If you did your safety checks, you would have known it’s in N mode 
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Fair point, but I put it in C and expected it to stay there!
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Read the manual, its a safety feature
How do you guys see your drones? Granted mine is a mini 4 but I took mine 120m away basically to the end of my field and I could barely see it any further and I’d have no chance. Given that the mini 4K has a range of 10 KM there is no way I’ll be able to get even close to that not that I’d want to!
I do wear glasses but only for close stuff which is a pain as I need them to see my phone when flying but have to look over to them to see the drone.
Do people just not fly that far from themselves? Have much better vision? Maybe lights on the drone (not that it would help during the day) or is it a case of just ignoring the code about keeping the drone in visual range?
I’m curious as even directly above me at max height I’m struggling to see it 
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Many folk including me have wrapped their drones. There are kits available on Amazon. Really helps keep track of your drone at a distance.
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Quite easily 
. But to be honest that is all down to the size of my Typhoon H.
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Oooohhh nice can get a nice orange wrap 
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I use Strobon C-2 strobes (red/white and green/white) to show location and orientation. And I don’t fly ridiculous distances away from myself or so low that the drone is hidden by background clutter like vegetation. [there’s a GADC discount on Flytron’s strobes, too]
Same here & bloody frustrating 
I’m short sighted, so I have to tilt my head forwards to look at the screen over my glasses, then tilt it back to look through my glasses at the drone 
Recently I acquired bifocal glasses that work brilliantly when operating my drone, now I wouldn’t be without them.
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Depends on weather/background flying at 100 ft at dusk (west coast), could clearly see at 500 m (ish), bright sunshine with sun pretty much overhead I’ve lost it at 20 ft (ish).
Furthest I’ve managed while being able to see it and look away then find it again easily was about 450-500m, that was in early spring on a very overcast day. I haven’t tried to measure it on a bright sunny day
I find this a problem as well. I’m short-sighted but pretty good with my glasses on, but I’d say 500’ is my absolute limit in perfect conditions. I have trouble seeing the little fella (MIni 4K) below the skyline and in dull weather against a dull background visibility can be as low as 50’! An orange dayglo wrap would be helpful in this scenario, but 500’ away it’s going to be a dot, and the colour will make no difference!
The CAA require you to have your drone in full visual line of sight at all times (or a spotter standing by you to have it in VLOS if you’re flying FPV), so the 4K’s 10km range is irrelevant; it is illegal in the UK to fly it that far because you can’t possibly see it at that distance.
I have a Flytron Strobon led light which is visible at up to 500’ in daylight, but not in bright sunlight, and can be made out (just) at 600’ at night, but then in an urban environment you have the problem of picking out your light amongst all the other illuminations. I lose my drone a lot, and have adopted the habit of letting it hover wherever it is, the theory being that the situation will at least not get worse, until I’ve found it again.
Finding it is helped by the screen image and the bearing/map panel bottom left of the screen. The map will show you where you are (blue dot) and where the drone is (arrow), and the arrow icon will show the orientation of the drone and it’s movement on the map in real time. Mostly, I keep within 500’, and have set that as a limit for distance, so Mr Drone won’t go beyond that, and he’ll tell me when he’s reached his limit. You can do this for height AGL as well.
One sees videos where the drone is clearly well beyond the pilot’s VLOS, sometimes literally miles beyond. Not my job to police them or complain about them, but I wouldn’t do this myself, I’m an obeyer of rules in general. I don’t doubt that the mini 4K is capable of being flown BVLOS to 10km out, but I reckon the sensible battery range would be more like about 8km and then start to come home for a safety margin.
The reason the CAA don’t allow you to fly BVLOS is that if you cannot see your drone, you will not be able to see other traffic in that airspace or assess how far you are from full-size aircraft that you can see. You can of course maintain visual observation through the screen, but that is a fairly narrow field of view compared to your eyes!
As I’m getting more experienced (been doing this over a year now), losing the drone is not causing me to panic like I did a while ago; I know I’ll locate it again fairly quickly using the information on the screen, and hovering will prevent me getting into trouble in the meantime.
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@nightnicon I’ve moved your post to the thread where this was discussed at length just last week 
Have a read from the top, there are lots of bits of advice in this thread already.
That’s to be expected, the Mini drone is only about 2 inches tall.
Don’t forget, the CAA requirements are to not just maintain visual line of sight at all times but to also be able to see the orientation of your drone at all times.
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@nightnicon I got the Strobon crees and use them in the daytime too. I find it helps. I’m still debating whether to get a reflective sticker as some people do. Read the thread about
The requirement for VLOS is all about ensuring the safety of others during a flight. You have to know where the drone is in relation to other people, property and animals/wildlife, and need to maintain appropriate separation distances.
For most flights you’re only going to be able to safely achieve this by maintaining VLOS with the drone.
However, to my view, if you were using active track in an unpopulated area, with the drone behind you, while you might not have ‘eyes on’ the drone at all times, the very fact that it is likely to be within a few meters of you, within audible distance, and your own awareness of your local surroundings should tell you that no uninvolved people are likely to have their safety compromised.
But if someone else came into the vicinity you’d be needing to keep the active track distance short enough to be able to immediately spot the drone again.
I’ve put a yellow skin on my inspire 2 to help with keeping in view, plus it’s big bird.
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I put a dayglo orange skin on mine and also added a white, and a red flashing strobe to help with orientation. I flew my newly aquired mini 3 pro the other week to do a signal strength test, i went some distance and could still pick up the strobes, although i have to admit that most of the flight had dark hills in the background. Its all about what you feel comfortable with really. I got a little nervous at £#£&# ft and brought her back. The rules are kinda stupid in my opinion, but they are what they are and i do most of my flying in the empty hills of Scotland, so rarely come accross other people. And of course I don’t post most of my flights on the tinterweb
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