so ive been flying my mavic for about a month now and im getting more comfortable but i keep second guessing myself on how far i should be taking it. i know there's the VLOS rule which means you're supposed to keep it in sight but honestly at like 400 feet away it's already pretty hard to see especially against a bright sky. feels like that rule is kind of impossible to follow strictly?

part of me wants to push it further just to see what it can do range wise but also i really dont want to lose it. not even sure what my actual question is here, just kind of wondering how other people handle this when theyre still getting used to flying

yeah VLOS is one of those rules that sounds simple until you actually try to follow it. the thing people dont tell you is that orientation awareness matters way more than raw distance ? knowing which way your drone is facing when its a tiny speck in the sky is genuinely hard and it's a skill that takes real time to build. i'd say before you start pushing range you should get really comfortable with flying it close enough that you can tell orientation without looking at the screen. once you lose track of which way it's pointing and you input a direction and it goes the wrong way, thats where people panic and crash.

as for how far ? honestly keep it closer than you think you need to for now. the footage from 200 meters away looks basically the same as 600 meters away most of the time anyway, youre not missing much by staying conservative

I actually lost a drone doing exactly this lol, went out over a lake to get a shot and got disoriented because the wind had pushed it sideways without me realizing and I input the wrong correction. got it back but it was a whole thing. these days I basically never fly where I can't immediately land it safely if something goes wrong, which sounds boring but I've stopped having scary moments