You've earned your FAA Part 107 UAV Pilot License. You've purchased a killer quad-copter. You built a wicked website. Now the calls are coming in and it's time to make some money with this thing. Seems easy, but once the hardware is off the ground, tunnel-vision takes over and it's easy to lose focus of what's going on around you. Here are 10 Tips for flying safe missions and keeping your wits about you.

1. PREPARE AND ADJUST THE NIGHT BEFORE, WHENEVER POSSIBLE. Preparation is key to mission confidence and success. We use checklists for everything. Batteries charged, CHECK! Take-off pad stakes, CHECK! Beer, CHECK! (Oh wait, not beer, gear!) Canned air, CHECK! Getting prepared and adjusting to needs the night before will allow you to focus on the client and the mission the day of. Nothing can throw off a good gameplan like forgetting to pack your props or not charging your controller. Prepare and adjust!

2. THINK LIKE NOAH - PACK 2 OF EVERYTHING. You never know when you're going to get cut off in traffic, slam on your brakes and spill your milkshake on your microfiber cloth. Now, you have no way to clean the lens on your drone camera. Not good. If you have two or more of everything, chances are reduced that you'll be unprepared once you get to the gig site.

3. BUY STOCK IN CANNED AIR. For droners, canned air is like oxygen tanks for divers. We need to keep all of our assets clean and free of debris as much as possible. Microfiber cloths are great but you need to blow the majority of the dust off first before wiping your lenses. Keep plenty on hand and take some with you on the mission.

4. CHAAAARGE! Without a charged controller and fully charged batteries, missions become simply, a miss! Make sure to spend some quality time with your nearest 110 outlet and get those items boosted up for fly time! Oh, and if your mission is an early-morning rendezvous and if your controller requires your phone or an iPad, DO NOT FORGET TO CHARGE THOSE GADGETS TOO! Many missions might be so early in the am that you won't have time to charge your phone or iPad on the way.

5. GET AN FAA LICENSED PILOT VEST. Because of the nature of our work, the curious public loves to innocently interrupt our missions and ask ten thousand questions, often in mid-flight. This is a major distraction and can be the difference between Mission Accomplished and Oops, sorry I flew my drown into your CEO's window. Hi-Vis vests can deter curious onlookers from approaching, and if it doesn't, perhaps the text on the back of the one pictured above will.

6. STUDY THEY WIND. Because the wind plays such a huge roll in drone stability, battery life, and overall deliverable quality, pilots should always know ahead of time what role the wind could play in every mission. If you're venturing into a dusty environment and you know the wind will be 15-30 mph with 40 mph gusts, you might want to reschedule. Get familiar with accurate weather apps like Wunderground and NOAA and check that wind report early and often!

7. TURN ON AIRPLANE MODE. Let's say you're flying a mission inspecting a high-dollar cell phone tower complete with guy wires, barbed wire fencing and situated next to a busy superhighway. You're 398 feet up and trying to zoom in on some manufacturer's product numbers when all of a sudden, Mom calls. NO BUENO! To avoid the noise, it's wise for pilots to turn their devices on Airplane Mode to avoid unwanted communications during flight. With DJI hardware, you should pre-cache maps for this to work appropriately. Open DJI GO 4, and hit the menu in the upper right of the splash screen (first screen that comes up). You'll see the Offline Maps option there. You don't need to be plugged into the controller or connected to the drone to do this.

8. TELL OTHERS WHERE YOU WILL BE. It may seem high schoolish, but many missions put us in places that our loved ones may not be aware of. It's always a smart, safe practice to tell your loved ones where you'll be, and approximately how long you'll be there. Drone missions can be a solitary endeavor. Don't let your solitude be your demise. Tell others where you'll be.

9. ALWAYS WEAR BLAZE ORANGE OR HI-VIS YELLOW. Why? Not just to look like you're official, or a hunter, or an official hunter. But imagine that you're flying and your drone is almost out of the visual line of sight. Suddenly, the drone loses GPS. You hit the RTH button, but nothing is happening. You've now lost most of what makes your drone easy to fly. You're only option is to manually fly it home. Problem is, YOU CAN'T EVEN SEE THE THING. If you can't see it, you don't know which way to steer it. One helpful tip is to look for YOURSELF. You might have a distinguishing vehicle or you might be posted up by a distinguishing landmark. But nonetheless, when you lose visual contact with your drone, you can use your POV view to look for yourself when flying back home. That's a whole lot easier when you're not blending in with the environment. As long as you're not sitting on a pile of traffic cones, wearing hi-vis helps with the manual RTH tactic.

10. LEARNING YOUR BVLOS. Because it's the rules, you should know how far away you can see your drone before it becomes an issue. As a pilot, you're bound to be asked at some point, "How far away can you fly this thing?" Well, according to the FAA rules, that really depends. Some of it depends upon an individual pilot's vision. While I might be able to see my absolute unit of a jet black DJI Matrice 600 Pro up to a mile away on the right day, you might not be able to see your shiny white Mavic Mini past 1/4 mile. Much of this has to do with pilot's vision, drone size, drone color, atmospheric issues, etc. You should launch your drone and fly it away from you while keeping eye contact the entire time until just before losing sight. Then, look at the distance that was. This will be your observable BVLOS distance, and you can actually adjust your controls to not fly past that distance.