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Practice makes a pilot

The best way to lock in flying skills is to give yourself missions. These challenges build the exact precision and control you’ll rely on when your code takes over the flying. Start easy and work up.
Fly on the slow speed setting for these. Precision beats speed every time - and it’s much easier to control.

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Beginner challenges

Steady hover

Take off and keep the drone hovering in one spot for 20 seconds without drifting. Trim it if needed.

Up and down

Rise to about head height, hold, then gently descend and land on a target spot (a paper plate works great).

There and back

Fly forward 2 meters, hover, then fly back to your start point and land.

Quarter turns

While hovering, yaw exactly 90 degrees, pause, and repeat until you’ve made a full circle.

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Intermediate challenges

Top-down flight path of a square with forward, right, back, and left legs and pause points at each corner

The square: fly forward, right, back, left - pausing at each corner

Fly a square

Fly forward, right, back, then left to trace a square in the air, returning to your start.

Land on a target

Set a target on the floor and practice landing the drone directly on it.

Gate run

Set up a simple gate (two chairs, a hula hoop) and fly the drone through it.

Figure eight

Combine forward flight and yaw to trace a figure-eight pattern.
Top-down figure-eight flight path showing forward flight, left and right yaw turns, and a cross-over

The figure eight combines forward flight with yaw turns and a cross-over in the middle

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Advanced challenge: the obstacle course

Combine everything: set up a short course with a takeoff pad, a gate to fly through, a spot to hover for 5 seconds, and a target to land on. Time yourself and try to beat it.
Top-down obstacle course map with takeoff pad, gate, hover zone, and landing target

A sample obstacle course - mix and match stations to build your own

Notice which movements are hardest to do precisely by hand - holding a perfect hover, stopping at an exact spot, turning an exact amount. On Day 3, your code can do these perfectly every time. That’s the power of programming a drone.

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Think ahead to coding

As you fly, imagine describing each challenge as a set of instructions:
That’s basically a program! Starting on Day 3 you’ll snap together blocks that say exactly this - and the drone will fly the whole path on its own, perfectly, every time.
You completed at least one beginner and one intermediate challenge, and you can describe a flight path as a list of step-by-step instructions.