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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

#111

Post by ffsm8 »

MrFantastic wrote: post #109
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…

Velocidrone $20 is the most popular sim with the pros. It's designed to be the most accurate at as cost of graphic detail. They have open races every week. I can place in the top 300 sometimes. You can see the FPV of any of the races. The fastest pilots fly so fast it's insane. It's hard for me to comprehend how they can even comprehend what they are seeing. They will fly though a 3 gate ladder(aka corkscrew) in 1.5…

There is a reason why these fpvs are so successful in the Ukraine/Russian war. Much quicker than a regular soldiers reaction. And it's over.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#112

Post by muu-g »

senectus1 wrote: post #8
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…

I really wanna give this a go. what controller would you recommend?

Check out https://www.fpvknowitall.com/fpv-shopping-list-controller-an... , it describes some of the best different options are depending on budget or requirements.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#113

Post by vdfs »

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…

How do they control them? Is it using Internet/4G? Isn't easy to jam those signals?

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#114

Post by josefresco »

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…

> FPV drones are a novelty

I can't find the link, but I believe I read Russian doctors claiming that drones were now the #1 cause of battlefield infantry injuries.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#115

Post by tekdude »

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…

One other note about simulators is that they include PID tuning (at least Liftoff does), which can be an incredibly time consuming and tedious process with a new quad if you're new to it. It's better to learn that process in a sim where you can change values and see how the results affect behavior right away. In the real world, you typically have to fly back, land, plug the quad into your laptop/phone, change the values, sync, unplug, and take off again.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#116

Post by rhombocombus »

hylaride wrote: post #102
madhato wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ELRS is fine but Crossfire is considered by many to be the superior radio link. The TBS Tango 2 is a great transmitter and comes with Crossfire built in.

Ever since ELRS 3 came out, I haven't met many people that argue that Crossfire is a superior radio link. The fact that ELRS 2.4GHz has gotten to 100KM and even now ELRS 900MHz RX's and TX's are widely available still gives that option, too. The smaller antennas for 2.4GHz are so much more convenient, as well. Also, ELRS has modes to go to higher refresh rates than crossfire in 900MHz (200Hz vs 150Hz for crossfire).…

This is my understanding of the state of the art in transmitter technology too. ELRS equipment and software offer a number of advantages over every other protocol I have used. It’s easier to pair and configure, it offers robust connectivity even in lossy signal environments, and its range exceeds that of any video downlink on any of my aircraft.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#117

Post by 05 »

josefresco wrote: post #114
05 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> FPV drones are a novelty I can't find the link, but I believe I read Russian doctors claiming that drones were now the #1 cause of battlefield infantry injuries.

That’s really impressive, - although for more deadly weapons deaths/injuries ratio would be different than with drones.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#118

Post by kqr »

saidinesh5 wrote: post #83
05 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> To just crash a drone into a large enough target, 6-7 hours is more than enough.

I know nothing about this but this makes it sound like the target is cooperative. Isn't it harder to crash into a target that actively tries to avoid you?

(E.g. listening for propeller whine, shooting at objects in sky, ducking into small openings, having signal jammers, moving/arranging personnel to limit the impact of drone damage, running counter-drone efforts, etc.)

I remember reading that book about the Predator drone and being surprised how much of Predator effectiveness came down to pilot skill, rather than technology. The predator was just a slow, small prop plane, after all. What made it powerful was that the pilots knew exactly how to use those properties (along with knowledge of the enemies' technology limitations) to evade detection and interception.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#119

Post by mosfets »

tekdude wrote: post #115
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…

One other note about simulators is that they include PID tuning (at least Liftoff does), which can be an incredibly time consuming and tedious process with a new quad if you're new to it. It's better to learn that process in a sim where you can change values and see how the results affect behavior right away. In the real world, you typically have to fly back, land, plug the quad into your laptop/phone, change the val…

Definitely agree. FPVSIM allows for PID tuning as well. You can learn a lot on how they affect drone dynamics by playing with the PID values once you know the basics of PID algorithm.

Re: Drone Flying 101 – An interactive tutorial for beginners

#120

Post by mosfets »

sizzle wrote: post #108
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…

Curious, do pilots learn to fly using sims?

Absolutely. Nowadays sims get more and more realistic and you can definitely learn a lot from them and transfer a big chunk of the learning to real drones.
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