Hi All,
I have a question. Been flying quads and Hexa for awhile now and would like to make the jump to FPV. What was your experience on the first flight? How was your learning curb? Easier or harder than flying traditional line of sight? be intresting to read your responses. Thanks.
My first FPV flight, even though it was over 2 years ago I remember it perfectly, I was nervous to the point of barely being able to hold the TX! It was bad enough that I had to rely on my Mikrokopter's altitude hold, position hold, and waypoint flight ability to get through the first couple flights. The flight plan went like this, setup a course around the field using the waypoint mapping and upload it to the Hexa. Set it down at a flight station at the field, take off LOS, engage altitude hold and position hold, put on the goggles and enable the waypoint route, at that point I was just a passenger along for the ride as the flight controller took over and flew to the various points I had mapped. The last waypoint was at the takeoff point so once there I set it back to altitude hold and position hold, then took the goggles off and manually brought it down for a landing, that was the same routine for probably the first half dozen flights while I got used to seeing things from the hexa's point of view.
Once the jitters wore off a bit I started taking off with goggles on and flying around the main field with GPS engaged so I could just stop in place if I got disoriented, still did landings manually without goggles. I think part of the problem I had was that it wasn't very long after I had built the MK Hexa and the cost for the entire setup was roughly 3X what I have invested in each of my current generation FPV quads, it was a substantial sum and I was more afraid of screwing up and crashing the Hexa than anything else. Once I pulled the FPV gear off the Mk and put it on a cheap quad with a far less expensive flight control system I progressed rapdily, the fear factor was no longer there, or at least I wasn't seeing dollar signs in the goggle lenses every time I took off with the goggles on.
Now that I've got a good hundred hours or more flying through the goggles it feels just as natural as LOS and I'm perfectly comfortable flying either way although I do still mange to get the pucker factor going occasionally when something totally unexpected happens and throws me a new challenge while flying FPV , watch this vid from about 1:35 to 2:05, that was a recent OH CR*P! moment that gave me a little angst on the first flight of the day.
Ken