so i finally pulled the trigger and got a drone, its the mini 3 pro, been wanting one for like two years and my wife finally stopped giving me grief about it lol. anyway i charged it up and took it out in my backyard yesterday and honestly i was kind of terrified the whole time. like i barely moved the sticks and it was already way over my neighbors fence. i just hit the return to home button and let it come back.

my question is i guess... how do you actually get comfortable with it? like do most people just practice in an open field or something? i dont really have anywhere huge near me. also should i be in sport mode or the normal one to start? i read something about different modes but honestly the manual is confusing me more than helping

normal mode absolutely, do not touch sport mode until you feel really solid with the basics. sport mode turns off a lot of the obstacle avoidance stuff and the thing will just fly into a tree no problem. i made that mistake early on.

for practice honestly just find a park or an empty parking lot on a sunday morning. what helped me most was just hovering in place and getting used to how it responds to tiny stick inputs, the mini 3 is pretty gentle so that works in your favor. just try to keep it within like 30 meters at first and slowly push that comfort zone out. took me maybe 4 or 5 sessions before i stopped feeling like i was gonna crash it every second

im pretty new too so take this with a grain of salt but the dji fly app has these tutorial flights built in that walked me through basic maneuvers which helped a lot. also i watched a ton of youtube videos before i even flew mine the first time, just searching stuff like beginner mini 3 flights. also yeah avoid sport mode for a long time lol i accidentally hit it once and nearly had a heart attack