How in the world do you fly FPV??

crayfellow

crayfellow

Member
OK fellas,

I learned to fly line of sight using a 250 quad. I decided today to see if I could pull off basic FPV flying, instead of handing the kids the display. Wow! I can see this working on a larger craft with rock-solid alt hold and all that. But with mine, I must keep tweaking throttle to keep it at a constant altitude. I think it has become second nature flying 3D, but it feels impossible when flying FPV.

So - do you FPV flyers tweak your flight controllers to a point that you don't need to mind altitude, or are you just so good at flying that it all works and you're never worried about maintaining altitude? I just couldn't look away from the craft, I was only ever able to glance at the screen just for fun to see what it sees.

My 250 has cc3d btw, great FC but no GPS of course. It's like learning to drive first on a manual, so I really appreciate that.

Any advice welcome!

Cheers all,
Patrick
 

MadMonkey

MadMonkey

Bane of G10
We're just awesome like that ;)

It definitely isn't easy until you've had a lot of practice, or an extremely stable aircraft. It can be hard to take that first step and transition into fast forward FPV flight, but once you do it gets a lot easier.
 

crayfellow

crayfellow

Member
well, tonight I entered into the ranks of those who have lost craft. Our "little flier" was a pinpoint of light in the sky and I could see the light twinkle when I would pitch it toward me, but something, wind, distance, sheer altitude, or whatever, prevented me from navigating it back. I went looking for it and had to give up, then break it to the kids :(.
 


Motopreserve

Motopreserve

Drone Enthusiast
Damn! Sorry to hear you lost your MR. It's an awful sinking feeling. It was probably worse breaking it to the kids.

But I t happens, and you'll get back on the horse.
 

R

Rgolfer

Gearing Up to Fly
Motopreserve said:
Damn! Sorry to hear you lost your MR. It's an awful sinking feeling. It was probably worse breaking it to the kids.

But I t happens, and you'll get back on the horse.
Click to expand...

It does happen, sometimes more than once. On the next one, just spend a lot of time learning how to get it home when you aren't sure what is happening. And, practice close to home.
 

crayfellow

crayfellow

Member
yeah. Since we have a big family (4 kids) we are usually around home. This happened right down the street. All I can think is that the wind was extremely strong way up there, so once I got sufficiently high it got pushed that way fast. Then turning back and pitching forward either wasn't enough to fight the wind, or it was much farther/higher than I thought.

I'll be looking at those little beacon devices.

The CRAZY thing is I had just mounted an FPV display on the tx, but didn't take the lens cap off before flight or even think to check the screen (which obv would have been black anyway) when all of this was happening. Then at least I could have gotten its perspective just as the little twinkle of light fell behind the trees...
 

R

Rgolfer

Gearing Up to Fly
On the occasions when I found a down copter it was almost always further away than I thought when it was in the air.
 



crayfellow

crayfellow

Member
so, after that horrible experience, I've been thinking about how to prevent that from ever happening again. I am compiling a list of loss-avoidance measures that I hope will be useful to others as well. I had prepared for lots of scenarios, had battery telemetry with Taranis voice warnings, all of that, but was not at all prepared for this.

So on our next rigs, I am considering some combination of the following:
* Lost model buzzer: all FC's seem to have some support for loud beeping when armed after some configurable period of inactivity. I did not have this configured on the cc3d I was using.

* StickNFind / Trackr / Tile / DIY BLE beacons: as a product developer these are interesting to me. Use an app to at the very least find out if you are within 100+ft, and if you are, tell you if you are "warmer" or "colder" as you move about. For our purposes this needs to be something with a replaceable battery; Tile is one that requires a new unit every year and that is awfully wasteful.

* Solid radio failsafe configuration: I hadn't done this at all. On a GPS-equipped FC this is normally RTL/RTH - right? But on a simpler FC like cc3d or kk2 you would want this to be all channels off, or something, to it doesn't float off into the ionosphere or go full-bore into someone's window. I'm curious what others have for failsafe config on the simpler FC's.

We looked all over the woods where it most likely "landed" and the brush is so thick it could have been within a few feet of the trail and we wouldn't have found it.

Any other ideas, even for new products but also for things you're using today, that help with this scenario?
 

Motopreserve

Motopreserve

Drone Enthusiast
On the simpler FCs I always bound the radio fail safe with a combination of stick/switch positions so that it kicked into Horizon (or whatever the FC called level mode) and throttle slightly under hover so it lowered slowly.

Fortunately, never had to see it in action - and never had the nerve to test it :)
 

crayfellow

crayfellow

Member
I see people use Marco Polo too. It would be nice instead of the separate handheld unit to just have a transponder on the craft, then a 900MHz to Bluetooth LE bridging device so you could use a smartphone as the UI. Maybe I will talk to them about developing an idea like that together.
 

S

Stacky

Member
The overwhelming vast majority of people never test the range of their radio. I did it after having been flying for about 3 years and was shocked to find my range was just 600 meters on a Futaba 10c. I was under the impression I should be getting 1km or more. Placement of the rx is important, it can add quite a bit of distance available if done correctly.
As motorpreserve mentioned failsafe setting is important. I had mine set to just below hover and did have it kick in once while flying fpv. Went out of radio range and all of a sudden went into auto level and then descended to a hard landing in an open field . Also had a location buzzer.
But everyone should be range checking their radios so they know the limit of their flight range, be it 600 meters or 2 kms. Dont just rely on what the manufacturers or other fliers tell you.
 

crayfellow

crayfellow

Member
when our poor 250 was a distant point of starlight in the distant sky, it was still in range per Taranis RSSI. The deep panic set in when I got a low cell voltage warning and low signal simultaneously, while struggling to bring it back. I had the X8R PCB antennae tie wrapped to the underside of the front arms, and this worked OK although I know it is not necessarily ideal for diversity.

Failsafe just below hover for a simple 250 setup sounds perfect. I will need to play with that to make sure I get it right. Obviously the proper level for a decent battery voltage will not be identical for a dying battery, so it'll be best effort.

What kind of buzzer did you have @Stacky? Something on the FC to beep after inactivity, or some sort of beacon? The "perfect storm" of the other night was it began to rain while I was searching at 10PM. Bottom line with that flight is I should have minded the weather and not gone out to begin with.
 


Mactadpole

Mactadpole

Member
Been there on watching a copter fly away, sorry. I definitely learned my lesson that day.

I did use this radio telemetry setup for a long time - http://com-spec.com/rcplane/index.html w/one of these: http://com-spec.com/rcplane/index.html
I had to use it once and it worked perfectly to find a copter in the woods about 2km from where I was flying. Luckily I was able to track the copter on the ground station to see where it went down. Drove as close as I could to those coordinates and picked it up right away on the receiver. The two copters I have now delivered to organizations have included one of these with the kit.

I am now trying out a Garmin 220 dog tracker that I picked up for a decent price on ebay - https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/on-the-trail/discontinued/astro-220/prod8576.html

It's pretty cool that you can also see the flight track on the Garmin GPS. Haven't had to use it for a recovery yet but here is a link to a story behind why I purchased it (starts 4th paragraph) - http://ecosynth.org/profiles/blogs/magic-numbers-panama-edition
 

M

Mike Chevalier

flyandride
crayfellow said:
well, tonight I entered into the ranks of those who have lost craft. Our "little flier" was a pinpoint of light in the sky and I could see the light twinkle when I would pitch it toward me, but something, wind, distance, sheer altitude, or whatever, prevented me from navigating it back. I went looking for it and had to give up, then break it to the kids :(.
Click to expand...
Next time you lose one, go back after dark. Those LEDs stay on for a long time.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.
Top