 Yes, I am droning and biking. Don't do this at home, kids. One of the most frequent questions I get from you is how do I drone while pedaling my bike? Let's unlock all the secrets that actually aren't secrets. It's more like lots of practice and smashing a handful of drones. Let's start with some history on my droning. I got my first drone in late 2016 when the Mavic Pro was first released. Until that point, drones were just too big to pack on a bike. But the Mavic Pro was a game changer because it was small. My first trip was a drone was in Nepal and it was there when I realized that this amazing tool would really enhance my storytelling. Now don't get me wrong, I was terrified to fly my drone at first. I really didn't want to crash my $1,000 camera, but I got used to it quickly. They make them pretty dummy proof with all the crash avoided sensors and they're surprisingly easy to learn. It's kind of like playing a video game. You've got your controller and you just move around the sky with your joystick up, down, left and right. It's pretty simple. And unless you physically hit something, they don't just fall out of the sky, even in severe wind. Here's some footage of my drone getting knocked around in high winds. It's panic inducing the first couple of times, but it's kind of like when you're in an airplane bouncing through turbulence. The pilot just moves towards smoother air and everything settles down. Well, it's the same with drones. Just make sure you have enough battery to fly it back to you. Oh! Sketchy! Did you make it buddy? You did it! All that being said, I have crashed a lot of drones, but it's always been my fault. I push the limits all the time to get beautiful shots and sometimes I pay the price. Here's a pro tip if you're looking to buy a drone. Get DJI care. It's less than a hundred bucks and this insurance will replace up to two broken drones for the first year. But they won't replace lost drones. So even if you smash it to smithereens, make sure you go out and retrieve it so that you can send it in. Did you see my drone land? No. You didn't hear it land over here? Ah! It was like, oh crap. Feels like it was somewhere. There it is. All stuck in the tree. Come back, come back buddy. All right, before we get into this, I'd recommend not jumping straight into drone biking if you've never flown a drone before. Get the basics down first when you have two feet on the ground. The beautiful thing about drones is, I can show you things that I couldn't really show you before. What? I love the ability to show vast landscapes on my bike trips and this is why I learned the incredibly random skill of drone biking. Most creators don't need to learn how to do this but if you're a bike riding YouTuber, you might wanna get good at it. Depending on the trip, I either use the Mavic Air 2 or the Mavic Mini. The Air is my all time favorite drone ever. This thing flies really smoothly and the picture quality is great but it's kinda big and tough to fit on a bike if you're really loaded down. The Mini is tiny and easy to pack but it's a bit harder to fly and the quality isn't as good. Either way though, you can't go wrong. I mean, just 10 years ago, you would have had to hire a helicopter to get these types of shots and it would have cost tens of thousands of dollars. I almost always fly in manual mode. Everybody thinks that I'm using active track but I don't like the follow feature because it only works if the drone is close to you. I like the far away wide angle shots that really capture the entire landscape and you just can't do this in follow mode because the drone loses its lock on you. Now there are some cases where follow mode is handy like when you want orbiting shots that are too hard to control while pedaling but if you do this, make sure you're in a wide open area with no obstacles like trees or buildings. The best place to pedal in drone is on flat roads with no traffic. You don't wanna worry your mamas, safety first. You'll notice in all of my footage that it looks like I only ride on flat roads but that's not the case. Take the Great Divide for example, that route has tons of uphill and downhill but in reality, I only pull out the drone on the flat sections. You really wanna minimize all the dangers because honestly, you're not able to maneuver your bike very well. Why? Well it's a bit of a circus act to do this. You hold the controller with one hand while your other hand is on the handlebar. That sounds sketchy but as long as you pedal slowly and you're on smooth ground, it can be done. And hey, it's always fun to learn a new party trick. Another reason to be on flat ground is so that you're not bouncing around while trying to get steady cinematic shots. I use my fingers very delicately to control the sticks and any bump on the bike translates into a bump in the footage. I always hit record right when I turn the drone on and leave it recording for the entire time the drone is in the air. This way you know that you're capturing everything. I've made the mistake a few times of waiting until I get the drone situated before I hit record only to forget to hit record and miss the shot and have to do it all over again. I set the camera at 24 frames a second and either 2.7 or 4K. So here we go. Once you launch the drone and get it to where you want it you start pedaling slowly. For me, I have my left hand on the handlebar, right hand on the controller. I sometimes rest my forearm on the handlebar to control the bike easier. If you zoom into any of my shots you'll see how I'm doing it. My thumb does most of the work as I gently push the controller forward or backward. You wanna make very subtle movements. I like to get at least 20 steady seconds for each angle above, behind, forward, and from either side. This makes it seem like you have an entire camera crew out there and the final edit is a lot more dynamic. And even more advanced maneuver is panning up and down while pedaling. Remember, smooth ground is key here because any jolt of the camera looks bad and you'll have to start over again. My favorite angle is looking straight down from high above. This looks especially cool and dense forest. It gives a unique view like you're riding through a coral reef. If you're on a long tour with limited access to power you'll have to conserve batteries. I always travel with three batteries total and depending on your drone each battery gives you about 15 to 30 minutes of power. So in other words, get your drone up and down as fast as possible. I know it's tempting to take off far away and explore the landscape but that uses a lot of juice and your riding partners might get annoyed with the delays. Yeah, can I have a hug? Yeah, give me a hug buddy. A bonus to the Mavic Mini is that their batteries can be charged with the USB cable to a power block but most drone batteries need to be plugged into a wall. Here's a very important thing to remember. Don't use huge capacity SD cards. They sound great because they hold a ton of footage but if you've got two weeks of amazing drone shots on that card and you accidentally fly your drone over a cliff and can't retrieve it you've just lost all your precious footage and crying will ensue. I knew I was pushing my luck but I wanted to get a beautiful drone shot of this area you see, flew it over the edge the wind kind of caught it and then it freaked out and it just wouldn't fly home, it wouldn't fly home. So now the drone is forever resting out there in Castle Valley. Bye bye drone, I'm smiling but it really does suck. The smaller cards like 32 or 64 gigabytes will force you to change them out more often and what do I do with all those cards? I store them in a waterproof pelican case. Packing the drone inside a bunch of soft stuff is key. These things are very delicate and if you rattle them too much, things stop working. I've had a few gimbals get wonky after rough rides and they're tough to fix. This drone gets wrapped up in my long pants and put inside the frame bag next to the tortillas. Did you know that tortillas are great shock absorbers? Well, now you know. This is also a great spot because it provides easy access to quickly get it out for those moments when you don't have much time to act. The real key to successfully documenting your rides with a drone is to simply put in the effort. That goes for any of the cameras you're carrying actually. There will be times when you don't want to stop for a host of reasons. Maybe you're tired or maybe you just want to get to camp early but if you don't record it, your audience will never see the magic. That's about all I can think of right now. If you have more questions, write them below and I will get back to you. I hope this video was helpful in some way and I wish all you drone bikers the best of luck out there. This may be one of the most important things I tell you. Don't be afraid. The more practice, the more confidence you'll have. And that goes for just about anything. There's your life hack lesson of the day. I will link below some of my favorite drone videos and please like and subscribe and share this video with all your friends. And as always, get out there.