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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

#81

Post by mosfets »

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…

Nice! Glad you liked it. Try a webkit based browser instead like Chrome/Safari/Edge, I'm not sure how much WebGL optimization firefox carries.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#82

Post by praptak »

icegreentea2 wrote: post #55
exar0815 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 on…

Domakha has ~50km range.

Here's a report (in Polish) from a FO mission to correct HIMARS fire (sadly the drone was lost but the Russians had to send a fighter jet to shoot it down with a rocket): https://x.com/Aldohartwinska/status/1792838189494706220

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#83

Post by saidinesh5 »

05 wrote: post #46
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…

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…

> it takes a long time to train, and they have to be relatively close to the drone, so they're vulnerable to counter attacks.

You'd think so. I mean to fly a quad properly, you'd need like 20-30 hours. To just crash a drone into a large enough target, 6-7 hours is more than enough.

As for having to be relatively close to the drone, range extenders these days seem to go a long way.. or even having a receiver outside a safe bunker - that seems to be how the Ukrainians/Russians fly these days.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#84

Post by Aachen »

fp64 wrote: post #13
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.

I am a registered pilot. Had to do an online course and learn about restrictions, took an hour and was free and is valid across most countries in EU. Most stupid restriction is that for FPV, a spotter is required. But if I stay away from people/buildings I am permitted to fly up to IIRC 6kg drones

Is being in the vicinity of roads okay? And what does "stay away" mean, just not fly up to or over them, or maintain hundreds of metres distance?

I remember the Dutch laws said, before European alignment in 2020: 150 meters from any uninvolved person, any road, or any building. Since fields generally have less than 300 meters between two roads, that means you can try to fly between trees in some forest (somehow making sure there's not a person in a 300 meter diameter from the quadcopter) or inside your own four walls. It was essentially banned outright. Not to mention that a large percentage (majority?) of the population lives inside of airport no fly zones because there's smallish airports sprinkled everywhere, but that's understandable even if the omission of a height restriction is a bit silly (if you would be allowed to stay below the height of a large flat and are several km from the airport, any plane would be striking buildings sooner than your device... but people are stupid and we probably need this hard rule with safety margin)

I think the location rules are more relaxed now but I don't know them by heart anymore. Stopped taking them seriously during the total prohibition period. If it is now only about people and buildings (and perhaps highways or such), the location rules are making more sense at least.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#85

Post by icegreentea2 »

exar0815 wrote: post #68
icegreentea2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 on…

>>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. Yeah but that's the whole point thats been discussed in interested circles - the shift of the vulnerability of SPGs from the firing to the travel phase in absence of accompanying VSHORAD. (If they just had 200…

Ok that makes sense.

I agree that persistent ISR has dramatically increased the vulnerability of especially road bound SPGs behind the line of contact.

I guess in my first post, I was emphasizing that the catalyst for this increased vulnerability was not the FPV drones, but rather of ISR drones.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#86

Post by Aachen »

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.

The line of sight requirement prohibits FPV altogether, unless you have someone else maintaining the line of sight requirement for you

You're not looking at the drone when you're looking at your goggles, or at least that's how Dutch laws were explained when I last looked into them, and nowadays they're aligned in the EU or maybe EEA (edit: looked it up, it's still like this but I think what changed is that your spotter can be the line of sight fulfiller and they needn't be able to pilot the device, they just need to be able to tell you of danger nearby)

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#87

Post by evantbyrne »

05 wrote: post #46
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…

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…

I wouldn't describe the large scale use of FPV drones in conflicts over the past couple years as a "novelty". They perform reconnaissance on a scale that wasn't previously possible; harass, pin down, provide target coordinates for, and even directly attack infantry squads; and destroy immobilized or poorly armored vehicles. That's not even mentioning the single-use specially made drones with larger warheads, which are capable-enough of taking out armored vehicles that tank designs have been forced to evolve.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#88

Post by fullspectrumdev »

icegreentea2 wrote: post #55
exar0815 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 on…

FPV drones have been used at much longer ranges than that - it’s pretty well documented with videos that with repeater systems there’s now been strikes in excess of 25km using FPV, by both sides.

That’s not to downplay artillery though: you simply cannot deliver the volume of fires with drones that you can with tubes.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#89

Post by AndrewKemendo »

05 wrote: post #46
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…

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…

We’re already there

Headed to production

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#90

Post by is_true »

consumer451 wrote: post #67
is_true wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is with the autonomy. Someone is gonna end up using something like a global hawk (spy drone) to deploy smaller kamikaze drones.

Ukraine already does the mothership thing using a larger multicopter, and there is a company working on the autonomy part. They are supposedly close to releasing the product. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40428492

it's "cool" tech but unfortunately not in the industry I would like
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