Finally able to fly my drone on a job.

Living in the DC, Virginia and Maryland area is a tough National Air Space to work in. We have many airports, helipads, restricted spaces and of course the no great fly zone for the DC area. The DC area no-fly zone, covers more than the District of Columbus, and we have multiple military bases that have their own no flight zones to boot.

I finally had a request to fly my drone in a Class B area that permitted flying below the 400 foot level. Which is the maximum height a 107 commercial drone Pilot can fly up too. My client wanted both daylight and twilight photography showing off the pool and lighting around the house.

Now, to say I was a little scared of flying a drone that I never flew before, because I was always in restricted space, had me going. The first daylight flight went off without a hitch, but the twilight gave me a little trouble.

My compass was off, which is an easy fix, if the software program would let you. The application became fixated on the message bubble telling me of the issue. One thing I found out that night was, the drone would still fly and let me take pictures. It was hard to see pasted the message, but I could accomplish the mission.

You ask me, why didn’t I just stop and correct the compass by doing the compass dance with the drone, well, I was to press for time. My window of opportunity for the best, ambient lighting to house lighting, was coming up on the end of my flight permission with the FAA.

Driving home, I was concern that I didn’t get the pictures, but I did and I just found out the house owners loved the aerial drone images that I took.