Traveling With Your Drone

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What is the Best Way to Transport Your Drone and all of its Accessories?

The logistics of traveling with your drone on a vacation or business trip are simplified with a little preparation. I’ll outline battery bags, backpacks, and carrying cases in this article.  First, let’s cover the FAA’s position on those Lithium-Polymer (Li-Po) batteries:

Air Travel

FAA requirements (49 CFR 175.10(a)(18)) state that:

  • Each battery must have short circuit protection.
  • Spare batteries must be carried in the cabin (not checked).
  • For less than 100 Watt-Hours (W-Hr) per battery, there is no limit on the number for personal use. (With permission from the carrier, up to 2 batteries can be carried with up to 160 W-Hrs per battery.)

Notes:

  1. Always discharge your batteries to 10-15%.
  2. The W-Hr rating is typically stamped on the battery.  For older batteries, the FAA calculates the W-Hr rating by multiplying the battery’s voltage by its Amp-Hr rating.
  3. Some example batteries: Phantom 3 batteries are rated at 68 W-Hrs and Phantom 4 batteries are rated at 81 W-Hrs.

Battery bags

I recommend a Li-Po fire-resistant carrying bag, such as those made by Lipo Guard.  Not only a wise investment for traveling, it also provides a safe enclosure for charging.

How to select a backpack or carrying case:

Start with your drone’s dimensions, including all accessories that you plan to pack.  That will be your minimum requirement.  Your maximum requirement is the size restriction for your commercial carrier – typically an airline.  The restrictions I’ve come across:

  • Personal item dimensions:  maximum of 18x14x8 in  (typical for under the seat stowage). UPDATE – United Airlines’ stricter dimensions just went into effect: 17x10x9 in. Always check!
  • Carry-on bag dimensions:  maximum of 45 in L+W+H  (I’ve also seen 22x14x9).
  • Your carrier may charge a fee for a carry-on bag, but no one charges for personal items.

If you’re so inclined, then go with a hard case and check it through to your destination.  The advantage of a hard case is that everything is well-protected and much more accessible.  Some hard cases don’t even require you to remove the propellers; although I always do.  Checked bag max dimensions are typically 62 in L+W+H.  Checked bag fees may apply.

Once you’ve listed your requirements, it will be much easier to select a case that meets your needs and suits your style.  Personally, I prefer a hard case for travel by car and a compact (personal item size) backpack for travel by air.

Fly Safe!

Balanced Propellers Will Reduce Vibration in your Aerial Drone

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Use an instrument like this to ensure your drone has balanced propellers

Balance Your Propellers For The Smoothest Possible Flying Experience

Balanced propellers will reduce the vibrations that transfer to your flying camera as these small movements can result in blurred stills and shaky video.

How Can I Improve the Quality of My Drone’s Photography?

Drone manufacturers have fairly good quality control for their airframes but like any airborne device their smoothness depends on proper balancing of the rotating components. In our case, that would be the propellers. We’ll assume for the moment that the motors and propellers are running true and aerodynamically balanced. More on that below.

First, Why Should the Propellers be Balanced?

Well, why do drivers balance the tires on their cars? Experienced drivers know that unbalanced tires lead to vehicle vibrations when their speed picks up. The same holds true for drone propellers. When one part of the propeller is heavier, the spinning mass delta will cause vibration that increases with speed.

The Solution is Propeller Balancing

To balance the propellers, you’ll need to purchase a balancing kit; example in the picture above. It works by attaching a rod to the propeller and the pair is then balanced on a very low friction support. Any propeller imbalance will cause the propeller to roll until the heaviest part of it hangs below. Balance is achieved by adding or removing material until the propeller is stable.

Here’s the How To:

Place the propeller so it’s horizontal and watch for one side or the other to dip. Then sand/scrape off a small amount of material from the heavier blade such as on the bottom side near the tip. (Or add a little scotch tape to the lighter blade.) Horizontal balancing will take out most of the vibration.

Vertical balancing is next. The concept here is that whatever imbalance that remains is in the hub. Place the propeller so it’s vertical and look for motion. Balance is again achieved by adding or removing material until the propeller is stable, but this time it’s at the hub. If needed, sand/scrape material from the heavy side of the hub, between the propeller blades. This step may take longer because more material typically needs to be removed.

Your propeller is properly balanced when it remains stationary on the support no matter which position the blades are placed.

How Do I Ensure the Propellers are Running True?

Great question and easily answered! Start your drone on an elevated surface, such as a table, but don’t take off. Then observe the blade tips, looking for spread. There will be little to no spread if the blades are running true, which means they’re aerodynamically balanced.

If there’s spread between the tips, then the blades have different amounts of lift or the motor/shaft are bent. This means that your propeller is aerodynamically unbalanced, causing vibration. Typically, the culprit will be just one of the propellers so you can rule out a bent motor by swapping the propellers (e.g. exchanging one black hub propeller with the other). If whatever spread you saw on the one side does the same thing on the other, then the propeller is bad.

Balanced propellers will lead to the smoothest possible photography with your drone. Whatever residual vibration that appears in your video can be taken out with post-processing software.

Fly Safe!

Drone Flight Profiles

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This is a recent video of pre-programmed drone flight profiles that showcases a residence for real estate marketing. These are just example profiles and we are by no means limited to what you see here. The sky’s the limit when it comes to aerial drone photography.

Notice the production quality of the videos. The smooth flight paths and camera tilting are all controlled by pre-programmed flight profiles. We do this with special after-market drone flight control software along with advanced video processing, which together reduce the residual shake and vibration. The results are breathtaking videos, ideally suited for professional publication.

The video speeds were adjusted to keep this film clip less than 90 seconds. For your video, you have as much say as you want in how the video will be edited, including brightness, contrast, color saturation, playback speeds for each segment, start points, end points, introduction, credits, logos, etc.

When You Work With Us

We’ll provide you with a number of our “standard” drone flight profiles, review how you want your shots to be captured, and program our drone software prior to arrival on site. We are by no means limited to these flight profiles; the possibilities are almost endless. All this can easily be coordinated by phone or e-mail. When you use our drone services, you have as much say in the process as you like.

Scene Composition and Grid Lines

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Your camera's grid lines will improve your pictures

Use Your Drone’s Grid Lines Option

Today we’ll touch on scene composition and grid lines. Digital cameras often have a feature that adds grid lines to the viewfinder. The DJI Go application also has this feature, which is turned on within its camera settings menu on your mobile device. Grid lines are a useful tool – they appear on your mobile display but they won’t appear on the actual photos and videos that you take.

Grid lines will help you compose your photos and videos by reminding you to check the horizon and land features so they square up in the frame. It can be a real letdown to take the perfect shot and then find it slanted by a few degrees.

Be Certain Your Drone’s Horizon View is Level on Your Display

If you’ve added a filter to the camera lens, you may find the added weight causes the horizon to tilt a little to the left or right. This is easily fixed by doing a gimbal calibration. Just make sure the aircraft is on a level surface so the horizon will be level in your display.

Tip for Composing Your Subject

Formal photographs are often taken with the subject centered, but for most other photography the image is more interesting if the subject is placed off-center. We recommend placing the subject approximately 1/3 from the edge of the frame and facing towards the center.

Grid Lines Have Many Other Uses

Another useful application for grid lines is for setting up pre-programmed function runs, such as way points. The menu blocks part of the camera view, but with grid lines you can see the center point of the camera’s view.

Try grid lines the next time you’re out flying your drone.

Fly Safe!

Exposure Compensation for Photos and Videos

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Too dark?  Too light? Color is off? Whether your drone is using automatic or manual exposure, you’ll almost always have to use post-processing to get the right brightness, contrast, and color saturation. Setting EV to zero and using the histogram is great, but backlighting from the sun and bright horizons will turn the best landscape photos and videos into silhouettes.

Example of an under-exposed photo taken by an aerial drone

Before

Example of adjusting a photo's brightness, contrast, and color saturation

After

Adjust Exposure With Photo/Video Editing Software

No worries though; most of your under- or over-exposed photos can be corrected in post-processing. There are a number of commercial software applications on the market that will assist you with this. Choose one and get familiar with exposure compensation. The results will be well worth the effort.

A simple but effective application known as Microsoft Picture Manager comes bundled with their Office Suite. Even for extreme cases of under/over exposure, adjustment will enable you to salvage images you thought were destined for the recycle bin. I like Picture Manager and Windows 10’s Movie Maker because they’re intuitive, quick and efficient.

For our commercial editing, we like Adobe’s Photoshop Elements for stills and Corel’s VideoStudio X10 for videos, but the same principles can be put to work with the more basic (but effective) Microsoft products.

Aerial Drone Camera Settings

Drone pilots, you already know that the best picture is the one that won’t take much post-processing. I’ve found that you can get great results letting the drone’s camera take stills using Automatic Exposure (AE) and tapping the screen where you want the exposure to be measured. The only lens filter that you should use is an ultra-violet haze (uv haze).

For videos that pop, the golden rule is to film with a shutter speed of at least double the frame rate. So, if you’re recording video at 30 frames per second, your shutter speed should be 1/60th of a second, or faster. ISO should also be low, in the range of 100 to 200. Look for an EV value near zero.

You can achieve the above video settings automatically or manually, but for drone cameras with a fixed F/stop you’ll need to use neutral density (ND) filters. Choose a filter, say ND4 or ND8, depending on how bright it is. I prefer AE for video as well, and use the ND filter that gets my drone’s camera closest to the above settings.

It’s a good day when your stills and videos come out perfect. The rest of the time (read most of the time) count on using photo and video editing software to get optimal results.

Fly Safe!