Why are drones hard to fly? How to get better at flying a drone?

Before buying the first drone the majority of people are trying to gather as much information about this hobby as possible.

The main sources of information are YouTube videos, blogs, and forums. The first thing you will notice is the amazing view and experience the aircraft can offer.

But right after that, the insane amounts of crashes, malfunctions, and low batteries will dominate these videos. After watching these tapes, you might ask: why are drones hard to fly?

First of all, not every drone is hard to fly. Newer and higher category drones have many tools and software that can help beginner pilots control their drones easier.

In the beginning, might seem difficult to fly your new aircraft, but the more you learn, the better you can get. Not every drone is easy to maneuver.

Many influencing factors may help or interfere with your learning period. Keep reading and find out every essential information.

Are drones difficult to fly?

I assume owning a drone won’t be your first hobby. Every time you start learning new things you will face many obstacles and will make a lot of mistakes.

Some of them are easier to learn while others require some practice.

The answer to this question is complex.

It depends on different factors like:

• What kind of drone are you flying for the first time?

• How fast you can adapt to new environments and circumstances?

• Do you have the talent to learn new skills?

• Have you ever controlled RC cars or owned a controller for video games?

Based on my experience flying a drone is not so difficult, but you need giving to for yourself. Nothing is simple right at the start.

You need to take your time to watch tutorial videos specific to your aircraft.

Practicing slowly without making risking movements will help you over the first difficult period of learning to fly.

You might want to read the following article too: Do drones need propeller guards? or do drones fly in the rain?

How hard is it to fly a drone?

As I already mentioned the answer to this question is depending on several factors. The first and the most important is the type of your device.

The amount of money you can spend on a drone will influence your learning curve. A little quadcopter or a cheap toy won’t have the capabilities of a more expensive drone like a DJI Mavic Pro.

The difficulty of flying the drone and the amount of experience you need will highly depend on the following factors:

• the flying characteristics
• telecommand system
• sensors
• automation and many other factors of your aircraft.

Manufacturing a professional drone, which the pilot can control without too much effort needs a lot of automation and fine-tuning.

These innovations and testing are costing much money for drone manufacturers. These costs will be mirrored on the side of the end consumer.

If you are planning to buy a drone that is not so difficult to control, you will need to pay more for it.

On the other hand, even cheap aircrafts are getting better by implementing this automation in their own products. 

Of course, you will never get the same quality and experience. But these days even the cheaper categories like 80$-100$ are easier to control right from the start.

You can find mini drones for 15$-30$ on Aliexpress or Wish. But the majority of them are jokes, some of those can’t even float or stay in the same position.

Controlling these drones without crashing can be difficult. If your possible movements are only up or down, without having the possibility to stop it in a single spot it’s almost inevitable to make mistakes.

Why are drones hard to fly?

Flying a drone can seem very difficult. The main reasons are the big number of factors influencing your hobby.

Learning to control your drone with the remote controller takes time. Learning this new skill might be challenging by itself, but this is not the only one.

Getting used to every external danger like avoiding obstacles, wind, and even battery life might take some time. It's fairly rare but even birds can ruin your fun.

I think flying drones is hard only at the beginning. If you are willing to learn with patience and without making risky moves, you won’t get in trouble.

How can I get better at flying a drone?

The first thing I would advise is to go to an open area without trees or buildings near you.

• Try to find a day with no or very light wind.

Starting with the basic moves like flying up and down, left and right will be easy with the majority of drones.

If you are practicing the movements in an open field you won’t fear crashing it, so concentrating only on learning will be easy.

In the beginning, you might feel the temptation of taking photos. It’s normal you want to share your new hobby with other people. But at the beginning take your time and focus on learning to control your new drone.

• Try focusing on the drone itself, without looking at your phone for the live feed. Besides you can avoid any obstacles more easily. Another goal is to figure out how the drone is reacting to your commands.

• Practice landing on smaller spots, this way you can make more precise movements.

• Making circles and different, but complex moves will increase your experience and self-confidence in flying your aircraft

How long does it take to learn to fly a drone?

The amount of time you need to practice to learn to fly a drone properly depends more on the device you are controlling.

More expensive drones with cameras like DJI Mavic or Spark are easy to fly with. The amount of software that are helping you, will make these tools beginner proofs.

Some of them even have inbuilt sensors to avoid collision with obstacles.

The requirement for getting licensed for commercial use of drones might give you ideas about the learning curve. Some of them are asking you to complete 40 hours of theory lessons and after 4-5 hours of practicing you can take your exam.

This amount won’t make you experienced. But for getting self-confidence and avoiding problems and crashing your device is enough.

This amount is only for normal drones. On the other hand, FPV drones are the freestyle piloting of aircraft.

Controlling these and watching the drone with FPV Goggles is another level. These don’t have automated software that could support your mistakes.

Learning to fly FPV drones will take tens or even hundreds of hours and you will still crash them. But the best thing about these drones is that you can repair them by yourself.

They don’t need to be sent back to the manufacturer.

Do you think you could handle a drone at night? Find out the regulations for it.

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