Hi All. I have read up on the previous threads on this topic but have a couple of questions that I couldn’t see answers to:
What height are you expected to fly the flat manoeuvres at?
In general how far away are you flying for example when asked to hover over a static point? How far away is it?
I can take the test with a Phantom 4 or a Mavic 2. The difference being I would be able to put the P4 into Atti mode. What would you guys recommend?
I want to get plenty of practise in before my test and some tips on what to practise would be great.
I have decided to finish my PfCO and have booked myself a flight test in May. I have my Ops Manual template to complete. Any other advice you can give me would be really appreciated. What should I brush up on?
Thank all and apologies if this has been asked and answered before I could not find it.
It will likely depend on your assessor what you’ll be asked to do.
For manœuvres, it will be at roughly 3-5 meters in height
Part of the assessment is to fly up to 120m and 500m in distance or whichever distance you are confortable with. On my assessment we were asked to take pictures of a static object from 3 sides and keeping 30m away from it. The height was roughly 20m.
You’ll be able to do the test with either drone, make sure you have your operators ID on the drone
I know someone who was asked to do a figure of “8” and had a cone where the cross over point was to be.
He was also asked to do a square, and also to take his drone to another cone ,which was at 100 metres and estimate when he was above it, and hover.
He had to have 2 attempts at this, and to make sure he was above it, they got him to tilt his camera straight down.
I would practice a lot in ATTI Mode with your P4. it is a great way to learn to fly your drone.
Wish we had it on the Mavic 2 Pro !.
The flight assessment was the one part most people on my PfCO course were dreading because it was all unknown. I agree, there should be a standardised format of what it to be assessed and how it should be done. The assessment you mentioned with the different manoeuvres sounds quite daunting.
This is why I have my non mavic 2s so I can get into ATTI or stabilised mode for those using arducopter, so I can fly the craft, nothing like trying to hold position in 10-15 mph winds to hone your skills.
As well as the flying, remember that your practical test should be planned for an flown as if it were a professional job, so make sure you know the Ops manual you’re flying your test under. For my test I could either fly under my own or one provided by my NQE. As part of the test your examiner will ask you questions about it (how you planned your flight, what your emergency procedures are, etc.). Also you’ll need to show that you are following your procedures (pre-flight, flight and landing).
That’s exactly how mine went. I’ve said in other threads, it was the cone in the middle that threw me because I’d been practicing a pretty lazy figure 8 which I thought would be good enough, then suddenly had to hit a mark on every loop.
I’d say the most important thing to practice is moving your drone from point A to point B. Don’t worry about whether it’s a square, a rectangle or a pentagram… so long as you can go to a set point and stop over it you won’t have a problem doing whatever shape your examiner asks for. Oh, and practice the figure 8 just in case (it’s fun anyway, even if it’s not in your test).
Not sure about the photos. My NQE was pretty insistent that the PfCO is nothing to do with whether you can take a nice picture, it’s only about being able to fly safely. Didn’t take a single frame in my test.
You need to FLY in order to practice them and get them adequate then more practice to get good then more flying and practice to get them perfect, us new flyers are just trying to understand what we should practice doing when flying rather than just flying around taking subpar videos etc
Thanks for al your great advice. I think my flying should be OK it’s just fear of the unknown and not knowing how to prepare for it. They seem to like to make it a bit of a mystery which in my mind makes it a bit unprofessional. I think there should be a set test that you can practice for, then perhaps a free section where they can ask you to show some more advanced flying. Just an opinion of course.
On the plus side they are testing to see wether you are ready to do Professional work which by and large is the reason most would do the course and want the PfCO At the end of the day No two Clients will ask you do to the same thing So maybe they are training you for the ‘real world’
my main fault as a newbie to drones at the time was that i didn’t take off and land manually ( i do now) or even know how to. So make sure you know how to do that.
I was told not to look at the screen at all, should be flying by sight not off a screen, no pictures required as that’s not essential to safe operating which is what you’re being tested for not just flying.
I’ve just signed up on UAV-HUB (free to do all the home based learning) And that Q comes up quite early Mr MPW (the founder & presenter of the videos) give the reason for the Atti mode being tested if you have it on your Craft is, It’s good to be able to have a working knowledge of ‘how to fly in atti’ as under certain circumstances the Craft could default into Atti-mode
As to Which you can do either it’s really up to you but if you take the Atti-mode ‘able’ Craft then be prepared to be tested using it
Remember you can always learn Atti-mode after you pass with-out it with your ‘ none Atti’ Craft
The course instructor suggests it not as hard to learn as you may imagine
