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 versatile and popular one is Liftoff and costs around $20, but there are many others, including free ones. You should also buy a dedicated controller since normal game controllers don't work well (the throttle joystick needs to stay where it is instead of returning to center). Dedicated drone controllers can be found around $40-50 used.
And then off you go! Be prepared to spend at least 20 hours on a sim before you can fly IRL (it took me around 100 hours to really be comfortable). It's surprising how well the learned skills transfer from the simulator to the real thing.
* "Controller" isn't used much as a term, when you start looking around. You'll see things listed under "transmitter" or "radio"
* The majority of FPV transmitters use OpenTX or EdgeTX software (EdgeTX is newer and a fork of OpenTX). Both of these support plugging the transmitter in to a host computer over USB, where it can appear as a HID joystick
* ExpressLRS (ELRS) is an open source radio protocol, with 2.4ghz and 900mhz versions. 2.4ghz is a denser waveforms, so better latency, but less penetration (unless you are going loooooong range, default to 2.4ghz). If you buy a radio today, get one with ELRS built in
* ELRS transmitters include Bluetooth. They can act as a BLE controller to a host computer, for wireless gamepad use: https://oscarliang.com/expresslrs-bluetooth-joystick/
* And there is a 3rd option for more convenience, since both HID over USB and BLE wirelessly require a tiny bit of menu fiddling: A dedicated simulator dongle. This acts as a full ELRS receiver, so you would just turn on your radio within range and play the simulator: https://www.getfpv.com/squid-stick-wireless-usb-simulator-do...
And finally, on radios themselves:
* The big split is between smaller "gamepad" style transmitters and full-size box transmitters. The larger versions usually have more inputs than you would use, for other radio control hobbyists (wings/planes/etc)
* Radiomaster is a solid recommendation. Check out the Pocket as an intro radio ($65 USD), and then the Boxer as a step up ($140 USD base, or $260 with all-metal gimbals and upgrades)
* Unless you have a strong reason to, like someone is gifting you a pile of quadcopter hardware using a different protocol, go with ELRS 2.4ghz built in
But there are controllers from BetaFPV that are much cheaper. A friend of mine just got started with the BetaFPV Radio Lite 3 ($60 new) and is very happy with it.
Edit: RC2 -> Remote 2.
I personally have a Team BlackSheep Tango 2 - though I haven't been flying as much as I would like, and have done little simulator time, it's worked fine for both.
If you want to get into the hobby in general, look up Joshua Bardwell on youtube - a lot of great information, including a variety of controller reviews, simulator reviews, and general "here's how to get started" videos. There are of course others, but Bardwell is the only one I'm actually subscribed to (not that I'm any great metric).
EDIT: for a lot of great information, see my sibling comment from Matthew.
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.
If you prefer game pad style controllers, you can use radiomaster pocket/Zorro depending on your budget.. ELRS version.
They have USB ports and can be plugged in and detected as a joystick.
I think 20 hours is excessive. I'd say 30 mins to 2 hours is fine, depending on the user. The most dramatic learning will happen in the first 10 mins or so.
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 seconds.
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 targets. The limiting factor is the amount of drones, Ukraine plans to build one million of them this year domestically.
Apart from jamming, there's not much to defend yourself against drones except staying underground, or moving fast enough that there is no time for you to be spotted and tracked. But drones can see kms away and move at hundreds of kmph, then go after you personally, even inside buildings, and even at night with infrared vision.
In an interview they asked a drone-ace how many ennemies he killed, he said he couldn't remember; "Do you remember how many cups of coffee you drank last year?".
I am not sure what to think about all this, but it is certainly fascinating
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 build and fly drones, then a simulator is absolutely worth every penny. You pay for real drone crashes with time and money, and you probably need 100 hours of practice before you can handle the real thing (and not that well).
If I were going to get back into the hobby, I'd probably try to do long range fixed wing aircraft with FPV and flight automation. The view will be much more enjoyable and the batteries will last much longer. I think there's also less community pressure around RC planes vs. drones, especially the loud racing ones.
I don't really care about freestyling - I'm more interested in cruising over forest canopy, and having a reliable return to home function if radio signal gets lost. (I have probably 15 built out airframes; over time I probably need to replace defunct hardware, but a lot of it still seems reasonably acceptable. Quite a few f7 controllers for example.)
I've been thinking of pulling the plug on getting a dji mavic (maybe mini pro which is 249g and doesn't need a licence, but also thinking of another dji mavic pro also). A1/A3 is around £200 elsewhere.
If this is an indication of what it is like to fly real FPV drones, I'll have to put a lock on my wallet.
You wouldn't want that because throttle is essential for flight control unlike with fixed wing where it's somewhat set and forget in many situations. It's partially alleviated by 'real' radios not having a spring on the throttle axis, so it stays in the position you've put it and part of it is just more practice..
Not springing back the throttle to neutral makes a lot of sense and would probably help!
Is this
(1) because my turns are uncoordinated,
(2) because I have an incorrectly configured viewport,
(3) because I'm not cut out for FPV flying, or
(4) a matter of persevering and getting used to the perspective?
For FPV drones there are many more options. I think one of the best brands is GepRC but there are so many others, it's impossible to mention them all. Still, for the video transmitting system, DJI is still dominant there as well, but at least you can use alternatives if you really don't like them (Walksnail for digital, or lots of others for analog).
iFlight is probably among the top BnF brands together with GepRC, but nowadays it's cheaper to build your own (used to be BnF/PnP ones were cheaper than parts, no longer the case).
If you want a commercial off-the-shelf drone, nothing is remotely close to DJI, really.
If you’re learning to fly FPV, get a betafpv all inclusive kit like the cetus series - that’s what I started on.
Eventually though, if you’re flying hard you’ll crash hard so you want to know how to build and therefore fix your quads. I highly highly recommend Joshua Bardwells DIY build kit and YT video series.
But you can also buy bind-n-fly quads like the Nazgul.
If it's dji like flying, there's skydio .
If it's fpv racing, freestyle etc ... There are many ready to fly options. Starting at 50 grams all up weight for indoor flying to 5" 200+kmph racers to bigger 7" long range quads..
Autonomous drones are supposedly already used for oil refineries (vision based navigation, to mitigate GPS jamming), once this tech trickles down to smaller drones things will get really scary..
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.
That is here now. Small drones are appearing in Ukraine that target vehicles and infantry using machine vision and thermal imaging. This is driven by RF jamming that limits FPV. Also, the terminal phase of a small drone attack is often where the attack fails and automating that improves effectiveness even when FPV is possible. Less skill is necessary when a fighter can just designate a target and hit the 'kill' button, so this is a force multiplier.
An interesting story on this is found here[1]. Quantity serial production is underway and it will be in wide use very soon, as in the next couple weeks. One thing they've done is secure the software to prevent reverse engineering.
[1] https://mil.in.ua/en/news/drones-with-machine-vision-are-bei...
Another thing that stands out to me in that article is the claim that production is limited by component availability. An obvious thing to do is further enhancing these drones by converting them from suicide drones to bomb delivery vehicles so they can be reused.
> Bombs and artillery is the main weapon
That's a generalization that overlooks a great deal in Ukraine. It's like selecting some organ in the body and calling it the "main organ." These drones frequently provide precision forward observation that enables artillery and precision missiles. It's a system, and without FPV observation, FPV interdiction and other contributions Ukraine wouldn't be performing as well as it has.
As for optional, full autonomy on small drones - I suspect it's further along than many might expect.
We're almost there: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369380266_Channel-A...
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.
Someone is gonna end up using something like a global hawk (spy drone) to deploy smaller kamikaze drones.
Headed to production
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, Dana and Caesar are optimized.
Since the advent of quick and cheap FPV drones, moving artillery on the road is much more in danger, and dug-in guns with jammers, SHORAD and overhead protection again regained the survivability edge - albeit mainly because russia lost most of its modern radar.
The only western SPA with any chance of survival seems to be the PZH2000, as its on a tracked carriage allowing it offroad movement and concealment and being better armored than most wheeled contemporaries on Lorry-Chassis
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 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.
I am not downplaying the impact that drones in general have, and I'm also not claiming that FPVs cannot significantly shape artillery operations within 5-10km of the front line.
Here's the rub - Russia is clearly cable to assembly company sized AFV elements (though not consistently) to attack. And yes, we see these attacks generally get repulsed (with significant FPV drone involvement). So we know that Ukrainian ISR + FPV combination (Ukraine has been limiting its artillery usage) can be overwhelmed in the deeper space - it is possible to mass company sized elements, and transit them through into the line of contact, reasonably intact.
There's no denying that PzH2000 is more survivable than Archer or Caesar (that is infact the entire point of Archer and Caesar - trade suitability and tactical mobility for strategic/operational mobility). But you're also missing like... M109? Like by numbers, there were more M109s donated than any other western platform.
FPV drones carrying anything more than antipersonnel grenades are heavy, with limited range and can have EW sensors track the control link signal sources that can then be responded with artillery.
Since a lot of the adaptions have happened, FPV pilots on both sides have become more about harassing the enemy than a strategic flipping of artillery doctrine (which was shifting to more mobile batteries before FPV drones came into the picture).
On the other hand, that's also what someone bragging insincerely would say...
Anyone knows if in China such men loses are acceptable for the population.
For me personally that’s too boring.. Long range is illegal in lots of places; in the US you technically need a spotter and the craft needs to be in direct line of sight, and pretty close because it should be visible with unaided eye - so, no binoculars.
3.5" is the sweet spot where you can build a sub 250g (or almost sub 250 - do cops really carry kitchen scales on them?) drone with decent performance that doesn't scare people when you fly around and still has the performance close to a 5" one and you can still do all of the tricks. The only drawback with 3.5" is that they're more susceptible to wind, so if it's always very windy where you fly, maybe consider a 5". Oh, and you also don't need to install a remote ID module on a sub 250g quad.
I need to check the rules closely because there's exceptions for rocket powered gliders but I don't think i'll be able to launch at a sanctioned event and will probably have to go out to FAR (friends of amatuer rocketry) which is a multi-day drive for me. Tripoli, the main governing body for experimental high powered rocketry, has rules about guided recovery with some exceptions for gliders. I have a feeling a rocket powered glider would have to remain in sight at all times which wouldn't be the case with an 'M' motor sending it up. Someone building a rocket that can fly to 100k feet and then land at a waypoint would attract a lot of unwanted attention from authorities and be bad for the hobby which is why those rules exist.
I just bought my first fixed wing, but it made me realize why i like my sub 100 gram " 3" toothpick" kind of quads even more. i can fly those around the home, i get 10+ minutes of flight time (trust me, it gets annoying after 8-9 minutes and you need a break before you fly the next battery!), and even if i crash that 1S toothpick into something or someone, you barely cause a scratch..
what controller would you recommend?
FC are essential for long range missions typically, but I have pushed several miles on just GPS overlay in my video feed.
There's also freerider fpv, DRL, and Liftoff. They're all pretty good, honestly.
Sub 250g drones such as the DJI Mini series and the Autel Nano will give you the most flexibility in places you can fly legally.
Portugal requires approval from the coast guard if your planned flight is within certain distance from a beach/the sea, which is quite easy in a coastal and islands country.
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.
For FPV flying it's a little bit different. In theory, it requires to have a "spotter" who will watch the drone when you fly, and the same other rules apply. But if you're flying in your backyard, close to the ground, or indoors, nobody will notice or care.
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 EU".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDIgPN9TWS8
Yet to fly it though but this will fit o3 nicely. Range is always limited by your Video signal anyway..
A 5" fpv quadcopter is already terribly dangerous, it happily pulls up to 50A, goes above 100km/h easily, and the rotors shred through flesh like butter, so it makes sense to at least regulate it somewhat. When I started, I had drones fall out of the sky because my battery connection was not firm enough and while I have by now quite some confidence in my soldering and building abilities, that's always something that can happen, so I naturally stay away from roads, regardless the rules.
For flying 5" drones, I usually take a trip to the country side where there's plenty of space. It's already stressful enough, and that way you can enjoy your flights much more without endangering people. Nobody ever asked for my permit, though, and nobody ever measured my signal strength and asked whether I have the required HAM license (which is far more involved getting). I don't fly in densely populated areas, at least not with my bigger drones. Sub-250g drones are barely regulated, and while they can hurt as well, the risk of serious injury is quite low - so you can try tinywhoops (which come even under 50g)
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.
> to evade detection and interception.
I was under the impression that the Reaper was typically used where US has air superiority. There is an international combat guy on Youtube who fought with the YPG in Rojava and has been hunted by that type of loitering drone, he said they are easy enough to hide from, but the main thing is that they are almost always around-- and eventually lead to complacency. To quote the IRA: "we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always."
You don't have to worry about stalling, latency, accuracy etc.. they are also harder to shoot down because of their size and speed.
So they simply select targets like a moving vehicle or a bunker or even a group of moving people, and go kamikaze.
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
That’s not to downplay artillery though: you simply cannot deliver the volume of fires with drones that you can with tubes.
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 2000 Gepards) And as Gunlorrys have to travel and fire on certain roads, that decreases the problem space.
For the M109, you are completely right. I missed that one.
I am not saying that tube artillery has a problem, but that ~10-20km around the line of contact seems to be the place you don't want to rely on mobility alone for survivability. Rheinmetall currently seems to be developing a 100km ranged base bleed grenade for 155mm pipes.
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.
I have flown (below 120m obviously) in Portugal near the beach with a <250g drone after checking their UAS map so it would be good to know what I missed? Possibly you are referring to some additional local restrictions?
1: https://www.anac.pt/vPT/Generico/drones/operacoes_transfront...
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)
To have line-of-sight. Actually being able to see the drove is usually not possible - seeing a small drone at 40m high is near impossible after a couple hundrend meters away, especially as it moves.
Of course nobody actually tries to be able to really see the drone.
> The drone must be visible to the naked eye and remain within the pilot's field of vision. Immersion flights (FPV) and the use of follower drones are possible, provided a second person is present.
https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F35675/...
Also, ELRS has modes to go to higher refresh rates than crossfire in 900MHz (200Hz vs 150Hz for crossfire). ELRS is also being rapidly developed(https://github.com/ExpressLRS/ExpressLRS/releases/) and has Gemini dual-channel modes (including cross-band support that doesn't have hardware for it yet), whereas crossfire (or TBS in general) has barely done anything.
And ELRS is cheaper (as it's open source) because of multiple hardware vendors and is more widely available as TBS has always had rather poor inventory management (their site now shows as unavailable for many components).
Don't get me wrong, crossfire was an absolute game changer when it came out, but TBS has really stagnated over the past few years.
Anyway, I just wanted to warn anyone on the market against either DJI or BetaFPV controllers - DJI ones only work with drones that have O3 on them so if you want to fly a whoop you're going to buy another controller. And there's an issue where when your video link to the goggles breaks, your controller is offline for a couple seconds - that's all it takes to lose a drone when flying long range. Not being able to react to video loss by gaining altitude is Not a Good Thing(TM).
Regarding BetaFPV: First, their gimbals are crap. Their build quality is crap as well. Oh, and it doesn't run EdgeTX, doesn't work properly with its own ELRS module when flashed to ELRS v3 and doesn't have a screen so that when you lose your drone good luck using telemetry RSSI to locate it.. Radiomaster Pocket is much better value for the same money
DJI remotes work with Caddx Vista as well (the predecessor to O3); those are digital video systems that offer much better quality than analog.
I have no experience with BetaFPV remotes, but I know they're cheap...
Well, you're technically correct (the best kind). They work with first gen VTXes when they're upgraded to the V01.01 firmware. The catch is that if you upgrade your V1/V2 Goggles will no longer work with those VTXes.. And now there are Goggles 3 that aren't even compatible with O3 VTX yet, and it's 50/50 on whether or not they'll work with first gen - it's all a pretty big mess compatibility wise :)
Crossfire has OTA updates from the TX to the RX's, so you just need to update the transmitter and updates can then be pushed to RX's next time you connect. On crossfire, the button on the TX's always allowed for easy push-button binding.
ELRS was a pain having to flash and update binding phrases via wifi, which often had poor wifi chips on cheaper receivers. You often needed to take your RX, update it near a computer, update the binding phrase, update your TX, update the binding phrase on it. You had to do this for each RX individually (still do for updates).
3.4, released just last week, now allows for push-button binding on RX's (the button was originally reserved for recover modes on boot).
However, once you're configured and bound, ELRS is technically better at every turn. If they figure out a way to get OTA updates (harder for them as there's dozens of different hardware vendors with diferent designs and limited flash space on them) to RX's, there's no reason to do crossfire. The only remaining issue with ELRS is that there are bad vendors with poorer quality hardware, but it's only an occasional problem.
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.
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.
Yeah, as I said for FPV and for non-video, people fly other stuff.
But for non-FPV and also for video (meaning the millions doing: content creators, news, advertising, corporate, event videos, etc - don't know what Hollywood uses) typically use DJI.
But for millions doing content creation (professionally), news, ads, events, and such, I see DJI dominating. Again, I mean the non-FPV space (unfamiliar with that).