11 Best Tips for Flying Your Drone at the Beach

Let us prepare. Let us avoid. Let Us Drone.

While I have recently written a post about flying your drone over water, I'd like to go a little more in-depth about flying specifically at the beach. I've said it before, but I do a large majority of my flying at or around the beach since I live in sunny San Diego. Flying at the beach is a bit of an adrenaline rush the first couple of times you do it. The added element of water when flying your expensive aircraft will likely have your knuckles a shade whiter than usual.

Without further ado, here are my top eleven tips for flying your drone at the beach:

1. Obtain necessary equipment
2. Check flight rules
3. Avoid the crowds
4. Don't launch too close to the water
5. Double check settings
6. VPS on or off?
7. Observe the ocean and surroundings
8. Don't perform range tests in high winds
9. Depth perception over water is difficult
10. Avoid the birds 
11. Inspect for sand and saltwater

#1 Obtain necessary equipment

You wouldn't take your kids to the beach without being prepared, right? You'd likely bring a beach bag full of towels, bathing suits, buckets (for sand castles), sunscreen, and other necessary items. Well, flying your drone at the beach is no different, so let's put together a beach bag and throw some things in it. It's going to be painful when you realize that you forgot your monitor hood sunshade, especially for those who drove three hours to get to the beach.

• The essentials. We're talking everything that came in the box when you brought your new shiny Mavic home from the store. You know, the drone, propellers, batteries (that are fully charged!), and RC cable.
• SD card. My best shots have been taken at the beach. Forgetting the SD card at home is one sure fire way to dull the whole beach flying experience. To take this a step further, I'd recommend ensuring that the SD card has adequate space before you leave your home. Don't get out there and realize that you'll have to delete little Jimmy's maiden voyage on his bicycle in order to get the water crashing off the rocks.
• Monitor hood sunshade. If you don't own one yet, I talk about my favorite hood here. It's a good idea to have a sunshade for your phone or tablet anytime you're flying when it's bright out, and this point is amplified when you're flying at the beach. Shade is one thing in particular that is usually lacking when you're at the beach unless you're lucky enough to find yourself under one of those fancy umbrellas. You're going to be blinded when you look out over the water and all you see is the glare from the sun. Trying to make out the image on your phone after that is nearly impossible, but having a sunshade helps.
• Landing pad. Launching from the sand has to be one of the worst things you can do for your drone. The damage to the motors and other internal parts that can be caused by those tiny grains of sand can be irreversible. If launching from a sandy area is your only option and you don't have a buddy to help you hold the drone, at least have a landing pad. If you're looking for one to buy, I discuss my favorite one here.
• ND filters. These aren't a must, but the neutral density (ND) filter limits the amount of light that passes through the camera lens, and limiting some of that intense glare may give you more cinematic shots. I use ND filters often, and these are the ones that I recommend.

#2 Check flight rules

Before you leave your house it's important to check the flight rules for the particular beach where you plan to fly. You may think that just because you'll be over water there couldn't possibly be no-fly zones that could ruin your beach day. Check out this screenshot I took of the Airmap app on my phone. Being in a big city like San Diego means that there seems to be either an airport or military base around every corner.

One day I was flying at a local beach and when I attempted to fly back to my location I kept getting notifications on my screen that I was approaching a no-fly zone. It was geofenced so I had a heck of a time getting around it. Eventually, I made a huge arcing return to the takeoff location, but I was holding my breath there for a minute. How I got past the no-fly zone (that I wasn't aware of) on the way out is still a mystery to this day.

#3 Avoid the crowds

We've all had positive and negative encounters (hopefully more of the former) with the public. Something about the beach attracts a lot of people, and you're bound to get at least one disgruntled lobster-red tourist complaining that “your toy that keeps buzzing around is ruining his vacation”.

Even though you'll likely be over the water most of the time where people aren't, drones seem to always attract attention. I have two recommendations for keeping interactions with other beachgoers to a minimum.

1. Fly early in the morning or later in the afternoon. You'll run into fewer people and any photos/video that you shoot will be more cinematic.
2. Do a little research on more secluded parts of the beach. Simply typing “top beaches in San Diego” into Google will give you the same results it gives the thousands of other tourists that are looking for San Diego's best. Try to get a little creative and search for “best-secluded beaches in *insert city here*” on Yelp. I did this with San Diego and was impressed with some of the results that popped up; I'm a native and hadn't heard of a couple of the beaches that were displayed. You can also glean valuable tidbits of info from the many reviews.

#4 Don't launch too close to the water

Most of the time the GPS on our drones is pretty accurate, but would you bet your $1000 Mavic on it? If you take off 10ft from where the waves are crashing and that is where the home point is marked, what happens when you fly for 20 minutes and your drone all of the sudden starts its RTH procedure without you having control of the aircraft? Sure, this is a rare occasion, but if it were to happen you're going to be hoping that the GPS is darn accurate and that the tide didn't come in too much while you were in flight.

Instead, go up 50-100 feet on the beach and launch. From there you can walk down to the water where you can do your flying and won't have to worry so much about the precision of your RTH feature if an incident were to present itself.

#5 Double check settings

Speaking of the home point, let's make sure that we have this set prior to taking off. Ensure that the position that is marked on the app is your actual location, and not out 20ft in the water.

DJI allows you to specify the course of action the drone should take in the case of a lost signal. You'll likely have three options: hover, land, and Return-to-Home. For obvious reasons, we're going to want to make sure that RTH is selected. I've read too many stories about drone operators that lost signal while flying over water and they helplessly watched as their drone descended to its salty death. To make sure you have RTH selected in the DJI GO 4 app, go to settings>main controller settings>advanced settings>remote control signal lost

As I mentioned, you're likely going to have a lot of glare at the beach, especially on a sunny day. You may want to consider manually adjusting your camera settings if photography or videography is your mission for the day. If you don't want to manually adjust the settings, you can at least choose “sunny” under white balance.

#6 VPS on or off?

Ah, one of the first questions you’ll see if you look up information on flying a drone over water. One of the reasons it’s commonly covered is because of what DJI has to say about flying over water in their manuals.

“The performance of your Vision System and Infrared Sensing System are affected by the surface being flown over.”

Further down it lists water and transparent surfaces as examples. In order to give an accurate answer as to whether you should turn the VPS off or not, we have to look at what height the VPS works and if you’ll be flying within that height. The VPS on most DJI drones works up to 10m or 30ft.

The general consensus is that it’s good practice to disable the VPS when flying under 30ft, as the drone’s sensors are affected by the movement and transparency of the water. 

If I am flying above 30ft I don’t touch the VPS and I’ve never had an issue with it. On the other hand, I have seen my drone do all sorts of drifting while flying low with the VPS on. I’ve even had my drone start to ride waves in before the GPS took over and repositioned the aircraft.

#7 Observe ocean and surroundings

We've all seen photos of waves crashing. If it's a high-quality photo then you've likely also seen those thousands of tiny droplets of saltwater that are shooting 30 feet in the air. Before you launch your drone it's a good idea to just observe the area where you plan to fly and look for potential problem areas.

Small airplanes that drag those advertisements or marriage proposals behind them are flying up and down the beach all day long during the summer. Don't think that you're in the clear just because you're below the magic number of 400ft. I feel like those planes often fly so low that they too have to worry about the sea spray. In short, be cognizant of your surroundings as flying at the beach comes with a whole new set of potential hazards that aren't seen elsewhere.

#8 Don't perform range tests in high winds

I get it, it's incredibly tempting to do a range test at the beach when all you have is an open ocean in front of you. I'm going to give you two reasons why you may want to rethink that range test.

1. It's usually more windy at the beach. All would be good If you were to fly straight out until you were down to about 50% battery left and then fly back…assuming wind was at 0 MPH. But what happens when there is a 10-15 MPH offshore wind and you fly out until you're at 50% battery life? The answer is that you'll never see that drone again with that kind of headwind and poor planning.
2. The drone blends in with the horizon quicker than you might think. Since we're all law abiding citizens here (right?), we're going to have a hard time keeping that aircraft within VLOS.

#9 Depth perception over water is difficult

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to tell how high something is off of the water? This largely due to the fact that there is a lack of reference landmarks. While flying in a large meadow you may be able to barely see your drone off in the distance, but you can see that it is at the height of that giant tree, signifying that your bird is well above the ground.

You don't have the luxury of comparing your drone's height to something when you're flying over the ocean. Judging the altitude is especially difficult if you are standing on a cliff or something and you have to estimate the height of the drone when it's 100ft below you. Remember that the altitude reading on the app will have your takeoff location as sea level, so prepare to see negative readings if you launch from a ledge and fly down closer to the water below.

Lastly, being able to ascertain your height from the video transmission on your device is near impossible. I'll descend while looking at the screen and when it appears that I'm mere feet from crashing into the ocean I'll look up to see that I'm still 15ft from the water.

#10 Avoid the birds

It's not the people, wind, seaspray, or any other element that is usually the problem when I fly at the beach. It's the darn seagulls! Nearly every time I fly at the beach I have some type of altercation with the seagulls. It would appear that we have a mutual distaste for each other.

Seagulls are very territorial and a foreigner on their turf usually means war. I have seen that they are more aggressive toward white drones like the Phantom series than darker colored ones like the Mavics. I went as far as to buy a shiny blue/green skin for my Phantom in an effort to avoid their attacks. This proved to lessen the frequency but I still have a problem with them pretty consistently when flying my Phantom.

I am passionate enough about this topic that I wrote an entire article about how to avoid and escape seagull attacks. That post can be found here. 

If you find yourself in the heat of battle with a seagull, take these steps to escape unscathed.

1. Put the drone in sport mode.
2. Ascend as fast as possible until you have a nice cushion between your drone and the seagull.
3. Fly towards you at that altitude and descend immediately when the drone is overhead. 

#11 Inspect for sand and saltwater

There are very few things that I can think of that are worse for your drone than saltwater. Whenever you come in for a landing after flying at the beach it is good practice to thoroughly inspect the drone for water, sand, or any other elements that aren't conducive to good drone health. You can imagine what saltwater would do if you packed up a wet drone and let it sit until next time you took it out to fly.

Trevor's Take

Flying at the beach is a blast. I've read about a lot of people who are hesitant to make that first flight over water, and some never do. I get it, the thought of watching your drone go into the drink is not a good one, but by being smart and prepared you can shrink your chances of a water landing to close to nill.

Have you flown at the beach? Have you taken any other precautionary steps that I didn't list above? I'd love to hear about them in the comments below!