www.helifreak.com

Sims are a good place to start.    They will get your muscle memory down to help you fly with fewer crashes.

They will also teach you how to scan from top down.

Flying FPV everything will enter the frame of view from the top of the image.

It is largely why you will find nearlt EVERYONE recommends 4:3 ratio cameras and matching 4:3 goggles because it gives a wider field of view towards the top of the image while flying.

Versus 16:9 cameras/goggles which are restricting.

Drones fly with an angle of attack that comes from uptilt on the FPV cam.    As you increase that uptilt your thrust vector changes which increases your speed.   Easy to figure out of you imagine a 0 degree uptilt camera.

What some do not grasp is that at a certain point of very high uptilt your roll axis and yaw axis start to cross.  Roll becomes yaw and yaw becomes inverted roll.   Stay around 30deg uptilt or less and you will not experience it.   But fly the insane uptilt of 50-60+ degrees and you will fill it, entirely different flying experience.

Sims are great for letting you experiment and get a feel for it.

Sims are not so great at letting you get a feel for ground effect or landing or close proximity delicate work.   But you can develop that as you get an actual quad.

My two favorites for simulators are Drone Racing League and Lift Off.

Largely because they are easy to obtain through Steam.

DRL is largely geared towards, surprisingly enough, the DRL racing series.   It is awesome to be able to compare yourself to actual DRL pilots who participate in the races.    You can tweak some things in DRL to make it seem a little more realistic.   They also have a large selection of custom environments for lots of practice be it racing or freestyle practice.

LiftOff seems to be slightly more realistic in how the quads handle straight out of the gate with no fiddling.   But the maps generally are smaller.

Velocidrone is the other sim that is decent, seems to be very specialized to trying to provide a good racing simulator experience.  

I have all 3 and DRL and Liftoff have been my primary sims.

The Radiomaster controller is likely to work well for your purposes for the sim as well as being able to move forward once you grab a quad to actually fly.

Plug n play quads on the OpenTX protocol will probably be pretty easy.   Just take care with the FrSky "access" stuff as it may be a bit of a bastardized FrSky protocol, too long to go into here but FrSky has been trying to power play with OpenTX and people are pissed over it.   They went from recommended to not recommended.

I have two FRSky X9D radios but they are the older radios that are pre-Access protocol.


For things like plug n play drone reviews check out Josh Bardwell and Painless 360 on youtube.    They will have a lot of various drone related stuff from radios, to binding, to Betaflight, and ready built quads reviewed.

It is hard to give advice on what direction to go for a first starter quad because it is almost invariably wrong.


As you learn to fly your experiences will change dramatically as you learn to fly/crash/rebuild and that impacts your preferences.   At some point you just have to jump in and go for it.

Micros have come a long way but if you are iffy on soldering the smaller components of a micro can be a bitch to work on.

Just the standard 5in stuff may test a person that hasnt been soldering for years.

Buddy of mine started on a prebuilt(ViFly, avoid that shit) and it was not long before he said fuck it and was starting to build his own.   He fried some parts early on with mistakes.   But he learned quick.   He was able to rebuild the Emax babyhawks himself but quickly found it was worth moving on to choosing his own components.

Things are a bit better now with some prebuilt 5in and even a few micros.   Dont buy without lots of research or ask for 2nd opinion.

I have the Radiomaster TX16S. I've been using it on a EMAX Tinyhawk II and Tinkyhawk II Freestyle with the Frsky protocol. Though I haven't tried other receivers, its definitely awesome to have that option. The overall quality of the radio is pretty good, but feels hollow and cheap (IMO).

As far as sims go, I don't have much experience. I tried Flowstate, but I can't get it to recognize the controller. I have been using Velocidrone, but it barely gets by on my 2-1 laptop. On the lowest settings and basic maps, I'm still able to fly and I can say it helped me out a lot with learning to fly in acro mode.

Edit: In the past month I ordered a 4 inch LR cruiser and two 5 inch freestyle quads. One of the 5 inch quads was a PNP, so I had to re-learn how to solder wires. Soldering on the receiver wasn't that bad, but I read the diagram wrong and it took me 4 hours to realize my mistake.

I also feel like micro quads are fun to fly indoors and help with learning controls and some proximity flying, but it also hurt me when now trying to fly 4 and 5 inch mini quads. I'm still having a hard time trying to make turns using mostly roll inputs vs wide turns using yaw.

Play with your uptilt.   Try 30deg if you are at 10-15deg.


And remember to roll first adding yaw to match roll.

Yawing first generates the loose skid effect.

Friend of mine used to yaw and then pitch for his turns.  Wound up with him hitting a lot of things because he wasnt using his thrust vector to his advantage.


That is where the sims fall flat.   Many of them do not properly convey a sense of mass or carry their nass like a real quad does.

So if you simply yaw your craft does absolutely nothing but rotate on an axis as you fly perfectly straight.

Roll and pitch help with the vector of thrust to couteract the mass while adding coordinated yaw just makes it looks pretty as you fly.

I have my 5 inch quad cameras set around 40 degrees. It's more of trying to work out instinct and muscle memory of using yaw in turns.

40 isnt bad.

Have you tried lowering the angle just to really over exagerate the difference?

Really starts to put everything into perspective as you play with the uptilt.

30-40 was a spot where I was for a LONG time because I liked the amount of bite through the corners.

But when it came to some freestyle aspects it really kinda started to hurt me.

Especially if you try to carry momentum backwards off an object as you pass it to yawspin and fly backwards.   Low camera tilt naturally carries momentum nicely.


I have a quad with on the fly adjustable uptilt from 0 to 60 degrees.    It is a mind fuck to fly because coming out of a dive with 60 degrees is HUGELY different than coming out of the dive at 0 degrees uptilt.

I haven't messed with the camera angles on the 5 inch quads. I just set them to something moderate to after watching the Velocidrone tutorials. Figured it would be good to keep the speed and flow in turns, but I'm still new and open to suggestions.

I did get into FPV for freestyle, so I'll give it a try and lower my camera angle a bit. I just tried it out on Velocidrone. I've been messing around and trying to do a inverted flat yaw spin (term?). My brain can't keep up with the stick movements and orientation, so I've been sloppy with the transition out/recovery. The lower camera angle helps with the inputs and controls being closer to the natural axis.

Yup.

Changing camera angle is often times the secret sauce.

A good mattyflip is so much easier with 50-60 degrees.

But yaw spins and other types of juicy flying is easier with low 10-15 deg uptilt.   Not to mention longer flight times.

I’ve been using the shit out of my Mavic Mini and decided to get in to FPV. I bought a Betafpv 2 Pro, LiteRadio 2, and Emax goggles - and promptly cut the shit out of my hand trying to get it to work at all. Whole different ball game.

Two days later, and I’m starting to get decent in a simulator and have the muscle memory down enough that I’m looking forward to getting out tomorrow and flying with it.

How many people actually measure camera tilt? I do.  General freestyle, cruising, and whoops get set about 20.  Maybe 25 if I'm flying a faster quad the same day. My 4s Tiny Trainer is my more race oriented quad and it's set at either 30 or 35.  I find anything above that to be pretty much un flyable in my yard.  I'm either staring at sky or flying so fast a crash is guaranteed.  At my preferred angles, I rarely crash outside.  The whoop inside is another story, but that's kinda the point of a whoop.

A rough guesstimation (looking at fingers) of about 30-40 degrees on my 5 inch and 2.5 inch freestyle quads. After the discussion above, I'm looking to lower them a bit. I think I need to find a protractor.

I think my 4 inch cruiser is around 20-25 degrees.

Same with my tiny whoop. Pretty much flat because I'm flying slow indoors.

I learned about it too late, but have you looked into setting up one of your switches to acro trainer mode?

Oh yes, and I’m resisting the urge to set up custom curves. Not yet. :)

Rates make or break the quad sometimes.


I am gonna go ahead and say that if you are running over 800 deg a second you are likely fighting yourself.

And if you have not played with expo yet you need to do so right the fuck now.


I run between 650-700deg a second.   I will check my rates later because I forget where I am for linear and super.

I can tell you for a fact that my expo runs at between .20 and .25 for expo.

Expo helps you around center stick for fine control and removes a lot of the jittery flying.   If you hear people refer to "doughy around center" thry almost always are getting there through expo.     The hogher you bump your rates in deg per second the more expo you will likely want to ramp in.

Once you settle on your rates you can fly just about anything.   This is a 10in quad flown at like 50% effort with very little over all stick deflection. This build was super locked by it's 3rd and 4th battery ever flown


/edit


Found my rates.

For RC/Linear I am usually 1.1-1.15.    For super I am around .6.    And for expo I will tweak between .2 and .25.

Should have you in the 600-700deg a second range on Betaflight.


Playing with rates is generally pretty safe regardless of if you go up or down.    Playing with PIDs is where you can really have things go wrong.

Also watch your RC inputs on the betaflight tab.   If they are constantly jumping around at the 1500 mid points you might add in some RC deadband of 3-5 just to make it less twitchy in flight.

You guys with TX16Ss... Backup your models and replace the memory card with something decent. Mine went wacky and I didn't have it backed up. Lost 10 models.

Word. Maybe it's time for me to get the Tango 2 Pro.

Just ordered carbon fiber 18x5.5 and 20x5.5 props for this monstrosity...

Motors are 5215 330kv listed at 6kg of thrust at 25v and 60 amps with 22x5.5 props.  Under propping at 18x5.5 or 20x5.5 shpuld drop my current draw enough that I can still use 100% throttle on 18650 batteries.   Will have a 6s2p battery per motor for 6s8p with 120amp continuous rating and 240amo burst rating.

Should still generate 40-50 pounds of thrust.

Build in right is 13in propped Xclass for scale.

And another bump for a seperate topic that deserves it's own post.



Those of you starting in FPV need to join the ReadyMadeRC mailing list.

RTF now.

They do insane black friday and cyber monday deals.

They often have what is called a "flat spin" sale.   Several products go up for sale and if nobody buys it it will go down by 1% every 5 minutes until somebody buys it.

Then sometimes "afterburner" mode kicks in and the sale will be like 10x speed.

It very much becomes a game of "do I hold out one more minute or do I lose it to somebody else".

It also becomes a game of staying up late while checking bacl every 20 minutes to see if something sold only to have a new item take it's spot.

A 1AM score is not beyond reason.

I have hit huge savings in the past.   Like buying my Fatshark HDO goggles for like 330 bucks when the going price was 425.

Both my Fatshark HD2s and Fatshark HDOs were bought during flat spins and I saved over 100 bucks each time.

Was getting Xing 2207 motors that should have been 85 bucks for 4 on sale for like 60 bucks.


Years back they even had like a 5% of money spent going towards future coupons to use on other orders.

So yeah...  be ready for ReadyMadeRC.   Could be a week of stuff popping up that you might be interested in.

Just go ahead and bookmark this page now

Black friday already being teased

RMRC is pretty solid on sales, I am curious about this year's black Friday sales.

The other one that has been getting a good bit of money from me is Race Day Quads.  Shipping out of Orlando to Idaho is slow, but the clearance section has made that worth while.

https://www.racedayquads.com/collections/clearance

Raceday gets to me in Ca pretty quick with US priority.


Nothing beats Pyrodrone though for quick as shit shipping.    If I order by noon I have it the next day but that is Ca to within Ca but sti.

RMRC, Pyro, RDQ are all my goto.

Cyclone has had some screaming deals too on motors for bigger quads.  27 bucks for 3115s Tornados on my 10in was one of best deals I have had yet.

I have a coupon for RMRC, but their selection and inventory is lacking. I was contemplating and missed out on a Tango 2 Pro they had in stock last month.

My go-to's are PyroDrone and GetFPV.

GetFPV pisses me off because the Trump tarriffs on China goods was potentially going to have a huge effect.

GetFPV's solution was to just charge more spreading it across all their products.

RMRC decided they would just let the pieces hit with any tarriff be the sole bearer of a price increase.

RMRC is also entirely reasonable on their shipping such that they dont use shipping rates as a means of padding profits.    They had done some kind of give away awhile back shedding l8ght on competitors that over charge on shipping.


I am HUGELY loyal to RMRC.   Met most of the guys in Vegas 2 years ago and they are all good dudes.

GetFPV is only used when I absolutely have to have something and everybody else is out of stock.

Yes, it was.  

I just saw a Facebook post about the Radiomaster TX12. Priced at $70. It's stated for a December release.

I only use 4 or 5 out of the 8 aux switches on my TX16S, and it takes a lot of room in my backpack.

https://www.radiomasterrc.com/tx12

I like my 16 channels...


It allows me to do all manner of crazy shit.

Like have 3 or 4 active drones that are all on one controller but seprate video links.

Flip one switch up and it activates one drone.   Flip that switch down it activates a different drone.   Another switch tied to two drones.   Switch for turtle mode and beacon mode on the two drones for switch A and another switch for turtle/beacon mode on Switch B.

Other switches are useful for telling which drone to swap from day camera to night camera.

Then you have a switch for flight modes on case you dont want to be full acro.

As for all those video feeds.   Those goto a case with multiple monitors allowing user to see what is on the monitors.    I can fairly quickly swap between drones with a button press on my fatsharks thanks to favorited channels.

Turn off telemetry so the drone's are not shitting on eachother causing binding issues.


Betaflight tabs window gives you a lot of options for doing interesting things.

Damn, bro. I'm nowhere near that level of operating. I'm still trying to learn how to fly and not crash into things.

Mentioned it just to get ya thinking.   Possible to do some unique shit with drones if you get creative.


Have a 3D printer?    Could make a flying FPV quad/tank thing.

One of these days I am gonna build a tougher version of one of these

I'm looking at building a quad and need some insight on all the required parts to get it flying. I'm uneducated with electrical stuff and maybe it can also help other new builders when trying to figure stuff out.

Frame
Motors & props
Flight controller
4-1 ESC (or 4 individual ESCs and PDB/voltage regulator?)
XT60 battery lead and capacitor
Receiver and antenna
Video transmitter and antenna
FPV camera
Screws, standoffs, mounts, wiring, battery, straps, zip ties, etc.

Anything else I am missing?

You pretty much have it but I am gonna throw some things out there to consider.

30x30 stack size or 20x20.    Not all 20x20s have enough Uarts to support things like GPS(I use it on some builds to have a direction/distance to home along with speed/altitude).

I am partial to the 30x30 Hobbywing G2 stack.  Has a seperate 10v line that is nice for powering the VTX and letting the FC use ordinary 5v to run the camera/receiver/gps.   Has just enough UARTs to get the job done between smart audio, crossfire input, and GPS.  Both ESC and the FC are in many of my builds, xt60 and cap are included.   Keep an eye on RMRC.

Note, I am not a huge fan of the HobbyWing G3.  More amp capability on esc but loses 10v power regulator.


Batteries.   You running 4s or 6s?    4s high Crated batteries of 1500mah are my preferred because it gives you a bit more buffer on drawing amps versus a 1300mah 4s.    I like 6s packs of 1300mqh for same reason compared to 1100mah but 6s with the voltage bump helps drop total amp draw.

Next up props?   Going 5in or 6in.    If doing 5in I really like the S3 ethix prop, lower pitch means more throttle and the benefit seems to translate to more gyroscopic stabilization due to higher RPM than ahigher pitched prop.    For 6in I prefer 6040 HQ props.


Next up motors.   If on 4s you are basically in the 2400kv range for 5inch.

If you goto a 6in build you have flexibility.   A 6inch on 1700kv 4s is one of my most favorite cruising rigs ever.  Not too aggressive and just a nice cruiser that can catch/corrrect itself quickly if you need to without the throttle correction putting you in even more trouble.    You can get some respectable flight times with 1500-1800mah 4s batteries if you stay out of the throttle and use like 20-25deg uptilt.

But the cool thing is 1700kv is pretty much the goto KV for 5inch rigs on 6s.   So one quad could have a 4s pack on 6inch for cruising with one rate profile/tune then swap to 5in props and 6s batteries and basically be at racer level speeds with a different profile.

There are nice motors in the 13-15 dollar range now.  2306 Emax ECO motors are fairly decent along with Xings.  There are others as well(Newbeedrone has an 8 motor set for 100 bucks but it sells out FAST)



For VTX I really am becoming a snob.   But that is after having used a LOT of other VTX and had them not perform very well.   I bought a power meter and tested things like the RDQ Mach3 and found they didnt put out the power claimed on higher settings.

The two brands of VTX that have are the TBS offerings and the Rush Tank offerings.    Both have some TINY little guys that can do like 200mw which is plenty for flying in tight spaces and not going too far.   Their more powerful offerings are "to the moon" status.



For frames, I would watch Pyrodrone.   Things like the Hyperlites(avoid the Flowride, weird stack screw placement, glide is a nice frame) can be had for a good deal.   Also the RotorRiot CL1 or the TBS Source 1 but they will be heavier beater frames.




Lastly.

Do yourself a favor and find the Impulse RC driver fixer.


It has been one of the more useful tools in quad building that I have had.
Why it isnt built into Betaflight is beyond me.


It will do away with the need to download Zadig and fuck around with stm drivers with every new FC that you get before you can flash the newest betaflight firmware(firmware upgrades can come later unless your FC has a frelease of like 3.8 or older).   4.0 and 4.1 are hopefully what all FCs ship with now.

Thanks, man. I'm building a 5 inch freestyle quad using 4s batteries.

I just purchased a Catalyst Machineworks Bang God frame. Should be coming in next week. The frame says it can fit 5.1 inch props, so looking at using Ethix P3 props. I just put them on my Nazgul5 V2 and I'm liking them alot.

For motors, I'm pretty much set on TBS Grinder II 2207 2500kv motors. Looks like some good motors that will take a beating. My Xing-E motors sound like shit (probably just the bearings) and my Mamba Toka motors are doing pretty good, but I wanted to try out something different.

I've been hearing good stuff about the Diatone Mamba FC/ESC stacks. I have a Diatone Roma F5 BNF with the Mamba F405 FC on it seems pretty good. I'm looking at trying F7 controllers and most likely the Mamba F722 for this build.

I've been hearing a lot about RushFPV Rush Tank. Looking at the Rush Tank II, mainly because it has mounting points and that's one less thing I have to worry about.

Also looking at the Rush Blade FC/ESC/VTX. Undecided about the stack combo because it's still new and haven't heard of any experience with them. Saw some comments on videos bashing the Blade FC for using connectors, but thinking the stack doesn't move much so should be good, right?

As long as you have steel screws going completely through the stack top to bottom you are probably okay.  

But PCB esc to stack connectors are generally frowned on.

HobbywingG1 stack used them and I nearly ruined 2 ESCs because of it.   Fortunately it was possible to solder new signal wires from the ESC to the FC and save it.

The JST to cable connections generally are more safe/durable.

Keep an eye on CNHL.  Buy one get one free battery deal coming up or already live.

Have had good luck with their batteries.   Bit heavy but more of a true rating than a hopeful rating(hate Tattu batteries) of some brands.

I didn't get an email or see any social media posts about it. Is this based on previous year Black Friday or holiday sale?

I have a bunch of their Black series 1500mAh 4S. I bought them when they were in 4 pack for $60. They seem pretty good for the price.

My goal when I started was to get my gear in order, then start working on quads.
I figure the radio and googles are the keys to longevity so I went with Fatshark HDO2s and Taranis X9D 2019.
After my radio arrived I bought the TBS simulator Velocidrone before a 1s tiny whoop.

Since then, I've both purchased and built a few of my own.
I'm finding lately, the Larva X on a 3s battery is quite a good time and flies almost as well as my 6s Apex build.
I actually enjoy it more, because if I crash it's only $100 down the drain opposed to larger more expensive builds.

The added benefit is you're already sub 250 for when the FAA comes down on their NPRM.
Good luck with your new hobby, It's very addictive.

You running KISS on that build?

I lost a lot of sleep shopping around and trying to learn about KISS only to figure out early this morning that I still have a lot to learn about flying and tuning in general. A lot of people (maybe just fanbois) rave about how awesome it performs and a lot say it's only marginally better than something running Betaflight. I still don't know how to fine tune the rates and feel the differences, so probably won't do me any good as a novice flyer.

Yes, KISS FC with Mr. Steele's pids.

The interface is not bad, but it's literally KISS compared to all the options on Betaflight.
I honestly prefer my BF builds in how they fly compared to the 6S KISS build. It's very unforgiving.
I think, like guns a lot of that stuff is very subjective in terms of "better". Fly what works for you and makes you crash less.

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Came out a little beefy, but it works.

This is my favorite uas right now, it's so much fun and super quiet.
Added crossfire and different antenna.
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I just got the email this morning when I woke up.   And it showed as a day or two old.

It is weird with CHNL.  Friend of mine gets the emails timely but I am always a day or two late.

So yeah, check their site often for on sale.   I have bought in the past and been happy with the G-plus 100c rated packs and the orange 120c rated.

Awwwwww....

Such a cute little guy.

Meanwhile my props for Kaiju Class came in...   5215 330kv motor to drive it.

I'm not trying to chop my d@&k off

I didn't see any BOGO when I logged in. Did you?

Email said I would have a cpupon tied to my account.   Said something about VIP reward.

Guess early access to the black friday stock

I haven't spent enough to get the VIP benefits yet.