Recent content by RicGPDX

You have all the basic information you'll need in this thread, but the exams do vary the question enough to make you think. On mine, there were a couple like this. My trick is to always draw the situation out on a piece of scratch paper. Remember that the runway number is the direction the plane...

I hope somebody at DJI takes note of this. This sounds like a firmware/installer bug to me. There shouldn't be a need to remove an SD card when updating firmware.

There's no cut-and-dried answer, but a good rule of thumb is when the wind is less than a third of the maximum speed of your drone (and significantly less if your flight is to shoot video). Keep in mind that once you get up 50 - 100 feet, the wind can be a lot higher than it is on the surface...

Higher resolutions (4K+) allow greater flexibility in post, either cropping or using cropping to add zooms, pans, tilts, etc. The additional pixels, even though they go beyond the eye's ability to distinguish detail, also have a big impact on tone gradations, especially with 10-bit or higher...

The Speed Editor just went up to $395.

It's conceivable that it has a bad sensor or something of that sort. Early production runs are more prone to errors than when a product has matured. I'd work with DJI support. The image quality on virtually any DJI drone should be excellent out of the box. Problems with focus sounds like a...

Adobe Lightroom for the stills and, if you want to get serious, Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Resolve for the video if you are willing to spend some time to get pro-quality results. The free version of the software should do all you need. The benefit (aside from the price) is that you can use the...

I guess now we know why the FAA is so uppity about us flying over people.

The TRUST exam is required of all drone drivers, even Part 107 pilots if they are fly non-commercial missions (I read that as practice). As of June recreational flyers also have access to LANC to get pre-cleared to fly within 5 miles of tower airports and flights at "night" (30 minutes after...

ND filters are used to keep your shutter speed below 1/60th when shooting 30fps (normal) video. Without the motion blur, the motion in the video won’t look natural. It’s a pain, but you should remove the ND for the sharpest stills, which require a high shutter speed.

My guess is that that the next Mavic will be more of a pro drone with a pro price. The new sensor brought the 2S's price up, I would expect to see something similar with the Mavic 2 Pro. What the Pro really needs is a raw video sensor. What I would REALLY like to see is a Blackmagic Raw sensor...

Ask some drone pros in your area. That happened to me once and I found a guy who did rescue training and was an expert in getting up trees. Also, if you call around to some residential tree service people, they may be able to get up there and get it for you. I paid about $100 to rescue a Mavic Air.

River, Any damage beyond a cosmetic scuff that you could probably remove with an eraser is always "too damaged" in my opinion (and the FAA's). Virtually any physical damage can set up virtually unnoticeable vibrations that are still hard on the motor and arm and may affect control in a way that...

I haven't had a chance to evaluate the 2S yet, but offering better adjustment is a major understatement. There's a lot more data in the sensor than a JPEG can make use of, including more detail in the highlights and shadows and no white balance information. Put a RAW image in a program like...

I took the course/test last night. I thought the coverage of the new rules was pretty good compared to other summaries I've seen online. Due to a quirk in timing, my Part 107 expired at the end of March, but my online recurrent won't be valid until April 21 when the new rules take effect. (I...