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Registering Your Drone

Lesson 4 from: Beginner Drone Photography

Dirk Dallas

Registering Your Drone

Lesson 4 from: Beginner Drone Photography

Dirk Dallas

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Lesson Info

4. Registering Your Drone

Aerial photography with a drone has several legal restrictions. The first step is making sure to register your drone with the FAA. Walk through the simple, inexpensive act of registering and learn to avoid scams. This lesson covers registry in the United States.
Next Lesson: Drone Terminology

Lesson Info

Registering Your Drone

I wanna talk to you about registering your drone. This is a very important first step and I share this because people will come up to me like, Dirk I have a drone, and one of things I always ask is like, I just try to make sure like how legit are they? And I find out people don't register, people don't know the rules, they just get their drone off the shelf and they're flying everywhere and it's like oh man, like this is why you know, drone pilots can have a bad name right? (chuckles) So I wanna help make sure that you guys are prepared, you guys are legitimate, you guys are good representations of our community right? So the first step when you get a drone, depending on which one you guys wanna get, you wanna then register your drone. Registration costs $5.00 and this will be valid for three years. So what does that look like? It basically looks like you going to the FAA's drone website, and I put the URL there and that is not a joke (chuckles). That is URL, faadronezone.faa.gov, and ...

it's really important guys that you go to this site. Don't Google it, just type it in because there are a lot of websites out there that they actually show up first in Google's ranking, and they will register for you, so you think you're registering, and then you end up paying them 55 bucks, and unfortunately you know I just had a friend that let me know about that; she paid 55 bucks and realized that she only had to pay five cause she went through not the FAA. It's literally just someone that takes your information, your $55.00, puts it in, it's like guys go to this website; do not be scammed right? And I do wanna let you know - I'm gonna back up real quick right here - so when you go to register, there's two options, and again there's fancy language right: sUAS, Aircraft under Section 336. So right, it gets kinda, it gets kinda serious really quick. So basically what you need to know if you're gonna fly commercially, you're gonna make money, there's any type of transaction, you're shooting for a couple that's getting married, you're doing real estate photography, any money that's being transferred, you will need to register as a Part 107. I'll talk about that in just a moment as well but I wanna point you first to this one. Probably most people, they're starting off, are not thinking right away about making money, they're like I just don't wanna crash, I wanna learn how to fly, right? Then you need to register under this option and this is just you're a hobbyist, it's for fun, there's no money being transferred, right? So you can register here and I do wanna let you know that there's actually just some news that came out this week that there's some changes, the House of Reps voted on something, now it's going onto the Senate, that FAA reauthorization bill 2018, and I don't know all the specifics of that, I'm sure we'll be learning more this week, but what I wanna encourage you with is things change, this field is rapidly changing. If you just go to the FAA's website, faa.gov, this is where you can find out like the latest information, like what's going on, and it's important that you know, we stay up to date, we stay educated, we know it's happening so that we're responsible and then we don't get in trouble right? And again, this technology just exploded onto the scene, and then everyone's like wait a second, we gotta have some like rules, and there's gotta be things and then it's like it's too late, we all have drones, we're flying everywhere right? It's crazy right? So things are changing fast, just stay up to date, do some research, faa.gov; that's the Federal Aviation Administration's website where you can learn the latest, so stay up on that. I'm not gonna speak to that cause I don't know enough of what's happening yet. Okay, so once you guys register, let's say you register as a hobbyist, you're gonna get a certificate; I've blocked out my information but it's basically gonna say your name, when they issued you your registration, when it expires - three years - but that option in the middle, the certificate number, that's gonna be unique to you, and that is number that you then put on your drone. So it's basically just identifying that hey, this is this person's drone, right? So, I put mine in the battery compartment, mine's written right in here, but you can put yours anywhere. I like to have mine be a little more private but some people just put a label on here; that's your choice, it just needs to be on the drone where someone can access it, access it right? So this is really easy, someone can just pop out the battery so I keep mine in here, and I just write that number down; it's as simple as that, put it on a piece of paper. Okay, so let's say you're not a hobbyist, you're like Dirk I wanna make some money man, I bought this drone, I gotta get it back right, I gotta get some money back. Well if that's you, you wanna make some money, you're gonna do weddings, real estate, movies, commercials, something like that, you need to get a Part 107 license. And at the beginning of the class when Kenna mentioned that Dirk is a licensed drone pilot, that means that I've passed this test. And so basically what this is is you've gotta study, you've gotta learn about airspace, and then you're gonna take a 60 question test, and depending on where you go it's about 150 bucks to take the test. I took mine at a local airport because there's flight school right by, and so there's helicopter pilots taking their test, there's airplane pilots taking theirs, and I was taking mine. I studied for about 35 hours so I definitely put work into it. I wanted to pass, I was like man if, if from where I drone guy doesn't pass like that's gonna look really bad right, so I had to pass. You do have to get a 70 or higher so do you have, you can miss some questions, but you have to get a 70 or higher, and I just wanna share with you just briefly, this is not a Part 107 class but just to maybe peak your interest, answer some questions, these are some of the things that are on the test. You need to be able to read charts and understand traffic patterns, you need to know about airspace, Class C, Class D, about towered airports/non-towered, about weather, you need to understand reports, air masses; some pretty sophisticated stuff. And I'll just show you a quick example of what a sectional chart looks like. So you would have to be able to read this and understand what the circles mean, what those numbers mean, and you'd have to be able to decipher that report down there, what all that code means, so again, I had to take about 35 hours to study. And depending on how you learn, you could just get a cheap book off Amazon. This is one that I highly recommend, it's called Test Prep 2018 Book, and I put a link down there so if you type in fromwhereidrone.com/part107book, you can check out the book that I specifically recommend. So if you, you know, you're on a budget, you can read stuff and you can retain it, you can take your notes, this is a perfect, this is a perfect tool for you to use to study for that. If you're like me though, I bought that and I was like, oh man, I need something else though, I bought a video course. So I paid for this training course and I loved it so much I asked if I could be an affiliate, so I'm actually an affiliate. They've been gracious enough to give people that use my code 50 bucks off the class. So if you use code Dirker, if you use code Dirk50, you can get 50 bucks off, and this website is a video training course. So the pilots walk you through weather, sectional charts, they do examples. So I'm very visual, I need someone to do that, to show me, I wanna watch them figure it out, and then I can take a quiz, it let's me know how I do, I took a bunch of cool practice quizzes, so I felt really prepared when I went in. So if you're like me, this might be a good resource for you.

Ratings and Reviews

MARGARET NICOSIA
 

Dirk really did a nice job taking new students thru exercises to gain confidence. The work in Lightroom and Photoshop was helpful, but I wish more time could have been focused on flying or tips. Dirk has presets that he offers. It would have been helpful to see the results using those presets. Looking forward to the free which Drone to buy class and the advanced class

JBPhotoDesign
 

I definitely recommend this course if you are thinking about getting into drone photography looking for the fundamentals. I now feel pretty confident I can get started and that my learning curve will be greatly shortened thanks to the technology available today and a great roadmap of getting started. If you are already started... follow up with his advanced topics... I know I will.

MikeD
 

Super class. As a beginner I had little idea what to expect and never got started because of all the talk of people crashing drones right and left and losing a fortune. Dallas made it seem simple. So I bought a Tello beginners drone (great starter by the way), got hooked and am now flying a DJI Mavic Pro 2 and studying for a commercial license. Not sure, this is a great class to start with.

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