The pre-flight check, and why each line is on it

Why lists fail

Aviation adopted checklists because experienced people forget ordinary things under mild pressure — and mild pressure is exactly the state of a pilot who has driven an hour, has good light and is losing it. Nothing about experience protects you from that. If anything, experience is what makes the list feel unnecessary.

But a list of forty items is not used, it is performed. The version that survives contact with a cold field is short, ordered by when it can still be fixed, and made of items where you know what you are looking for.

At home, the night before

The cheapest problems to solve are the ones you find while standing next to a charger.

1. Batteries charged, and one more than you needIncluding the controller and the phone or tablet. The controller is the one people forget, and it is the one that ends the day.
2. Propellers inspected, not glanced atRun a fingernail along each leading edge. A nick you can feel is a nick that changes how the blade behaves loaded.
3. Firmware and maps in a known stateUpdate deliberately at home, never in the field. An update on site can leave you with an aircraft that wants a step you cannot complete without signal.
4. Storage card in, and empty enoughA full card ends a flight silently, and usually right after the good light arrives.
5. Airspace and conditions for tomorrowA ten-second look now can change where you drive.

At the site, before power-on

1. Look upCables, catenaries, masts, branches, a crane that was not there last time. This is the single highest-value item on the list, and the only one that must be done with your eyes and not a screen.
2. Look aroundPeople, animals, parked cars, a path where someone will walk in four minutes. Choose your landing spot now, not later.
3. Check the surfaceLoose gravel, dust, sand and long grass all cause problems on take-off and landing. A hard, clean, level patch is worth walking twenty metres for.
4. Feel the wind, and look at the treetopsWhat you feel is not what the aircraft gets. If the canopy is moving hard while you feel a breeze, expect the wind at altitude to be well above the forecast.
5. Decide the exit before you need oneWhere will you land if something goes wrong in the first minute? Answer it now while it is a calm question.

Powering up

1. Aircraft on a clean, non-metallic surfaceMetal corrupts both the compass reference and the first position fix. Not the car roof, not a manhole cover.
2. Wait for a strong, stable satellite countNot a count that is still climbing. Thirty extra seconds on the ground is the cheapest insurance in aviation.
3. Confirm the home point, and look at it on the mapTwo seconds. It prevents the most avoidable automated-return failure there is.
4. Set the return altitude for this siteAbove the tallest obstacle between you and the far end of the flight area, with margin. This is a per-location setting, not a one-time one.
5. Check for warnings, and read themDo not dismiss a warning to make it go away. The aircraft is telling you something it decided was worth interrupting you for.
6. Gimbal and lensCap off, protector off, lens clean. A smeared lens is discovered on the drive home.

The hover check

Twenty seconds at three metres tells you more than any screen. This is where a problem is still cheap.

In flight, the running check

• Keep the aircraft in sight. Everything else on this list is secondary to this one.
• Watch the satellite count, not just the battery. A collapsing count is the earliest warning of interference.
• Note the wind on the way out, because it is the return leg that has to pay for it.
• Turn for home on the percentage you decided, not on how the shot is going.
• If anything is confusing, stop climbing and stop travelling away. Altitude and distance make every problem harder.

After landing

1. Power down in the right orderAircraft first, then controller. The other way round can trigger a failsafe you did not ask for.
2. Look at the propellers againNow is when you find the strike you did not notice, while it is still a story instead of an incident.
3. Let the batteries cool before chargingA hot pack charged immediately loses capacity faster than one that waited twenty minutes.
4. Note anything odd while you remember itA brief note now is worth more than a perfect memory later. Odd behaviour repeats.

Where Fly4cast fits

Half of this list is conditions, and conditions are the half you cannot see from the take-off point: wind at altitude, airspace, interference reports, the flyability of the next few hours. Fly4cast gathers those into one screen and keeps the checklist itself on your phone, so the check happens where the flight happens.