherever you are flying the only acceptable approach is to check the current rules of that country and that land manager before the trip, not on the morning of the flight.
9. Run the same pre flight routine every time so it becomes muscle memory. Firmware and app updated before you leave home, not in a car park with no signal. Props inspected for chips and seated correctly. Compass and IMU calibrated if you have travelled a long distance. Card in, formatted, with space. Home point confirmed and return to home height set above the surrounding terrain. Battery plan for how many flights you actually have. Airspace and land manager checked. Rider briefed. And an abort criterion decided in advance: the wind speed, the battery percentage or the visibility at which you land immediately, chosen while you are calm rather than while the aircraft is drifting away.

Common Mistakes

Flying downwind first because it feels fast. Fix: fly the upwind leg first and keep the return into wind budgeted at triple the power.

• Trusting automatic subject tracking on snow or in trees. Fix: fly the follow manually with a constant smooth line and let the rider move through frame.
• Leaving return to home height at the default in mountainous terrain. Fix: set it above the highest terrain between you and the aircraft, at every new location.
• Landing in loose snow or sand. Fix: hand catch, or use a pad, and keep prop wash away from powder and grit.
• Assuming that legal airspace means you are allowed to fly. Fix: check the land manager as well, since parks and resorts often ban flight outright.

The Drill

In an open legal area with no people, fly the same three moves on a stationary object ten times each: a slow orbit at constant radius, a rise and reveal from behind an obstacle, and a pull back from tight to wide. Time each move and keep every one between six and twelve seconds. You pass when ten consecutive orbits hold the subject within the same third of the frame throughout, and when your reveals contain no visible correction or stutter.

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