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Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

fpvsim.com

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Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#51

Post by simion314 »

fvdessen wrote: post #39

Not entirely unrelated, but FPV drones are now the main weapon of the Ukraine war. They started using them against tanks, then groups of soldiers, but have now found that they are cost effective enough to go against individual soldiers. The drone soldiers operate in small teams from underground bunkers close to the front from which they launch hundreds of drones a day, with different types of drones for different tar…

Hopefully this will make invasion much more costly, so smaller countries will have more chances to survive their imperialists neighbors. Sure the criminals can level your city but they need toe eventually move their troops in to pillage the resources and then you can make them pay. Only downside is with countries that can afford to lose 1000+ men a day for years, it will cost them and you a lot.

Anyone knows if in China such men loses are acceptable for the population.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#52

Post by poulpy123 »

coldtea wrote: post #42
DeathArrow wrote: post #10

Too bad in most parts of the EU is illegal to fly drones. You can do it if you are far from populated areas but you need to go trough a complicated bureaucracy and obtain a permit before each flight.

Not sure for FPV (don't own one), but it's quite trivial to get an operator license/registration, and you don't even need one for a certain smaller / more toy-like class of devices. And this covers most parts of EU. For 99% of flights you also don't need any per-flight "bureucracy". There are some limitations, like X height in city, not above crowds, no "no-go" zones, but totally not "illegal to fly in most parts of…

In france, Drone less than 250gr are legal without any documentation in autorized places (or more exctely where it's not forbidden) but you need to be able to see the drone. So FPV is legal as long as the drone isn't too far.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#53

Post by kqr »

05 wrote: post #17
kqr wrote: post #15

Huh, once I figured out how to switch to first person view and acro mode and hooked up my PlayStation controller this was surprisingly fun – it behaved a little like a more friendly helicopter simulator. The most annoying part was that I couldn't have throttle on a completely separate control from the rotation axes, and the frequent brief freezes I got in Firefox. If this is an indication of what it is like to fly re…

> The most annoying part was that I couldn't have throttle on a completely separate control from the rotation axes You wouldn't want that because throttle is essential for flight control unlike with fixed wing where it's somewhat set and forget in many situations. It's partially alleviated by 'real' radios not having a spring on the throttle axis, so it stays in the position you've put it and part of it is just more…

I was actually thinking more in terms of helicopters having the collective on a separate input from yaw... bur then again, helicopter pilots use their feet to yaw, not their fingers.

Not springing back the throttle to neutral makes a lot of sense and would probably help!

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#54

Post by coldtea »

poulpy123 wrote: post #52
coldtea wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure for FPV (don't own one), but it's quite trivial to get an operator license/registration, and you don't even need one for a certain smaller / more toy-like class of devices. And this covers most parts of EU. For 99% of flights you also don't need any per-flight "bureucracy". There are some limitations, like X height in city, not above crowds, no "no-go" zones, but totally not "illegal to fly in most parts of…

In france, Drone less than 250gr are legal without any documentation in autorized places (or more exctely where it's not forbidden) but you need to be able to see the drone. So FPV is legal as long as the drone isn't too far.

>but you need to be able to see the drone

To have line-of-sight. Actually being able to see the drove is usually not possible - seeing a small drone at 40m high is near impossible after a couple hundrend meters away, especially as it moves.

Of course nobody actually tries to be able to really see the drone.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#55

Post by icegreentea2 »

exar0815 wrote: post #50
fvdessen wrote: post #39

Not entirely unrelated, but FPV drones are now the main weapon of the Ukraine war. They started using them against tanks, then groups of soldiers, but have now found that they are cost effective enough to go against individual soldiers. The drone soldiers operate in small teams from underground bunkers close to the front from which they launch hundreds of drones a day, with different types of drones for different tar…

Drones basically have flipped the total modern artillery doctrine on their heads. With the proliferation of fire-finder-radar, modern artillery started to switch from dug in stationary guns to highly mobile "shoot-and-scoot"-tactics, in which a gun quickly fires half a dozen rounds in a time-on-target salvo and relocates to dodge the counterbattery fire. For this, modern Artillery systems like PZH2000, Archer, RCH155…

Uh, I'm not sure FPVs have all of the effects that you're discussing.

FPVs are significantly range limited (~10km), and have relatively small surveillance footprint. It's true that persistent ISR is significantly increasing the danger posed to all vehicles within the 10-30km (perhaps further) of the 'front line', but these are predominantly coming from different classes of drones.

And yes, while FPVs can be queued onto SPGs (or whatever) by these other drones, so can other means of fires (like traditional artillery). As a reminder, tube artillery can usually reach out to at least 20km.

I am not downplaying the impact that drones in general have, and I'm also not claiming that FPVs cannot significantly shape artillery operations within 5-10km of the front line.

Here's the rub - Russia is clearly cable to assembly company sized AFV elements (though not consistently) to attack. And yes, we see these attacks generally get repulsed (with significant FPV drone involvement). So we know that Ukrainian ISR + FPV combination (Ukraine has been limiting its artillery usage) can be overwhelmed in the deeper space - it is possible to mass company sized elements, and transit them through into the line of contact, reasonably intact.

There's no denying that PzH2000 is more survivable than Archer or Caesar (that is infact the entire point of Archer and Caesar - trade suitability and tactical mobility for strategic/operational mobility). But you're also missing like... M109? Like by numbers, there were more M109s donated than any other western platform.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#57

Post by btreecat »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #23
bambax wrote: post #22

There are two big families of drones: FPV and non-FPV (sometimes called cinematic). Flying non-FPV, GPS stabilized drones (like the DJI Mavic family of drones) requires almost no training, you just put the drone in the air and it stays there, waiting for your instructions. Flying FPV (in acro mode) has a steep learning curve (but is, arguably, much more fun). The way to learn is to use a proper simulator. The most ve…

What dedicated controllers would you recommend? Is there a FPV that works for both drones in real life and in games? Any ones in particular you like?

Yes. Look into radios from radiomaster with ELRS or multi protocol hardware.

They have USB ports and can be plugged in and detected as a joystick.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#58

Post by btreecat »

avidiax wrote: post #2

It's quite annoying that every stage of the lesson requires you to recalibrate your controller. When I learned to fly racing drones, I used Velocidrone; I have no experience of FPVSim. Even if you don't plan to eventually fly an acrobatic or racing drone, the sim experience can be a bit relaxing & focused. I used to practice on a 2nd monitor while I was in large mandatory group meetings for work. If you do plan to bu…

Wings are just so much fun because of the longer flight times and no need for a flight controller.

FC are essential for long range missions typically, but I have pushed several miles on just GPS overlay in my video feed.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#59

Post by bambax »

coldtea wrote: post #49
wepple wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends what type of video, doesn’t it? I’m surely biased but whenever I see people working on high-end film sets they’re using serious cinelifters, and even for property filming you typically see cinewhoops, and for action sport (motocross, drifting, etc) you’ll never see a DJI

Not talking about Hollywood or high end film sets. Or something like a Nike or Superbowl ad, which has the budget of a small movie.Those can use anything, even real life helicopters. Also not familiar what they use for sports (another special case). But for millions doing content creation (professionally), news, ads, events, and such, I see DJI dominating. Again, I mean the non-FPV space (unfamiliar with that).

Content creators tend to use FPV more and more, because it lets them do tricks and "spectacular" shots not possible otherwise. But in many cases, even if the drone itself isn't DJI (and it usually isn't, for now), the video system is DJI (O3).

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#60

Post by btreecat »

05 wrote: post #12
avidiax wrote: post #2

It's quite annoying that every stage of the lesson requires you to recalibrate your controller. When I learned to fly racing drones, I used Velocidrone; I have no experience of FPVSim. Even if you don't plan to eventually fly an acrobatic or racing drone, the sim experience can be a bit relaxing & focused. I used to practice on a 2nd monitor while I was in large mandatory group meetings for work. If you do plan to bu…

> If I were going to get back into the hobby, I'd probably try to do long range fixed wing aircraft with FPV and flight automation. For me personally that’s too boring.. Long range is illegal in lots of places; in the US you technically need a spotter and the craft needs to be in direct line of sight, and pretty close because it should be visible with unaided eye - so, no binoculars. 3.5" is the sweet spot where you…

Still need a spotter. And if you have 107 for YouTube money, then sub 250g doesn't give you any alleviation from RID.
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