Landing pads
A drone landing pad is a portable mat, usually circular and usually reversible, that you peg to the ground and take off from, so that the aircraft never touches grass, gravel or dust. It is the cheapest genuinely useful accessory in the hobby, it folds into a bag smaller than a dinner plate, and it prevents the two most common forms of slow damage to a drone: grit drawn into the motor bearings, and moisture drawn into the underside of an airframe that was designed to stay dry.
What a drone landing pad is
A drone landing pad is a sheet of coated nylon or polyester stretched over a sprung steel ring, printed with a marked centre and a high contrast border, with pegs or stakes to hold it down. The ring is the whole trick: it holds the fabric taut and flat on ground that is not flat, and it lets the pad twist down into three overlapping circles for carrying. The common sizes run from roughly 50 cm across, which suits a folding travel drone, up to about 150 cm, which is more than most hobby flyers will ever need.
What distinguishes a landing pad from the other things on this site is that it is not part of the aircraft and it never fails in flight. It is also the only item here that is bought for the ten seconds at each end of a flight rather than for the flight itself. Those twenty seconds do more damage to a drone over a season than everything in between, because that is when the propellers are close to the ground and are pulling whatever is on that ground straight up into the machine.
The numbers on a landing pad and what they mean
Landing pads are sold on a diameter and very little else, which makes them the simplest purchase in the hobby, but four secondary figures decide whether the pad is any good in wind.
Diameter is the figure to get right and the one most often bought too small. The pad has to be comfortably larger than the aircraft's own diagonal, not merely larger, because you are landing a machine that drifts in the last metre and because the propellers must stay over the fabric rather than over the grass. As a working rule the pad should be at least twice the motor to motor diagonal of the aircraft. Packed size follows from diameter and is the reason people buy small: a 110 cm pad does not go in a jacket pocket and a 50 cm one does.
Fabric weight decides how the pad behaves rather than how long it lasts. A light pad packs smaller and lifts in a gust. A heavy pad stays put and is a nuisance to carry. The two sides exist so that you can pick the one that contrasts with the ground you are standing on, and on many pads one side carries a large H and the other a large cross. On a camera drone with downward vision sensors, that marking is not decoration: those sensors read texture on the ground to hold position, and a plain lawn or fresh snow gives them nothing to read, while a printed pad gives them a pattern to lock onto.
How a landing pad fails
Landing pads fail in four ways, and the first is the one that damages the aircraft. A pad that is not pegged down will lift in the downwash of its own drone during take off, and it will lift into the propellers. That is not a slow wearing failure, it is an immediate one, and it happens most often to people who have used the pad successfully twenty times on still days.
- Lifting in wind or downwash, because the pegs are missing, the ground is too hard for them, or only two of the four were used.
- Kinking of the sprung steel ring, after being forced into a bag folded wrongly, which leaves the pad unable to lie flat or fold properly again.
- Wear of the coating, which starts at the fold lines and eventually lets water through from below.
- Fading of the printed markings, which matters more than it sounds on an aircraft that uses those markings to hold position.
The failure that is felt in the air is the one nobody attributes to the pad. Take off from an unpegged pad, or from bare ground, and the aircraft ingests dust and fine grit at exactly the moment the motors are working hardest. Nothing happens that day. Weeks later the bearings feel rough when you turn them by hand, one motor runs hot, and the flight time has quietly fallen. Motors and speed controllers describes what that damage looks like once it has arrived; the pad is how it is avoided.
Caution
A pad that lifts into spinning propellers destroys the blades and can flip the aircraft into whatever is next to it. Peg every corner before the battery goes in, not after, and on ground too hard for pegs weight the edges with something heavy rather than flying from an unsecured pad.
Choosing and using a landing pad
To choose a landing pad, size it against the aircraft and then against your bag, in that order. Everything else on the specification is secondary and most pads at any price do the same job. Setting it up takes under a minute and the order matters, because the sequence is what keeps the pad on the ground rather than in the propellers.
- Choose the flattest ground available, and clear the loose stones and twigs from it.
- Unfold the pad and let the sprung ring open on its own rather than forcing it flat.
- Turn the higher contrast side upwards, choosing whichever side stands out against the ground.
- Peg the upwind edge first, then the opposite edge, then the two sides.
- Place the aircraft centrally, with the nose pointing away from you.
- Fit the battery and start up only once the pad is secured.
Folding it again is the part that defeats people, and it is one movement rather than several. Hold the ring at two points on opposite sides, turn your hands towards each other so the ring twists, and let it collapse inwards; it will fall into three overlapping circles by itself. Forcing it, bending it over a knee or folding it in half will kink the steel and the pad will never lie flat again. If it will not go, let go and start the twist again in the other direction.
The alternatives
A commercial folding pad is not the only answer, and for some flying it is not the best one. The realistic alternatives are a hard board, a piece of artificial grass, a home made pad and no pad at all.
| Option | What it is good at | Where it fails |
|---|---|---|
| Folding fabric pad | Packs small, sets up fast, marked for vision sensors | Lifts in wind if it is not pegged |
| Plywood or hardboard offcut | Will not lift, will not fold, dead flat | Heavy, awkward to carry, no markings |
| Artificial grass offcut | Cheap, heavy enough to stay put, gentle on landing gear | Bulky, holds water, no packed form at all |
| Home made pad on a pop up ring | Costs almost nothing, any size you like | Needs the sprung ring to work, and that is the expensive part |
| Hand launch and hand catch | No kit at all, works anywhere | Puts your hand next to the propellers, and is not for beginners |
Home made pads are a real option and not merely a thrifty one. A pop up laundry basket or a collapsible sun shade already contains exactly the sprung ring the commercial product is built around, and a circle of tarpaulin with taped edges does the rest. Three dimensional printed landing gear extensions and printed peg sets are widely shared as files, and printed pegs are worth making because the supplied ones are the first thing anybody loses. A printed pad itself is not practical, since the useful part is fabric.
The case where no pad wins is genuine. On a paved area, a tennis court or a firm short mown sports field, the ground is already clean and hard, and a pad adds a thing to peg down and a thing to lose. Take the pad for grass, sand, gravel, dust, snow and anywhere with loose surface material, and leave it in the car for tarmac.
Is a landing pad worth buying?
Yes, and it is the clearest yes on this site, because a pad costs less than a set of propellers and prevents damage that costs more than a set of motors. Grit in a bearing, water in a shell and a stone chip in a blade are all avoided by a piece of fabric that fits in the same bag as the drone. There is no comparable ratio anywhere else in the hobby.
Where the money changes only the receipt is at the top of the range. A large pad with a heavy fabric, a printed compass rose, weighted edges and a carrying case does the same job as the plain one at a fraction of the price, and the plain one folds smaller. Buy a modest pad, buy spare pegs, and put the difference towards the parts that actually wear out. The parts of a drone sets out which those are, and FPV goggles are the accessory that changes the flying rather than protecting the aircraft. Line of Sight covers the rest of the decision, from which machine to buy to where in the United Kingdom you may fly it.