Flying drone at night - what you should know.

The most interest answer – is YES.

You can fly a drone at night. And even more – you don’t need License, but just only to safe the basic rules for such activities. The FAA ( Federal Aviation Administration) have published these rules and if you save them this will save you from any troubles or drone crash or lost at night.  

Major Rules for a night drone flight are:

• Never loose visual eye contact with your UAS. 

• The flights must be an only hobby or recreational. 

• The Manned aircraft is with priority.

• The absolutely max weight of the drones is 25 kgs. The heaviest drones must have Certificate from the territorial authorities. 

• Stricly save the rules for distance to near airports. 

Is Licence needed to perform a drone night flight?

Yes, you need to have. There is one more option – to take someone with such certificate to supervise you during flying drone at night. 

If you want to have your personal certificate – you have to: 

• Be over 16 years old and pass an aeronautical test. This test can be done in a certified testing centre approved by FAA.

• You need to have a complete flight test in the recent 24 months

After you already have this Certificate, you need to apply one more thing – a Night Waiver from FAA.  

 Waiver – what is this?

A waiver is an official document. It is issued by the FAA which approves certain operations of aircraft outside the limitations of regulation.

These waivers allow drone pilots to deviate from certain rules under part 107 by demonstrating they can still fly safely using alternative methods. You can read more about Waiver – here.

The very important thing – choosing the area where you intend to perform a night flight. This area is good to be someone you know pretty well in daylight conditions. Somewhere you have been many times before and have flown your drone. The obstacles and specifics of this area are known for you. This will help you a lot in nighttime flight, for sure. The orientation of humans has little differences in daytimes and nighttimes. In the dark, you won’t some of the obstacles and details, but if you know them from your previous daytime flights, this will help you at the night. These obstacles can be trees, power lines, buildings and many others. Fly drone at night and Shooting in some known by you area – is a good decision. This way you avoid taking unnecessary risks.    

The next advice to you is to remove the ND filters before take off our drone. It is a very unhappy situation to fly up your drone and after that bring it down back, just to remove them. In all case these filters are needless.   

Next is about the Visual eye contact during all the flight. As we know – this rule is obligated, but from real practice, we actually are doing something different – we switch our sight between the drone and the monitor or the screen of the remote control. That`s why we advise you when you fly at night – to look only on the drone and follow the LEDs. When you look mostly to the screen, there are obstacles that you do not see clearly. Is much more easy to just follow the Red and the green lights in the sky. 

The Shooter Speed – here sour advice is to switch to video mode. This way you will prevent to take glitchy images. One more thing – turn off the front LED, because if it is on “On” position this may produce weird funky red glow you should not want to have, for sure. To make this option valid – Go the camera settings -> general. After that hit front LEDs Auto turn off. 

The front LEDs will turn off itself automatically when you press the shutter button.