so ive been flying for about 8 months now, mostly calm days because honestly wind just stresses me out. had a few sketchy moments early on where the drone was just getting pushed around and i panicked and almost lost it. since then i kind of just... avoid it. check wind speeds obsessively before going out and if its more than like 10-12mph i stay home.

but im starting to feel like im just not getting better because of this. i see videos of people flying in pretty serious conditions and they make it look easy. obviously experience plays into it but im wondering if theres a more intentional way to build up to it. like do you just gradually go out in higher winds or is there more to it than that. also does the actual technique change much when its gusty vs steady wind, because those feel like completely different problems to me.

gusty and steady wind really are different problems, you're right about that. steady wind you kind of just compensate for and your aircraft handles most of it anyway in GPS mode, your biggest issue is just return-to-home into a headwind eating battery faster than you expect. gusty is where it gets interesting because the drone is constantly making corrections and if the gusts are sharp enough you'll see it struggle to hold position.

the way i got more comfortable was honestly just going out in 15mph days and staying close, like within 50 meters, and just hovering. not doing anything fancy, just watching how the aircraft responds, feeling the sticks. once that felt boring i'd go out in 20mph. the incremental thing really does work. also learning to read where the gusts are coming from by watching trees before you arm is something a lot of people skip but it helps a lot with not being surprised mid-flight.

one thing that helped me was switching to attitude mode or atti mode on calmer days to practice actually controlling the thing without GPS doing all the work. feels terrifying at first but after a while flying in wind feels less chaotic because you're used to the drone drifting and correcting manually. not saying go fly in a storm with atti on lol but it builds a different kind of muscle memory