Anyone else fly FPV drones?  I got into drones a couple years ago when I decided to 3d print one during the initial lockdown vacation.  It wasn't the best, by far.  Pixhawk 4 FC on Arducopter firmware, 10" props, hard to tune, crashed a lot.  6 months in, built a tiny whoop on Betaflight, crashed alot, rebuilt, tried again.  Finally invested $20 into the Liftoff game on Steam, and figured out Acro flight mode.  These days, practicing trippy spins on it.  A few quads later, everything except the DJI Inspire 1 v2 is running ExpressLRS on Betaflight or INav firmware.  Still running analog VTX, might upgrade to OpenVTX in the future.  Here's my fleet.

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With my 4" and 10" setups, I can cruise around my neighborhood, literally, with ease.  Local flight rules state that I can fly over properties in transit at 250' AGL, which I only due if there's not a street path to follow.  My neighborhood is outside of regulated airspace too.  I do have people stop and chat sometimes when they see me outside, they all know who it is when they see me flying by.  Here is a recent flight on my IFlight XL10.  First turn around was at 1 mile, I've been out 1.6 miles with it, and will go further when I get more comfortable with it.  Good fun, always get a thrill when I send a few hundred bucks flying far away.



What are you flying?  Let's see those fleets, and videos.  I've got some stunts gone wrong stuff too, on the smaller whoops.

Some of us.

@uglygun

10 years (almost 30 of fixed wing) from micros a couple of inches across to heavy lift film rigs.

About to pick up a Nazgul or Sector for some higher speed GoPro fun.

Nice.  I'd love to do a cinelifter just to say I have one.  Not super big, maybe the Holybro Kopis X8, with 8 2806.5 motors, just to say I have one.  I'd be scared to fly with anything expensive on it.  I just watched a video the other day, guy was flying a cinelifter around, and forgot about battery management, ended up rolling the whole rig down the side of a big sandy dirt hill.  That thing will probably never fly right again.  

I don't have a better pic right now. This is one I was flying a few years ago:

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8 T-Motor U7 420kv motors

That thing was a monster. And scary.

That was right before the Inspire came out as well so it was a huge waste of money. I'd do an Inspire 2 in a second if I wanted a production rig again.

Nice!  I do plan on getting my Part 107 one of these days, maybe make a bit of money at this hobby.  Long story on that Inspire 1, I ended up getting it for free, and the feet on it didn't have any scratches, so I doubt it'd ever been flown.  Batteries were dead though.  Then I was gifted a pair of TB47's, brand new.  Not that they're worth much anymore these days, but still, a nice setup.  I'd like to mount a camera and vtx on it though, then be able to fly fpv while someone controls the camera on the slave.

That big rig was set up that way with an FPV cam in the front, which I wanted initially but INSISTED on after almost whacking a telephone pole on our first shot for a film in Mobile

Somebody used to make an FPV retrofit for the Inspire, not sure if they still do though. Honestly that would be a really simple and fun 3D printer design project to make an all in one mount for a camera, transmitter and battery that you could Velcro on when it's needed.

I still want an Inspire 1, they're good birds. Just haven't really looked for one.

At this point I'm trying to find a good DJI alternative for commercial work (which I'm not doing right now but want to get back to later) and still photography/smooth cinematics.

But for a bit I'll be experimenting with freestyle and GoPros with Reelsteady for more fun shots.

I'll have to look into that Reelsteady app, I tried the Gyroflow out last week, but didn't see much of a difference with it.  I guess I need to dig into it a bit more before I abandon it.

Left off 2 years ago with a macro 10in on 3115 Tornado 640kv motors that ran 6s2p 18650 packs I built.  Designed and cut the entire frame and could do 7-8 minutes of spirited flying just from storage voltage alone.  6000mah likely would last every bit of 25 minutes just cruising, my 7in was 19-21 minute flight times on 6s2p.    Thing flew very nicely for a 2000g drone.  Rebuilding for 8s would make it a rocketship.

Tried 900-1000kv motors with 6s but could not sort the tune.  It would hit 60mph at half throttle in the space of around 25 yards.

Made any of my 5-6in freestyle rigs and my Xclass on 8s seem slow.

Put down the FPV stuff when I started buildi g a 330kv 5215 Xing motored 22inch build.  6mm carbon fiber main plates and 1m on x/y axis.   Just the batteries alone would be 6s8p for around 22-24 amp hours of battery, 2400g of battery alone.

Went back to working on my cars and building up my 66 Mustang.   Have a lot of lipos that have been sitting at storage voltage for 2 years.   Gonna be a pain to start sorting through them.



As for Reelsteady...

Fuckin bought the full version about a month before they came out with the lite version for gopros.

There is also some fuckery with Premiere requring a specific build to use the full version.


Regular gopro motion stabilization has come a long way with the 8 and beyond.

That sounds like a monster.  I'm getting 16 minutes from a 4s1p 2200 pack on my XL10 with 9045 props just cruising.  My older 3s1p 5500's are worse, too heavy, and only 50c, just not enough.  They gave me 12 minutes on the 3d printed 10" I built first, but are tired now.  They're relegated to rc car use now.  I have a Slash no prep car that is a beast with them, though not class legal.  I have been neglecting my '64 El Camino these past couple of years, I know what you mean.  

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I bought a Emax Tinyhawk 2 in mid 2019 and it slowly turned into an obsession to buy better gear. I think I have 12 or 13 quads at the moment and spare parts to build another 4. I've been participating in some local races and constantly breaking stuff. Velocidrone helped me a lot.

It's ok, we're here for you, brother.    I sent my old Fatshark box goggles, a Flysky I8 tx, and a Mobula 7 to my stepdad last month after he told me he broke his Holystone camera drone.  He's probably driving Mom crazy about now, and ready to move up.  He's flown planes in the past, has a few Spektrum tx's around, but never flew fpv except for his friend's DJI fpv drone.

   I talked to a guy flying a mavic 2 in Fernley yesterday.  Windy 15-25
  Closest I've been to them.  The dude does video of truck stops. Trucker himself and killing time.  
Nice guy.  Made me want one .lol

From 2016-2018 was spending more on FPV than on the 4 mustangs in the garage...   that included buying my 66 mustang in 2017 for 4500 while still making payments on the 2015.

Things like buying a CNC mill, PC for design, building on average one FPV drone a month while stashing away spares.

Have a pair of Fatshark HD2 and HDO's.  FrSky Taranis with fullpower crossfire long range radios x2.    A base station suitcase setup with monitors and remote dock king ground stations that I can swap RX modules on.

Basically salad days of FPV buying lots of spares so I have shit for the future if everything were to be banned.    Probably 20 quads in total from a 3.5in 80mph ripper to the monster heavy lift which should generate 80 pounds of thrust.


Spent a fair amount of time playing with multiple camera builds while coining the "cheaterkwad" term for being able to make it seem like you are flying backwards while in reality being on a rear facing 2nd FPV cam.
Got stupid while engaging 3D mode for upside down FPV cams to include a 3rd camera.

Last time I was really experimenting and flying


Still chat with some of the FPV crowd.   Instagram is great for that.   Mr Steele is a huge car guy.  Probably the most interactive dude in thr community and we chat more about car shit than drones.   Things have quieted down for a lot of the original RotorRiot crew.   Lots of them have gone on to doing professional FPV flying which is a long way from their days of building dives.

From the little that I read and understand, the FAA requires you to have line of sight with drones.

How does FPV setups differ from this?

Can I fly a FPV miles away because I can see where the drone is with goggles?

I really want a little whoop with FPV setup, they are very neat.

FAA rules on the goggles are stupid as fuck and they require a spotter.

I outright ignore it.

If you tried to follow all federal, state, county, and local flight restrictions, you would only be able to fly on a simulator.  Seriously.  My city allows flying in a few parks.  Yet, if you abide by their rules, you'd be flying in restricted airspace in one of them.  Second, the parks are never empty, so you'd be breaking the "don't fly over people" rule.  The next town over, the FAA's own app, B4UFly, shows no restrictions 100yds from the end of their active municipal airport runway.  Yet their city has rules that state that you can't fly in their parks, within 5 miles of their airport (which encompasses my city's side of a mountain range between them), and "city's wide open spaces" which, by map, include literally a couple hundred square miles of open desert.    So, don't bother people or air traffic, don't call attention to yourself, and enjoy the flying.