6
3 — How to Fly
Learn to Fly Manually
Although DroneDeploy automates 
mapping ights, it’s important to have 
the skills to take over and y manually 
if necessary.
Review your DJI Phantom 4 Pro 
manual and pracce ying manually to 
familiarize yourself with the drone.
Plan Automated Mapping Flights
The DroneDeploy app makes it quick 
and easy to automacally y your drone 
to capture imagery needed for mapping.
To plan your rst ight, open the 
DroneDeploy app and click the  
“Plan” buon.
If you are planning in a locaon other 
than your current locaon, click the 
magnifying glass icon at the top le of 
the screen to search for the area you 
want to map.
To change the area you want to map, 
either tap and drag the center of the 
map to move the enre area, or tap and 
drag the circles on the corners of the 
ight plan to dene the map perimeter.
If you want to add addional points, 
tap and drag the faint circles on the 
straight lines.
In the sidebar, you will see adjustment 
sliders for the altude and direcon of 
ight. Adjust these as needed based 
upon the goals of your mission, and 
save your ight plan.
To change the overlap of each image 
captured, tap the “Advanced” text at 
the boom of the sidebar.
We recommend the following 
sengs for agricultural mapping:
• 400  for most crop scoung 
and large-area mapping (greater 
than 60 acres. Standard 60% 
overlap should be sucient in 
early stage or highly variable 
elds, but up to 85% overlap 
may be required for closed 
canopy, late-stage elds where 
the crops are uniform.
• 200-250  for maps that will be 
used for stand analysis and plant 
counng. If you plan to use an 
app to generate a report, check 
the imagery requirements to 
make sure you capture imagery 
at an appropriate resoluon. 
Standard 60% overlap should 
be sucient, but higher overlap 
will reduce the likelihood of map 
stching failure.
Don’t have a good connecon 
out in the eld? You can also plan 
ights on your your computer and 
then sync them to your mobile 
device for oine ight.
Have a shapele or KML le 
dening the eld perimeter you 
want to y? Install the KML / 
Shapele Uploader app and then 
upload your le when on the ight 
planning screen.