As a Hawaii-based commercial drone pilot, I am regularly asked to fly drones in relatively strong winds. Here on Maui we typically have winds in the 20 knot range with gusts of 30 and sometimes 40. Whenever I am assigned an airborne media capture task, I have to do an assessment and determine if It is safe enough to fly without losing a drone, flying out of control, or hurting someone. Obviously, a “no-fly” call is not ideal and usually spells immediate financial loss in the fast-paced world of commercial drone services. Many times this strong wind occurs over the water (shark-infested salt water to be exact!), Increasing the risk and complexity of the operation. Also, as you may know, losing a drone in the great blue sea negates your ability to get a replacement through insurance like DJI Care Refresh, unless you can get the drone back to ship back to DJI. The good news is that you will generally not encounter obstacles on the water and image transmission is rarely interrupted due to interference from objects. The challenge is that if you have a problem, you must first traverse a considerable distance over no-man’s-land before you have a chance to retrieve your drone.

To prepare for a scheduled drone shoot, say kitesurfing, for example, I do various things. First I check if the location I am going to fly to is a “green zone”. This means you are not in an FAA no-fly zone, nor within 5 miles of an airport, and you have a legal launch and land area within visual distance of the drone’s area of ​​operations. Next, I take care of the insurance, permits, and FAA clearances needed to get the job done. Once the location is approved, I check the local weather, do a site survey before filming, and write a plan for filming, as well as an emergency plan based on the prevailing wind direction and coastal topography. Finally, I reserve my assistant for filming, as the law requires a visual observer and is highly recommended when the limits of a drone’s flight capabilities are exceeded.

What I am looking for when I check the weather is if there is going to be sun (drone shots need sun) and how strong the wind will be. Also, the gust factor of the wind is a big problem. A lot of variability in the wind really degrades the flying experience and can cause the drone to roll and sway a lot more than the constant wind. Depending on the wind speed, I determine if my drone can handle the upper limits of the wind prediction. Direction is also key. Offshore winds pose a much greater risk than land winds when flying over water for obvious reasons. And finally I consider the conditions when determining not only if I can fly, but also how close, what the subject is doing, what other obstacles are there, what is the range of my drone, and what is a safe altitude. With kitesurfing, you have a fast-moving kite at the end of 30-meter lines, so any shot within 100 feet must take this action and associated risk into account.

On the day of filming, you want to assess the actual wind and weather conditions (don’t get caught in the rain) and make the final determination to fly or not to fly. I like to do this before clients or other aspects of the production show up so that I can make the decision without biased influences. If it’s a “running” situation, I fly my drone in normal GPS mode up to about 10 feet and see if it can stay in place. If it is very windy in your launch area, do not launch from the ground or your drone may tip over before taking off. If you can hover in place without losing ground, try flying up to your maximum shooting altitude and test the wind speed there. If the wind starts to overtake your drone and it drifts away, lower it to a lower altitude and try to retrieve it. If it’s too windy to get your drone back in GPS mode, you can try switching to “sport mode” (DJI Mavic Pro and Phantom 4 series) and flying it back. Make sure you are familiar with shifting and flying in sport mode before the flight. While your drone is zooming out, this is not a good time to check out the settings menu for the first time. If sport mode is not an option and there are obstacles around you, you can use them as a windbreaker. If you are flying the drone towards you at full speed and the wind is still dominating it, you can dive behind buildings, trees, barriers, and even mountains to enter a more stable environment. Although obstacles can increase wind variability, I have found a combination of lowering the altitude and getting behind things that slow the wind can get you out of most situations and at least allow you to lower the drone to the ground and not into the water. If the wind blows away from shore and offshore, you have few options to recover, and the wind can be as strong at 10 feet from the water as at 100 feet. Strong and (typically) gusty offshore winds pose the greatest risk of losing your drone over the water and should be approached with an additional level of consideration.

In conclusion, remember to be safe, do not regret it. Do not push your drone into an unrecoverable situation and have several backup plans in mind for possible emergencies. Get to know your equipment well before flying in the wind or over the water, including time and distance limits, as well as the effects of wind on relative speed versus surface speed. For example, if your drone is flying at a maximum speed of 25 Mph and has gusts of 15 to 20 Mph, it can fly downwind at a surface speed of 45 Mph, but it may only be able to go upwind at 5 Mph. If your drone flew a mile downwind, make sure you have enough battery to go back upwind at 5 MPH, which by my calculations would take about 12 minutes. In addition, the “sport mode” increases the speed but reduces the battery life. And finally, try to avoid flying your drone empty. Flight performance can be lower than expected when the battery is running low and definitely increases the stress level when you are in the single digits and have not yet returned to shore.