How should I start with getting a drone?

There’s a lot of old threads here, I’ve gone through some, but my questions are:

  1. Should I first buy a cheap practice drone with no camera to learn how to fly before forking out for a high-quality drone for work?
  2. What’s an easy video editing program so that what I shoot I can make look professional easily.
  3. What’s a good drone, once I’ve leaned the basics of drone flying?

DJI Phantom 3 Professional. Has everything you need.

I wouldn’t waste money on a “practice” drone. Regardless, you will have to train / practice with the final product you use.

Get Some…:wink:
http://successfulstudent.org/15-best-drone-training-colleges/

The typhoon ,one model coming out soon with anti crash sensors . also you can get a flight simulator for 30 bucks to practice flying , you use your computer and drone control
. I had the Phantom for about a year i gave it away . Love the typhoon slow mode is great for roof or just video Call me Kenton if you want

Looks like Mexico’s drone regulations are not a stringent as they are in the United States. Just buy a decent drone and practice away from airports, buildings and crowds.

Why not use a spectoscope camera pole?

You know it’s not going to crash or fly off on its own or violate any regulations.

Start with a 50 dollar drone. Learn to go up down left and right. Most of them come with cheap cameras. And there lost if fun I like the syma brand. Then move up to the big boys. I would recommend the dji phantom or yuneec typhoon. With the price drops going on right now you can get a great set up for like 30 percent of normsl price. Even tho the bigger ones are easier to fly watching a 1000 dollar bird crash is painful. I also have a parrot bebop. Its a great drone but with the price war going on between dji and yuneec the phantoms a steel.

Bought a $50 drone and wasted my money. Crashed every time I flew it. Too hard as you must do everything.
Got the Phantom 3 (1600) and really like it. Takes off and lands automatically, returns to home auto if it gets lost or loses comm. And if you panic, panic vertically, jump in altitude and then let go. It will hover there till you settle down or the battery dies. Used it yesterday on a high and steep roof. Flew over, took a dozen shots then used my tablet to zoom in each section to look for problems. Client and I were both blown away by the quality of the pictures on zoom. From 20 feet above the roof I could zoom in and see individual granules on the shingles. But do practice in an open area for several hours to get the feel cause you have to fly it, look at the pictures you want to take, then use the camera. Naysayers here but I like it. And having just turned 65, don't need to fall off a steep roof at this point in my life. If I die, it makes the report really late. Just my .03 worth. (inflation and experience cost more)

As some have stated the DJI Phantom 3 Professional is out of the box ready and since the software does the work your learning curve is about ten minutes. Read some of the You-tube dos and dont’s but overall it works. I have had DJI products for almost three years. As far a video editing i only use stills so i cannot speak to the hows and how nots…
Also, buy the prop protectors and spare battery and spare propellers.

I’ve got the Phantom 2 vision plus.

I practiced for one hour with a friends drone and decided to try it solo with my own drone the next day.

It’s very easy to fly and control. As already stated, if you run into any issues whatsoever, there is a FAIL-SAFE function that will tell the drone to return to the take-off location immediately.

As Jeff said, get the extra stuff. It is well worth it and not expensive. but you need at least 2 batteries and maybe more.

And David is right, the Fail Safe comes home … but set your fail safe altitude high enough to get over any trees and power lines, like 50 meters or more. Then it jumps up to that altitude and then flies home.

But don’t initiate it when you are under a tree. It will jump into the tree, crash and blow your camera and then you spend $600 getting it fixed. Apparently there are manuals for a reason.

That’s why it was $.03 in advice.

One more important piece of information…If your going to use the waypoint option. When setting your waypoints always set your very first waypoint above the takeoff area at least 50 feet straight up so it clears all trees and stationary objects in the area. The drone waypoints should always be set to fly directly straight up over all tree lines and then it will fly to designated waypoints.

I screwed up on my first waypoint flight. I set my first waypoint 75 - 100 feet away, so my drone took off diagonally to the first waypoint direction without going straight up and I had to hit fail safe before I crashed into trees.

A lot of what you pay for in a quality UAV is flight control and automation. There’s not much point in buying a cheap one to practice with when the real UAV will fly entirely different.

If you want to practice, some of the UAV controller software (e.g., DJI) is equipped with a simulator mode so that you can practice. Flying a UAV in GPS mode is entirely different than flying an RC craft. You do not have to maintain the position and attitude of the UAV. If you let go of the controller, it will stop itself (it actually brakes) and holds position and altitude. If a gust of wind comes, it will compensate and hold position. If you walk up and shove it in flight, it will compensate and hold position. You can push a single button and it will return to where it took off from and land itself. They are very forgiving and easy to learn if you are patient. They are also developing and refining many intelligent flight modes http://www.dji.com/product/intelligent-flight-modes?www=v1, which enable you to tell it what to do and not even have to provide control inputs. I had no problem exploiting the POI mode on my first attempt.

I’d say start with the model that you intend to use for the foreseeable future. Some UAVs come with video editing software. For basic stuff MS Movie Maker has good capability and is fairly intuitive and is free for Windoze users.

Phantom 3 users:

What kind of device are you viewing flight on? A phone seems kind of small. iPad mini? Android tablet?

iPhone is small but it works for me Kenton. I was in the market for an iPad but never upgraded.

Hey Dave! How are you?

I use a 9.7 inch Samsung Tab S2 http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/galaxy-tab/SM-T810NZWEXAR. It’s the largest device that will fit in the mount without modification and is thin and light enough to keep it manageable. Outstanding image quality and lag free for flying. Have to remove it from the case though.

Look into the yuneec q500 its actually cheaper then the pro right now. The controller is nicer and has built in screen
You could pick up the package deal two batteries case everything for 999. The pro is great but your going to drop 500 more. Plus yuneecs customer service is way better.

Hello Kenton,

I’m doing fantastic. When are you going to come visit me again?

I picked up an ipad mini 2 w/o phone. $200. bummed because they did not support my android tablet. Now I have to deal with 2 os in my life.