8 Tips For Traveling Abroad With Your Drone

Being obsessed with nature, I adore taking my camera and hitting the road, be it for a road trip in the UK or jetting off to Nordic countries which have stolen my heart, I love travel and being outdoors. I am always intrigued to see places in new seasons, different light and from a new perspective. Whenever I explore new destinations, I always hit satellite maps and pour over the detail of the landscape, so it was only a matter of time before I took to the sky myself and created images of the bird’s eye view myself.

Flying a drone is one of the most liberating experiences, I feel a level of solace as I launch my drone and it climbs in altitude, revealing awe-inspiring scenes the higher and higher it goes! There are lots of drones on the market and I have one that I fly commercially in the UK that is a more substantial but less portable drone and another that I bought as my travel buddy! It is compact, easy to transport and packs the punches when it comes to image quality.

Top Tips For Traveling With Your Drone Abroad

• Always carry your drone and batteries in your hand luggage – check with your airline about their regulations around the Lipo batteries (check their limits on max Watt-hours and number of batteries) and carry your batteries in Lipo Bags. If one were to malfunction it contains the fire within it!

• Check what the rules are for flying a drone in the country you are visiting. Every country has a different set of rules on this, so search with terms like ‘Country’ ‘Aviation Authority’ ‘Drone Rules’ and take note of these.
• Carry a plug convertor so you can charge your drone batteries in your accommodation.

• If you’re road tripping, get an in car inverter for the cigarette lighter so you can charge your batteries on the move.
• Use common sense and pre-plan where you’re going to fly based on the countries rules about drone flying.

• Check the weather forecast and buy a small anemometer so you can measure wind speed to check you’re not flying in conditions beyond what your drone can cope with.
• Get insurance and check with your insurer that you’re covered in the countries you’re traveling in.
• Buy spare memory cards, if conditions are on your side and you’re capturing lots of shots and footage, you’ll certainly want to make sure you have enough memory to lay down the memories!

Now that the admin side is done and you’ve got yourself to your destination, conditions are awesome and you’re ready to go, it is time to take to the skies and enjoy every sweet minute of your flight!

I am an advocate of flying drones respectfully, no matter where I am or how epic it would be to fly and shoot some where… if there are signs up that do not permit drone flights, I adhere to them.

I always think that, the more we respect boundaries that are set, the more likely rules are to stay flexible for everyone. We’ve all got a responsibility when we fly to be mindful of others and the nature that we are all enjoying, so I hit it from a place of kindness and community and honoring rules that are laid down.

Once you’ve shot, it is always important if you can to backup your images and footage, the memory cards in most drones are tiny and it would be so devastating to lose a once in a lifetime moment where the stars aligned for the most epic of flights. I travel with my laptop and multiple hard drives, so I can sleep easy and know everything is safe!

So far, I have flown in Iceland, Norway and Sweden which are all away from home destinations for me and extensively along the coastline in Kent in the UK. I have some destinations on my radar this year that I am super excited to be talking my ‘eye in the sky’ to and hope that the weather is on my side to fly and grow that list!