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Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

fpvsim.com

71–80 of 136 posts

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#71
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eventually you’ll want to fly non-DJI quads If you do FPV for fun, maybe. If you do it for video needs you'll most likely getting a drone, usually DJI, and sticking with it.

Interesting, I am just getting into hobby and it looks like not many are flying dji for racing, some fly dji air unit ( just the video cam for video tx/rx but drone hardware rarely for freestyle. Even for cine dji does not dominate. What’s really cool is that a lot of people build and modify their drones as flying acro can lead to a lot of crashes:-)

DJI is not very good in terms of end to end latency which are necessary for racing. They are good with packed techs, but racing market is too small for them.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#72
post #46

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…

Bombs and artillery is the main weapon, FPV drones are a novelty and they're being limited by being tied to the remote pilot. Pilots don't really scale that well - it takes a long time to train, and they have to be relatively close to the drone, so they're vulnerable to counter attacks. Autonomous drones are supposedly already used for oil refineries (vision based navigation, to mitigate GPS jamming), once this tech…

> once this tech trickles down to smaller drones

We're almost there: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369380266_Channel-A...

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#73

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…

Lancets are much bigger problem for artillery as they are not as limited in range as FPVs.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#74
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…

Sorry, this tutorial is meant to be played with the on-screen virtual joystick. Not many people have radios lying around after all.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Checkout Jumper too, they are the biggest competitor of radiomaster, might offer better price with similar quality.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#76
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…

I was able to fly the DJI avata in full manual mode with maybe only 4 hours in a sim. I'm not sure if that's because it just "clicked" or if the avata is just way easier than other FPV drones. I definitely think the ability to exit FPV with a click of a button and it's crazy durability have allowed me to be comfortable taking risks, which has made me a better pilot.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#77
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eventually you’ll want to fly non-DJI quads If you do FPV for fun, maybe. If you do it for video needs you'll most likely getting a drone, usually DJI, and sticking with it.

Interesting, I am just getting into hobby and it looks like not many are flying dji for racing, some fly dji air unit ( just the video cam for video tx/rx but drone hardware rarely for freestyle. Even for cine dji does not dominate. What’s really cool is that a lot of people build and modify their drones as flying acro can lead to a lot of crashes:-)

DJI make the best easy to use quads that are basically GoPros that can be positioned anywhere in three dimension space at command. If you have a vlog about how you’re going off grid or hiking the Appalachian trail, that’s what you should use.

For true FPV, the DJI quads are way too limited in many ways and are not exceptional at anything - they’re a solid high-end Toyota Corolla.

The DJI video system is very good, and does make its way into a lot of custom FPV quads. But it’s very heavy and high latency (also, just as bad: variable latency), so never used for racing. And it’s also too heavy for smaller aircraft. It’s also more expensive than all alternatives, once you get past about 3 builds.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The drone controllers usually have more resolution than your typical PlayStation controllers. They can get recognised as USB joystick anyway. If you prefer game pad style controllers, you can use radiomaster pocket/Zorro depending on your budget.. ELRS version.

+1 on the controllers resolution part. Just add to it, gamepads usually do things like dynamic frame rate for power saving reasons, these features are not the good if you do fly drones for competitions. Good to get a OpenTX/EdgeTX based controllers, which offers 1Khz frame rate in newer versions.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#79
post #40
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d avoid the DJI controller if you want to truly get into FPV. Eventually you’ll want to fly non-DJI quads (eg the o3 air units are too heavy for whoops, so you’ll be analog or HDZero) so stick with ELRS. The arguably best all rounder controller at a decent price point is the radiomaster boxer at about $99. Their pocket model is only $55 and super compact, but isn’t really full sized.

> Eventually you’ll want to fly non-DJI quads If you do FPV for fun, maybe. If you do it for video needs you'll most likely getting a drone, usually DJI, and sticking with it.

Even if it is just for fun, having a more powerful and a separate controller - that isn't tied to the video system is very valuable. If DJI signal gets lost, you simply punch out or trigger return to home using your ELRs controller.. and know that the quad will be safe..
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