Professional Drone Pilot in Michigan Lists 5 Things You Should Know Before Buying a Drone
Hey there and welcome to another episode of Tips & Tech Talk. I am your host Ron, a professional drone pilot in Michigan and today we’re going to talk about 5 things you need to know before you buy a drone. You know last Thursday DJI released their new Mavic 2. In fact, they released two versions of the Mavic 2. They have released a Mavic 2 Pro, and they have released the Mavic 2 Zoom. You get two different kinds of cameras depending on what your needs are. If you’re a photographer you’re probably going to go with the Pro. If you’re a film maker you might consider going with the Zoom.
#1 – Determine What Kind of Drone You Need
Nevertheless, it poses the question, what kind of drone do you need? What’s your budget? What kind of specs do you need? Do you need it to shoot in 4K or 1080? Will that do the trick? Before you buy a drone make sure you understand what you need in a drone so you don’t overspend and you don’t waste your money. If you’re looking for something that is more recreational, you might want to go with the Spark. This is a beautiful drone for under $500. The quality of video is very, very good, but if you’re doing something more professional you’re going to want to go with something like the Phantom 4 Pro with a one inch sensor and it’s going to give you very good quality video,or photographs if that’s what you’re looking for. But again, the new Mavic 2 models you might want to look at and there’s other makes and models from other companies as well that you might want to consider. Nevertheless, the first thing you need to understand is what do you need your drone to do and then buy your drone accordingly.
#2 – Know What You Can and Can’t do with Your Drone
Follow the rules. Understand that you cannot fly your drone higher than 400 feet. Understand that you can’t fly your drone near airports. Understand that there’s rules and regulations that you have to abide by when you buy one of these drones and you put it up in the air. Don’t forget there’s helicopters and airplanes up there that you have to share the airspace with, and this is not a toy. It always cracks me up when people buy this for their kid. This is not a toy. When you’re talking about putting something in the air, that’s no laughing matter. You have to have responsibility. So number 2, know what you can and can’t do with your drone. Know the law, know the legalities of what you can do. And again, be responsible with it.
#3 – Understand Misconceptions and Propaganda About Drones
There’s a lot of people who are kind of weirded out by the drones. You have to respect and understand that if you get into a situation the best thing to do is to bring the drone down, walk away and go find someplace else that you can fly your drone. That’s not the only place you can fly your drone. Legally you’re not doing anything wrong, but you want to avoid conflict because there’s a lot of ignorance out there and you don’t want to get into a confrontation when you have this quad or your drone in the air. So make sure that you understand that from time to time you might be faced with a situation like that.
#4 Obtain FAA License if You are Using Your Drone for Business
If you are going to use your drone or your quad for business purposes, that includes real estate photographs, you must be licensed, Part 107 FAA licensed as a UA pilot. So if you’re starting your business and you want to take video or photographs as a business, or you want to hire someone to take photographs or video for you, in the pursuance of business whoever’s flying that quad that gets that content must be licensed, must be UA, part 107 FAA certified. In fact, I have to go get certified here in a couple weeks in September, because you have to do it every two years and my two years is up at the end of September. So I will be going and retaking my FAA part 107 UA pilot license test so that I can continue to use my quad for business purposes.
#5 – Register Your Drone with the FAA
Regardless of whether you get a part 107 UA license or you’re just going to use it for hobby reasons, if you buy a drone you do have to register it with the FAA. There is a $5 charge, but once you pay that $5 you will be issued a serial number and you must put that serial number somewhere on your quad so it’s visible. So, regardless of whether you get your license to fly legally for businesses, or if you just want to use it for hobby purposes, it doesn’t matter. If you own a drone you have to register it with the FAA. So understand that legally you are required to do that.
I hope you liked this video. More importantly, I hope you learned something. If you did, please hit that like icon, share it with all your friends. Also, go see more of my videos on my YouTube channel. Click that bell notification button. You’ll be notified when I make future videos, and of course, you can always see more of my work at my website at ronrobinsonstudios.com. Tune in again next Tuesday, we’ll have another episode of Tips & Tech Talk. Thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time.
In the meantime, I’m going to go flying over this. I think they’re going to make a dog park here in Utica. So, I’m going to go take some more drone footage of the area that they’re going to put a dog park. I think. Is it going to be a dog park?
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