Mastering Drone Control: What a $25 Mini Drone Taught Me About Real Piloting Skills

Think You’re a Great Pilot? Try Maintaining Control of a $25 Drone

Hello fellow pilots! Here we are again in another lecture about how we will soar higher than we ever expected. As I have told you many times, my drone road is paved with a lot of difficulties. Since buying the first DJI Mavic Air and getting a state of the art DJI Mavic 2 Pro just a few days after it was released, I have learned a lot, but as everyone knows, it’s the smallest lessons that hit me the hardest.

And yeah, in this case the lesson came in a small cardboard box, after spending $25 on a facebook marketplace finding. I was working on a series of videos for my YouTube channel (and let me tell you: it ended being the most viewed video on my channel, not being a “best seller” but a “long seller”, with around 10,000 views per month) and I though, it was hard for me to buy my first drone, even working in the audiovisual world, so it’s going to be harder for anyone that just “want to fly” but didn’t have the $600 that a well-made drone costs at the time.

So, what did I do? Always, always put yourself in the shoes of others. What was the cheapest drone I could get?

What can I do with it? Will it fly? Can we use it for photos or videos? What can we learn from it?

So, as a very investigative Youtuber, I clicked on the product and ordered it.

Who knows what I could get from a $25 drone?

It was a few hours later when a deliverer came to my house and give me what would be one of the most searched drones in all Youtube and most viewed drones on my channel

Normal cardboard box, open and you get a really, really lightweight drone, a small battery, the RC (that for you to use it, you’ll need to buy three AA batteries), extra propellers, propellers guards and the most important piece of all: a Chinese / English manual. Why was the manual so important? Because of the QR code that will let you download the app to connect the cell phone and the drone.

As you may guess, this is not your usual drone that the RC connects to the drone and then via usb cable you can get visuals on your phone. In this type of drones, the drone creates a wifi network in which the cell phone connects to the drone and gets visuals and also can give certain orders, like “take picture” or “record video” all of them of course more camera-related.

Everything that comes to movement, and turning on and off the motors it’s straight from the RC, actually you can fly the drone and practice without a cell phone (I encourage you, if you buy the drone and fly it, to make your first flights this way, so you can have your eyes on the drone).

The case here is that even if you can fly without having the cell on as a camera monitor. Don’t worry about what the drone sees, he’s not going to fly that far, TRUST ME.

And here comes the good part: the flying. Remember that this is a $25 drone. I can’t stand this enough. With this drone you won’t have sensors of any kind, gps or nothing like it. You are on your own, this is the closest to flying an fpv without all the expensive pieces. Once you take off (please don’t take off from yours or anyone’s hands!) you will enter into survival mode. The drone will pull up to like 3 or 4 ft and you wish it would stay in place, but, no no no, this is not one of those drones that you take off and he just stayed there.

He has free will. And it will use it. Probably against you.

Once the drone is in the air, you have to have lightning fast reflexes because this drone will not forgive you. Basically, the drone will be moving in any direction that the wind will push and multiply its speed, so, the first mission is to counter those movements.

In the RC you’ll find four trim buttons that’ll help you compensate for the drone movements, but believe me when I say: flying this thing is a challenge that not only will make you run out of patience, but also will help you develop the skills necessary to fly better than your other drones.

These people that want to start flirting with drone flying now have it a little easier with the “a little more” accessible DJI Neo… but I dare you fellow pilot to fly with this drone and let me know how many minutes you survived.

See you in the next newbie article!