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Beginner question regarding best budget drone equipment

zazas321

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Hello. I would like to get into drones and now been reading and learning a lot. My main plan is to get a drone and make cool videos and great pictures. I have initially thought of getting a mavic air 2, but then I found out that it is not compatible with FPV goggles which is a deal breaker for me.

I have started reading about custom built FPV drones and just use an external gopro camera for videos which sounds like a decent idea, however, I have some questions regarding selecting my parts. I would like to select some all round decent parts that would be compatible with most other parts.


1. In terms of radio, I am now mostly considering tango 2 or some radiomaster. I am slightly concerned about output power on tango 2 (just 250mw) (even though I do not know anything about mw, but I just now the more is better! :D . Whereas some other radios have much higher power output. Also, tango 2 is only compatible with crossfire. Are there any radios that are compatible with multiple protocols? Also, I am considering a DJI radio but I am concerned about the compatibility between other drones. Is DJI controller compatible with all the other drones?

2. In terms of FPV goggles, I am eventually planning to get a DJI FPV goggles and use their digital system. When looking at various FPV drone videos on youtube, I see people using analog and the quality of the preview is worse than 144p video, It is really hard for me to understand how can they fly and maneuvre so well with this horrible quality. For me it is hands down for the DJI digital system though is quite costly.

3. In terms of drone, I am planning to build my own drone and learn with it. Eventually maybe I will buy a dji drone because I am scared to break it since I do not have much experience with drones yet.


Im also considering new DJI fpv drone, but I am mainly concerned about durability because im definately going to crash and also about compatibility between dji controller with other drones.

Please any suggestions are appreciated! Thanks in advance.
 
There is alot to think about and alot to know when it comes to getting into the FPV hobby! Build or Buy? what radio? What drone to start with? Analog or digital? DJI or Fatshark? and the list goes on... The most important question you need to answer for yourself is what is your primary objective you want to get out FPV? Is it to experience flight from the first person perspective? (way cool!) or learn skills on building drones? or maybe another reason... This will dictate your best path into the hobby.

Let's start with the big news! The DJI FPV drone will be officially announced Tuesday despite all the leaks and information already out. It will have a retail price of $1299 for the kit which includes everything you need: v2 FPV goggles and battery pack, the drone, two sets of props, one battery (20min runtime) and charger and finally the radio. It has a normal assisted flight modes (safety features on, collision sensors, landing sensor etc.) and an ACRO mode. You will not be flying this drone in ACRO mode unless you are an experienced pilot or you enjoy the sounds of crashing. This drone will not survive a crash in ACRO mode. SO... if you want to fly in acro mode maybe start somewhere else. If all you want is to capture cool videos or take pictures, the normal flight modes may be exactly what you want or need. I believe many people will buy the DJI then come over to FPV racing type drones after a crash or to learn to fly properly. For many people, it may be better to start with FPV racing drones if their primary goal is to fly ACRO. It will save them alot of money and tears.

Some people who aren't sure about FPV, buy a $200 kit like the Emax Tinyhawk 2 or Tinyhawk 2 Freestyle. The radio and goggles are junk for anyone serious about FPV, but good enough for anyone to get their toes wet without a big investment. The radio is the first thing you would upgrade, then the goggles or just make the jump to digital once you are convinced you love FPV (2 days later... LOL!)

On the question of build versus buy? What;s your priority? get flying right away or learn take a month to build your drone? Most people want to fly asap and because there are so many good pre-built drones these days as opposed to say4 years ago, it's a no-brainer for most people. Plus pre-builts are actually less expensive in many cases than the sum of their parts. Go figure! It eliminates the need for a bunch of tools up front although a simple toolset is still necessary for maintenance. Buying also eliminates the risk of making an expensive mistake in your build process costing you extra money. The iFlight Nazgul5 V2 is amazing value and comes in 4S or 6S, analog or digital.

The next question is what radio? An OpenTX based radio is the way to go.... the Radiomaster TX16S is amazing as is the Tango2. The tango 2 is crossfire only but that just means you are starting with the best control link on the market and the only minor drawback is that you need to mod it to add a module bay for other protocols (only really necessary if you want to fly tinywhoops). I have both and I love theTX16S for its east of use and great feature and the Tango2 cause it's super portable and small. Don't buy the older DJI radio. It's big, bulky and way too expensive. Once the new FPV radio is available for sale separately, I may be a good option as well.

Analog versus digital is a matter of budget and user experience. Once you go digital, it's hard to go back to analog unless you are using high end analog goggles that cost as much as DJI. I started 6 years ago so I have great analog goggles and use them to this day all the time. I usually pick digital but anlaog has it's place. I fly whoops and micros and even some 5in bashers that are cheap to repair when I'm trying something sketchy.

The last thing is your budget, which might be your first decision as well. a digital DJI setup will cost $800-$1200 (radio $160, goggles $550, drone $250, batteries $40/each, good smart charger $60), a starter kit can be as low as $200 and get you in the game, and an analog setup will range $500-$800 (radio $150. drone $200, goggles $200-$500) mostly dependent on which goggles and video receiver you chose. These numbers are a reasonable estimate but you can go cheaper or more expensive depending on quality of components.

There is no question that a purpose build carbon fiber racing drone will be faster, more nimble and tougher and les costly to repair than any DJI drone. So that needs to be factored in your decision. Even if you don't want to fix your FPV drone yourself, there are tons of people myself included that offer this service at a reasonable rate, but many also find joy in repairing their drones and it's a skill anyone can learn.

Hope this help shed some light on the great hobby that is FPV!!! C'mon and jump right in!
 
Thanks what an amazing piece of information right there! Since I have already got gopro hero 8, I might just get a simple analog setup and learn to fly and control drones before I move to more expensive drones.

Could you clarify something else in terms of radio? How much better is radiomaster tx16 compared to tx12? Is it worth to pay double for tx16?

From what I understand, does not really matter what protocol the controller is working, I can just put various modules on my controller and solder some PCB to the drone and they should pair without issues! Thats good to know.

Getting the right FPV goggles is the hardest decision for me.. I am really worried about the video preview quality in analog goggles. I dont mind dropping 300-400£ for a good quality goggles, but even the top of the range fatshark goggles from what I seen online, have ridiculously bad video preview quality just because they use analog. On the other hand, buying DJI would force me to put their digital module and a digital camera on all drones which would leave me without any room for customization.

I do not mind building my own drone and learning how everything integrates. I have soldering and some electronics knowledge. Also, I have recently found out about nazgul 5 drone which comes prebuilt but seems like a solid choise. Would you recommend?

So now I am mainly considering between goggles and analog/digital..
 
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Hey @zazas321,


In terms of a radio, I tell people this is your tactile link to your quad, you should really think about quality here. You should look at it as a key investment to ensure you have a great platform for learning on. The TX12 id a budget radio with decent potentiometer gimbals with mono chrome display whereas the TX16 is a full featured Hall sensor gimbals radio with a color touch scree (touch screen capabilities only available when OpenTX 2.4 releases). Yeah it's double the price but it's a $70 difference in a setup that will ultimately cost you north of $800 and you will use this radio for one or many drones moving forward. I get the need for budget radios, but in the big picture, $70 towards a really great radio is a great investment. If your overall budget is $300-$400 then don't spend 50% of it on a radio, but I tell people spending 20% of your budget on radio, 30-35% on your quad and 45-50% on your goggles is pretty realistic. You'll also need to factor in the price of a good smart charger and batteries in your budget and pull equally from each percentage when adjusting your budget. Don't drop your radio budget to 10% to accommodate for batteries and charger.

The Radiomasters like many other multi-protocol radios have a built-in multi-protocol transmitter that support a variety of protocols. Just because they support a bunch doesn't mean you should use a bunch and buy quads with every type of receiver. Consider the effort in updating and maintaining the firmware on your receivers as one factor in your decision around what receivers to use. The other factors to consider are range, cost, ease of use and vendor support.

One other thing I didn't mention is that if you go DJI, you could use the DJI control link and not bother with a multi-protocol radio since the DJI air unit has a radio link built in. This means your drones would'n't need a separate radio receiver but it also means you can only use this radio with DJI enabled drones. But there is a small problem. I would not recommend you buy the first gen DJI FPV radio. It is big, bulky and way over-priced at $300+. It's not a bad radio as far as gimbals or range. In fact, it's great in those areas, but DJI will be releasing a gen2 radio in a bit that will be leaps and bounds better as this model has many limitations.

dji FPV radio v1.jpg


If you are struggling with the decision of analog or digital goggles, but also concerned about video quality, let me give you more information that might help. An average pair of analog goggles (low end to mid-range analog goggles) gives you the video quality of a VCR. Maybe you're too young to know what that means, but hopefully you have an idea. High-end analog goggles are like a top-of-the-line VCR when the reception is poor and DVD quality when the reception is good. The color and picture quality also depends on the camera and it's settings. DJI digital is like low end HD (720p to your face). It still has compression and pixel blur is low latency mode or focus mode. One of the biggest differences is that the DJI goggles transmit and receive data back to and from the video transmitter. This means that the goggles can communicate to the video transmitter (VTX) on the drone and request re-sending of missing packets. This creates a highly reliable and consistent video link. Analog goggles on he other hand use a "best effort" in assembling the video information coming from the VTX. Using a dual or diversity analog receiver and different antennas helps alot. Diversity modules (dual receivers) like a Immersion RC Rapidfire, TBS fusion or Eachine Rapidmix capture the video signal on twice. You equip the receiver with a long range and omni antenna the module has smarts to take the best parts of the video from each receiver and combine them into a better analog video to your face. They do a great job at this. The challenge is in multi-path environments (environments where signals can bounce off stuff like buildings) the goggles receive reflected signals at varying times causing the receiver to overlap video signals that are old but just getting there late. This causes distortion of the image. Diversity help solve this issue a bit. DJI digital knows what packets are coming and rejects all the reflected packets so your video stays crisp and clear in these multi-path environments.

Now, back to a major factor of analog versus digital... the price! Below is a list I put together of many of the analog goggles on the market old and new.
goggles.jpg
The highlighted goggles are the ones considered by most as more high-end. (Skyzone 03O is more mid to high end based on resolution). As you can see the price starts approx. $300 and goes up to $500 but pay close attention to the fact that the Fatshark, Orqa don't come with an analog video receiver module so budget another $100 at least. So when you compare the cost of a high-end analog setup to get you DVD quality video versus basically the same price for DJI, it explains why alot of people are choosing DJI. For people who just don't have the budget to spend $500+ at once on goggles, the phased approach to upgrading parts and pieces over time might make more sense. I didn't talk about Fatshark Shark Byte, but it's a digital offering that people who already own goggles with HDMI input are upgrading to protect their existing investment of their goggles. If you're new, it probably isn't a fit unless you choose the phased-in analog approach I mentioned as this would provide an upgrade path to digital down the road.

Lastly, when you go DJI, it means all your quads need a DJI or Caddx video transmitter. These cost of these is $20-40 more per drone over Shark byte digital and $60-80 more over an analog setup for every drone. So take that into consideration.

I hope this helps you in your decisions and don't hesitate to reach out with any further questions.
 
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Thanks for your answer again. Can you clarify:

Lastly, when you go DJI, it means all your quads need a DJI or Caddx video transmitter. These cost of these is $20-40 more per drone. So take that into consideration.

From what I know, if I go digital, I would have to put this to every drone Buy DJI FPV Air Unit - DJI Store. Can you clarify what video transmitter are you talking about and why Caddx? What does it have to do with DJI systems?
 
There are 5 options but only 2-3 good ones for video transmitters that are compatible with DJI. DJI allowed Caddx to build their own "air units" that work with DJI. They are a slimmed down smaller version. None of the Caddx have onboard DVR and there are four models to chose from.
  1. The Caddx Vista (same feature and AIR unit minus DVR and same camera as air unit)
  2. The Caddx Nebula Pro (same feature and AIR unit minus DVR and a smaller 19mm camera that is almost as good as the DJI camera)
  3. The Caddx Nebula Nano (can only do 16:9 wide screen, no 4:3, noL ow Latency / High Quality mode, different latency and a smaller 14mm camera that is terrible)
  4. the Caddx Nebula Micro (19mm camera that is marginally better than the Nano camera can be used with analog VTX as well)
  5. The Caddx Nebula Nano V2 (slightly improved version of the nano V1 but still terrible)
  6. the Caddx Nebula Micro (Eachine edition) (14mm camera that is better than the Nano and camera can be used with analog VTX as well)
nebula pro.jpg
 
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yeah but that is still about 150£ for a whole digital camera setup right? I was confused because you said something about 40$
 
yeah but that is still about 150£ for a whole digital camera setup right? I was confused because you said something about 40$

Yes it is expensive. If you use a DJI radio, it works out to about $40-60 more than an good analog VTX and good radio receiver plus antennas. Multiply this times every quad you want to add DJI digital. It's about $30-40 more than Fatshark Digital.
 
Advice from hardcore fpv aerobatic pilot follows...

STOP

Don't buy any goggles. Don't buy any quad copter.

In fact, don't even proceed past this sentence if you are not a computer technical whiz (can build a PC, for example) and have flashed firmware before, are fine watching tons of Youtube how videos, know how to solder, have a gaming PC (quad core or higher) rig with decent 3D video card, and have previous experience flying in other games. Also, deep pockets. Your going to be building flying robots, and crashing them. A lot. It's really a very foolish, rich man's hobby, but I'll outline how you can mitigate somewhat lighting a whole lot of $100 bills on fire.

If you meet those things, particularly the computer skillz, then proceed. You'll eventually be doing a lot of connecting your equipment back and forth to the PC.



But that's not where you're going to start.



Step 1. Buy a transmitter as your first piece of kit. You'll be using it as a controller.

If your heart has chosen the Tango, then buy it first. I hate the Tango myself, not enough switches, but this is you, not me. Always buy what makes you happy. You're going to be living with it. Even if it's more expensive, buy what makes you happy.


Step 2. Buy a simulator. There really are only 3... Liftoff, Velocidrone, and DRL. If you are broke as hell, buy Velocidrone. If you want to race, buy DRL. If you want to Freestyle, buy Liftoff. Myself, there is nothing but free style, so Liftoff on Fantastic settings makes the other two simulators look like so much rotten ****. I started with Velocidrone and learned to turn in it, but that was about it. I have DRL, and find racing good at improving your technical skills shooting gates and gaps, but otherwise, inane and tedious. In real life, IMHO, at least me, I'm going to be flying alone in the countryside. My gaps and gates are going to be trees. If you have no idea which three you want, I plug Liftoff. It's the caddilac of sims, and only $20. You can get the other two if you want as well, no reason not to own all three. They are cheap. Very cheap.

Step 3. Fly in the Sim. Every day. Hours a day. Like it was your favorite video game. Because it's about to become it. Put 50 hours into, put 100, put 200, put 500, put 1000, put 3000... I'm not kidding. I'm at 1229 hours in Liftoff and can do half of everything I could ever dream. I can see myself putting in another 2000 to be god mode and do every Hail Mary pass I can dream up.

But learn to turn, learn to fly acro, learn to to do stunts, shoot gaps, orbit tree trunks, flat orbit water towers, loop, and a dozen other stunts I can't even name. Become an expert pilot before you ever buy a thing more. Seriously. Would you go out and buy an airplane and then learn to fly it by cranking it up and taking it off. Sadly,t hat's what most people are doing in this hobby, and they are trying to learn the ahrd way.. by busting up equipment after equipment after equipment.

Step 4. If after 1000 hours, you are not bored to tears, then go shopping for your other junk. In real life flying is no where near as fun or convenient as the sim. All the time you're Sim Flying and learning, also be comparison shopping, compiling lists, getting recommendations, price shopping. Not just a controller, goggles, and a quad... you'll need a big forth category... batteries and chargers.

Up until Step 3, you can fly for thousand hours on less than $150... if you get a Realflight Controller instead ... $50 bucks even ($30 for controller and $20 for Liftoff). That's some mighty cheap price for infinite flying and infinite flight school. Use it. Do it.

Step 4 and higher, it goes up to $1000, $1500, $2000, $2500, $3000... and keeps going.

If you want to progress rapidly, you'll spend 99% in your Sim. It would make sense, to put yoru focus and money there first.


That's my advice, It's the difference between jumping into a street fight holding a butter knife... or jumping into a street fight after you've played 1000 hours of Mortal Kombat, and taken another 1000 hours of martial arts classes in real life.


Controller. Sim. 1000 hours.

I'm not joking.

Investment cost: $50-$200. If you find it's not for you, sell the controller, get most of your money back.

Learn to drive, and better, learn to drive defensively and drift and practice, before you ever set foot near a new car lot and drop $50,000 on a new car you have no clue how to fly yet.

It doesn't start at buying the car. It starts, at learning to fly.

You can do it the other way, buying the car, and smashing them up one after another, and many go that route, and learning to drive that way. Eventually you get pretty decent at driving, maybe even really good, after a whole lot of cars and a whole lot of gasoline and rubber.

My way, though, you'll do it way faster, progress at lightning speed, way cheaper, and have way more fun.

For example, Bardwell for a month as a personal challenge, flew 3 packs a day. One pack = 5 minutes of flight. So he flew about 15 mintues per day for a month. That's 30x15= 450 minutes in a month, or 450/60 = 7.5 hours.

I fly 2-3 hours every day just for fun. Pleasure cruising, pushing my skills, trying new things. That's 2.5x30= 75 hours... or ten times as much. Wasn't any personal challenge, it was just me everymonth gaming for 2 hours a day, like a lot of gamers do anyway to unwind.


Choppergirl
CHOPPERGIRL's AIRWAR
My Sound pack: Choppergirl's Edgy Sound Pack for Open-TX English


Interesting side note:

I spent like a month (of a year of Sim flying) in a Sim just overall fine tuning up and down by a point here and there tin a quest to finding my ideal rates and stick lengths. You could never do that in real life. In fact, most people don't... they use the default 1.00 / 0.70 Betaflight stock rates, which have to be the worst ever. I don't know how anybody pulls off flying with them, but they do, and it's a curse.

You can tell they are using them, because their FPV aerobatic footage looks like a marble in a washing machine, hard bouncing and then drifting whenever they have to make a turn. They call it "juicy" flying, but it's really a cursed way of compensating for lack of resolution at the center of the stick of trying to fly horrible default rates. I call it ping pong table tennis turning. I suspect the Betaflight team must of asked someone they thought was a pro in the very beginning, well, what are the ideal rates we should set this around,w hat do you use... and he told them the crackhead meth number he was using to do flippy flops.

If you watch my flying, it's smooth as butter because I worked a long to time to increase the resolution around the center of my sticks to the absolute highest I could get away with and to find my ideal rates to match how my brain expects the sticks to work. I have super high resolution around the center of the stick. If I do a hard slam reverse in direction, it's because I want to, not because it's the only way I can change direction and make it look cinematic. Fling for me is not this after that, it's let my fingers do whatever they want and my fingers follow my brain and go where I want and do what I want without even thinking about it.

Don't worry about PIDs in the beginning, the stock ones will work. Strive to experiment and find your ideal rates after you reach intermediate level and can mostly wherever you want all over a map. When you try a better rate, you will find you crash less, and can suddenly do something that was very impossible or twitchy or hard to do before.

The first thing you're going to have to do is learn to turn. Once you learn to turn, the whole world opens up to you, and you can kind of mostly go where you want to go to explore the map. Getting a controller, getting a sim, and learning to turn in the sim will be your very first goal or milestone. No quads, no goggles, no battery purchases, no buying bottom end BNF angle only toy quads to get a taste of the hobby (waste of money, you can see it in reviewers videos, they have a wall of those as decorations behind them as useless junk they'd never fly any mroe).
 
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No offence choppergirl, but I teach people to fly in real life (IRL) and thy are amazing pilots after 3-4 hours of training. Simulators are not essential and definitely not for everyone. My background is motorcycle racing and my experience has been that the trick to proficiency with any new skill is to break down the required knowledge into specific steps and have a systematic approach to building your skills. Using drills and repetition builds muscle memory. I've helped 100s of people learn FPV this way without a simulator. The problem with alot of people is that they are impatient and want to be a pro freestyle pilot in a week, expecting to crush bandos and dive skyscrapers right away. It doesn't even matter what drone you buy. A tinyhawk freestyle is just as good a drone to learn on than your best 5in. Alot of my students bought a kit and never went further and are still happy flying the TH2, while others jumped right in an bought DJI after only a couple hours of flying lessons.

The simulators are a great tool but 99% of people get into FPV because they want to fly in real life and experience the feeling it gives them. They do't want to spend 1000 hours in a simulator. Learning hard core freestyle isn't going to happen over night and this is where the sims help avoid expensive crashes. but not everyone wants to be Mr. Steele. A lot of people start off wanting to experience the thrill of FPV and the feeling of freedom you get from it and fly to capture cinematic videos. Everyone has a different and personal reason to get into this hobby. Some people like myself and many others get hooked and it becomes almost a lifestyle. We end up spending alot of $$$ and have no regrets. But many people are happy with one or two drones and are satisfied with what that gives them. I never flew simulators and I was flying day 1. I only started flying sims last year to see what the fuss was about and I do see the benefits as a training too but not a replacement. 99% of people will be bored in a simulator after 5 min. It's nothing like the real thing.

For instance, I make sure all my student have ANGLE, HORIZON and ACRO on an aux switch, I also make them use a variable throttle scale and mixed rate profiles. I teach them different rates in horizon LOS so the can get used to snap rolls and flips to build muscle memory around while hovering 8 feet of the ground. The do crash but there is basically never damage because

Your tone is very discouraging and it sounds like you resent the fact you spent a lot of money in this hobby. Understanding the risks and having a proper drone setup goes a long way to ensure success and avoiding costly mistakes. Having a mentor to help you out is the best way. Anyways, I think supporting people in their desire to fly FPV is more about mentoring and support not about simulators. This hobby is about to get alot more crowded and we all need to be more supportive of each other.
 
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Thanks for your suggestion Choppergirl. The first item on my list is a controller of course! I am still considering between tango 2 and radiomaster tx16s. I think it will give me a good idea of what it is like to control a drone with a controller. I am not expecting to become a pro soon, but hoping to get up in the air and get flying soon! I do understand that I need to have atleast a decent understanding how controller works before I fly in real world because if I just go and fly a drone out in the real world without any practise, im just gonna crash right away and probably cause unnecessary damage to my drone. Of course having a mentor like droneguy would be helpful :)
 
At 3-4 hours, I felt I was getting the hang of things and could fly around.

Hadn't gotten the hang of turning yet in Angle mode, I was yawing and skating like a secretary sitting on a rolling wheel chair holding a portable fan to try and turn and slow down at stop.

At 100 hours, I felt I was pretty good. I could do turns, loops, and had switched to acro and was comfy in it.

At 500 hours, I felt, dang, I'm intermediate high level. I stopped making flying videos abotu then, because, why... what you'll do next week, will smoke what you did this week.

At 1000 hours, my skills were 2x what they were at 500 hours , and I was like, yeah, my skills now can smoke me at 500 hours, I had experimented with different rates, and found what I thought were my absolute ideal rates at 500, were not at all, I could refine and polish them even further, like frequency tuning a piano.

At 1200 hours, I'm a mofo UFO, I'm a dragonfly fighting over a pond, I'm a hummingbird fighting his rivals off at a sugar water feeder. I discovered I could do way more tricks accidentally by dramatically lengtening my sticks. I started trying all sorts of different scenarios I might do on a "job", that has nothing to do with racing or aerobatic flying. Around about this point, I can smoke Bubby FPV or Steele where they are now. But I'm not competing with anybody.

My first rule of improvised aerobatic freestyle: you compete against yourself and yourself only.
My second rule: go where you want and do what you want.
My third rule: always be experimenting, there are so many tricks and combos waiting to be discovered.
My fourth rule: learn all sorts of different flying, don't get stuck in one rut inside your favorite comfort zone.


So yeah, take your best 3-4 hour IRL expert pilot.
Take your best IRL 30-40 hour pilot...
Take your best IRL 300-400 hour pilot...
And match them against me with 1200 hours under the belt in Liftoff. I will slay and crush them.

Hand me any 5" to 7" IRL quad and I'll bind it, drop into Betaflight with SpeedyBee and tweak all the rates and just give a once over on the pids, get a feel for a handle of it in the air with one pack and fall into the zone, and then I'm dangerous. FPV wise, anyway, I don't fly LOS except tiny hoops in the house and that was only years ago.

I have a friend Greg who is learning the hardway by beating basher quads he ducttapes together. He's ahving fun, but after 6 months, he's still in angle mode, still wobbling around, he can go where he wants, but he's still in analog staticy world hell with park range (under .5 km). He's got a collection of motley quads that I would immediately throw in a garbage can with lol. I mean, it makes him happy I guess, and that's great... But he is very crippled by not having a computer or a sim to learn on (he has only his mobile phone for inet access and mobile phone sims are a joke).

So if you want to be pro, take my advice, and go the Sim route.

If you want to p*** in the wind and beat your stuff to death and always be at the soldering table, or charging batteries, or throwing sticks into trees, or driving back and forth to a flying site, go the hard way and eschew Sims entirely and do it only with hardware in real life like they did it back in the early days of quads (and flying real life full sized airplanes). After all, Sim pilots, pshaw, what a joke, not real pilots!

You can go your own way and do what you want. Makes uh no difference to meeee : - ) Less pro freestylers out there, the rarer a fwild improvised fully aerobatic bird I am.

I really should make an Aerobatics Course... much like and in thesame style of the PACE soldering courses... but... only so many hours in a day and I'm pretty burnt out on Youtube by now and sick of it's culture of neurotic self promotion : - ) Weird thing to say from a barnstormer girl, but, yeah. Lol.

---------------------

Also, there is one more mine field you need to watch out for... people shilling for the hobby. There are a lot of them. I could rattle off names off the top of my head, but I wont' do that ever because... un-cool to call people specifically out like that.

A lot of them realized, early on, dang this is an expensive hobby, if I can shill and review products, I can get stuff from free from manufacturers and keep feeding my addiction because dang this is getting costly.

If you want to know who the shills vs. who the good guys are you can trust, the answer is... they are all shills. Every one of them!. Yes, even your favorites you trust the most. Shills, or only a stones throw away from being one. In one way or another, if they're not shilling for a product they were buttered over because they got free, they are shilling for the hobby as a whole.

I lucked into an ocean of unemployment pandemic money, so I don't have to shill for the hobby or anything at this point. I can bash the DJI goggles, I can bash the entire hobby and call it out if I want, and speak truth to power, because I found all the cost free flying I want inside a dirt cheap sim. Do I have all the hardware and elite hardware at that to fly IRL. Yes. Sure. Collecting dust at the moment as I rocket upward in skill level inside Liftoff in Fantastic mode on The Green, Hanger C03, Russian Woodpecker, Hannover... etc.

Fly the Sim, watch Youtube videos, and you'll get a feel for things. Save your money up. In 6 months, the plus is, something new and better will be out, and you'll look back at what you wanted to buy in the begining and say.. that would still be top notch, but this other thing I thought was the bee's knees then well turned out to be junk.

At 3000 hours, maybe I'll come back and make a post as to looking back, what I thought then at 3000 hours about how I could fly at 1000 hours...

Most boys play hundreds of hours of their favorite video game a month... or have at one time... so... put in a couple of hundred hours having fun learning, crash all you want, crash a million times, crash your way to being a pro pilot... all without consequence... and once you are intermeidate level, start switching up and flying it like it was real. Learn how to land with a high camera angle where you can't see the h orizon, learn how to dial it back a bit and fly conservatively and go a whole 5 minutes doing aerobatics with a zero crash rate, learn how to slowly and carefully navigate in angle mode through tree branches, learn how to hover in front of a tower for an observer to snap an inspection picture, learn to loop thorough gaps over and over, etc...
 
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No one is questioning your abilities to "slay and crush them" as you said it's not a competition. Stick time is stick time and there is no substitute for it including on a sim. Learning to fly FPV is all about breaking down the required skills into small bite size pieces. Before Covid I ran many 8 hour bootcamps (6-8 students, 4 hours Sat and 4 hours Sun) most attendees never flew a drone but had limited experience with other RC toys. The first hour is mostly a sh!t show, people crash a lot the make mental mistakes due to inexperience and everybody laughs a lot. Focus for hour one is safety and basics. I use a fleet of Emax Tinyhawks many without cameras because everyone starts on a TH in LOS angle mode. Even people who already flown 5in, use THs and many go out and but one afterwards because they like how small and fun they are. I start everyone in angle, then horizon, then acro trainer then full acro. By hour two, people are doing laps and hitting 6ft hoops. By the end of day one they are doing snap rolls and flips in Horizon mode to build muscle memory around the rates we are flying. Rates start low and build up with skill just as the throttle scale. Between packs there is a lot of talk about the mechanics and physics of what the drone is doing, as this helps everyone understands and later predict the behavior of the drone in flight. I spend most of my time watching and coaching everyone to their skill level.

Day two starts with a repeat of day one but faster. Then more drills. After the first hour we finally put on the goggles for the first time. Consistent pilots move to 3in 3S or 4S drones still with throttle scales. Repeating the drills in horizon mode and adding rolls. Hour two on day two we fly goggles on, in acro trainer mode and everyone at this point maintains control 70-80% of the time because they have a strong foundation to build off of. I run more drills, then fly some more then the last hour we put it all together. Full Acro, flips and rolls (some quick learners are power looping in open air). The ones that are consistent in their skills can try a 5in to get an idea of the power (with a throttle scale nonetheless). We wrap up discussing the past events and THE MOST IMPORTANT part is the everyone leaves with a set of drills and a specific plan to execute that will keep quickly advance their skills while maintaining control and having a great time. Most of my student come back for an advanced session within a month or so and if they did the drills and put in the time on the stick, then they are ready for the into to freestyle training.

tinyhaws.jpg
Learning on your own can be daunting and frustrating, but what makes FPV so great is the supportive community. Find other experienced pilots, convince your friends to try it too and get a group together to share knowledge and experience and get as much time on the sticks as possible. This is the best way to learn FPV.
 
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That is one way to do it I suppose.

Downside... Lots of crashing, maintaining, fixing, tracking, and charging of real hardware.

When I thought of setting up a flight school, my approach was to be completely different. Computer Lab Style.

A College Computer Lab LAN party style arrangement of gaming rigs all running liftoff with Realflight USB controllers attached (or they bring their own controller which was part of the course purchase price - much better imho - you get your first transmitter on day one of class and we spend 30 minutes blinging them out ;-) It's a girl thing. ).

Computers on rows of desks, facing towards front of class room, where there is big screen projector/tv for instructor to demo on.

Give a presentation at the beginning of each section, demo it on a projector, and then everyone tries it themselves. Start with fundamental overview, setting up your sim environment, and then inside the sim.. start with up and down like a hot air balloon, then moving about and turning. I won't get into the whole course outline I myself first drafted... but you get the mental visual picture.

Inside a building, no weather to deal with, students can go at their own pace, can come back and practice for hours, and can learn at their own pace at home. The lab really is only there so someone off the street can go right into the pilot seat without all the setup.

You can get there eventually starting and staying on real hardware, but wow is it a lot slower and rougher and inconveniet. I can imagine all your students running all over the green looking for their little tiny whoops or whatever.

We could argue all day (let's not lol), whether it's better to learn to fly first then get the equipment, or get the equipment first and then learn to fly. There are some benefits to each approach, but I think ultimately, with my approach, you are going to be on a far faster track to becoming pro.

Sims are not the joke they use to be back in say 1990. The Unity 3D engine is pretty hardcore realistic.

IMHO, if you haven't set up your simulator environment, you're still in the slow merging lane on the highway.

If you look at the pros, what you don't see, is their secret weapon test environment sim they try stuff on and learn on.

I have one of course. It was the first thing I set up.

=====



If you have time, ponder these comparisons.... I popped into this Live Stream today....

Edrone Send It Saturday

Take a look at Hot Chicken FPV, a complete unknown, mentioned in the video above...

Note the comment he's only been flying a year, same as me.

Hot ChickenFPV ripping around some silo on a farm: Farm Freestyle 2

Now, I haven't ask him, did he use a simulator or not, but compare the video they are discussing to one of mine.

Me ripping around a water tower in Liftoff: I don't Speak German

There's not a whole lot of difference in skill level... except in style perhaps because I fly different rates.

When I rip some place, I don't plan a routine or what I'm going to do in advance, I just do one trick after another trick after another, whatever I feel like it in an instantaneous moment. I look, I see where I want to explore or go around, I do a trick, and I know already by hundreds of hours of experience, roughly where the maneuver will come out. If that place is free and open, in a microsecond it gets the all clear and I just do it because I feel like I do it.

It's not like an airshow routine where they do one show piece after another. It's entirely spur of the moment improvised.

I imagine it's identical for him. Nobody has time to plan something, it's more like skateboarding, you just go have fun and rip around a place and go where you want to do and do whatever you feel like in the moment.

We know for a fact I'm a hardcore Sim flyer because I've stated.

Looking at his video, do you think he spent hundreds of hours in the sim as well, or just ripped 10,000 5 minute Lipo packs in a year to get to about the same place I am.

I bet you a dollar, his secret weapon was a Sim.

Just like Hypher, Vannover, Steele, Zoe, and a billion other names I could rattle off. You don't need to be known to be an expert. With a sim, you can come out of complete nowhere on to the scene like a gangster with a year of practice or more fast tracked in a Sim.

Set up your Sim environment. Step Numero Uno! : - )

You can yes teach someone to fly with out one. I can with a trainer transmitter teach my mom to fly in 5 minutes IRL with no sim experience. Up to assend, and yaw around to look around, then down to land. All with GPS lock and Angle mode. I call it Ballooning, like a hot air balloon Is it really flying. Sure, I guess. Is angle mode flying like with a DJI cinematic drone flying? Yeah I guess.

There's flying... and then there's... frolicking in the sky...

If you want to rip up the sky like a pissed off dragon fly or territorial hummingbird... there is no faster way to get there than.. the best Sim available and hours of stick time for fun and play.

Make it play, a way to spend your lunch at home, or wake up in the morning, and hundreds of hours are meh... no more than you would waste watching Youtube, Netflix, or TV.


Anywho, that's my advice to the OP.

--Buy your Tango 2.
--Buy a copy of Liftoff. (you can race in it too)
--If you don't have one, get yourself an Geforce 9xx, or 10xxx, or equivalent Radeon card, or better....
--Not necessary, but I highly recommend these things as well, they are expensive but worth every penny, and the only hardware recommendation that JB ever got right IMHO ;-) . NetDot Gen12 L-Shape Magnetic Fast Charging Data Transfer Cable
--Put hours into it, before you think of buying a single thing more...

If you really want to catapult jumpstart, you can try my own rates by configuring your Liftoff flight settings exactly like mine... http://air-war.org/graphics/Rates 08 Plesure Cruise 2.jpg

They won't fit you perfectly, but try the defaults, try them, experiment and try others. If I were setting up a flight school, all the comptuers would be set to those rates to start with. Why? Because they are the most docile ever, and the more controllable and docile your quad is, the more you can sling it around the sky like Red Baron in his monkey climbing triplane....

I probably pounded out a lot of typos and grammar errors, but it's late, and I'm tired lol. I need to work on being more succinct and less long winded that's for sure.

CHOPPERGIRL / Patron Goddess of AIRWAR
http://choppergirl.airw-ar.org
 
I’m still not sure if you’re trolling or not, but this will be my last post in this thread as it’s gone off the rails. . I see you edited your first post to soften your message but the fact remains, your first post on this forum outside you promoting your soundpacks was to hi-jack a thread and TELL the OP to stop whatever they are doing and spend at least 1000 hours in a sim and if they can’t do that, then they should sell their radio and move on. I’d suggest you start a new thread outlining your experience having gained all your initial skills in a simulator and people can judge for themselves if this is the right path for them. What I think you continue to miss is the fact that people get into FPV for their own reasons with their own set of goals. Not everyone wants to become a self-proclaimed pro pilot like yourself. For many people it’s a social opportunity and for others it’s about the feeling they get out in nature flying like a bird enjoying the view. But what I can tell you for 95% of people it also becomes about the comradery and community a point which I think you sadly missed out on while spending 2000 alone in front of a simulator.

Each persons’ skill and progression is a personal journey, and your advice regarding simulators isn’t wrong, but your approach could be a little better. Yes, simulators help build your skills and no-one will question that that. The way to get better is with stick time. It’s a tool to help improve one’s skills and get stick time in. What simulators don’t give you is the benefit of immediate feedback from an experienced pilot. “Every time I try to turn, my quad keeps falling off it’s axis and I crash… what am I doing wrong?” In real life, someone gives you tips and explains what is happening and what to do differently to correct it. In a simulator, you crash until you figure it out for yourself. Sounds pretty discouraging to many. The new book “FPV flight dynamics” released by Christian Mollica does a great job explaining what most experienced pilots already know: how a quad moves through the air at an angle so your axis are not directly related to your sticks and what that means in flight. No one has put this into videos yet, but this is where the physics really matter. Once you wrap your head around what the quad is doing, it’s much easier especially when someone is explaining it to you. In a sim, it’s trial and error until you get a feel for it but then you still don’t know what really going on. Bottom line is there’s no substitute for stick time and no replacement for the valuable insight and coaching from an experienced pilot. How you choose to accumulate your time on the sticks is a personal choice. Many people chose to do it in a social setting but again it’s a personal decision.

The OP stated he wanted to get a drone to make cool videos and take pictures, he didn’t say he wanted to spend a year by himself trying to become a “Pro” pilot whatever that means. You obviously have a personal experience learning to fly FPV from a sim that I think is a valuable point of view, I just think you need to temper your advice with some humility and supportive recommendations that align with each person’s individual goals and objectives.
 
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Thank you guys a lot for so much information. I have bought a tx16s and it is coming on Tuesday. Cant wait to try it out. I am probably going to get nazgul 5 v2 as my first drone.
 
Also, would you guys be able to recommend 4s or 6s version of the drone? I am mainly concerned about the flight times. I am hoping to increase the flight time as much as I can so I can get more time to practise flying the drone. Having to replace the battery every 3 minutes does not sound like a good idea. Would you recommend grabbing 4s or 6s version of the drone? Which would get longer flight times? I am getting mixed up answers from various youtube videos I watch regarding the 4s and 6s.


I have recently come across the long range FPV drones such as FLYWOO explorer lr. They claim to have a flight time between 20-30 minutes. The only issue with that is I think it is not compatible with gopro hero 8. Since I already own gopro hero 8 camera, I am looking for a drone that would be compatible with the camera and hoping to get at least 10 minutes flight time if thats possible
 
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Wow...
Sorry Zazas321. When I started flying FPV the end of September I joined this forum because I had been a member of two of the DJI camera drone sister forums. Other members here helped me with my set up and problems with my first kits. I had tons of questions, lots of problems and got a whole bunch of great help. No one argued, just helped me.
My path was:
Emax Tinyhawk 2 RTF kit. I quickly out grew it.
-Got a Jumper Tsg V2 transmitter
-Got some Fatshark Attitude V3 so I had better goggles with a DVR so I could record my flights for review and so I could go back through the video help me find my qwad when I lost it.
-Bought an Emax Tinyhawk Freestyle 2
I now own 6 FPV Qwads including my first scratch build.
I also have a bunch of DJI camera drones I barely fly anymore.
I'm happy enough with the analog video, I'd love the DJI digital but it would be expensive to outfit my fleet with it. I'm waiting for DJI V3 or a better version of Fatshark's or Orca's digital to come out before I upgrade.
I'm just now circling back to get set up with a sim so I can practice some tricks I've tried but this time I won't smash my qwad when I eat sh#$.
I love flying my 5"(the size of the props not the frame)quads. I've spent a bunch of time flying the Tinyhawk Freestyle 2 and I translate that skill on the bigger ones so if you're going to go IRL I'd pick one of those up too, it will save you a lot of repairs on the big ones.
They're both kind of right.
They both know what they're talking about.
If I were you I'd take a bit of both of their advice. I'd get some real qwads so you can get the amazing experience of flying outside and set up a sim so you can practice stuff when you can't fly outside.

Just one thing, none of the members I've interacted with here have ever before have argued like this when I asked for help. I appreciate how knowledgeable and passionate they both are but I hope their responses to you don't make you think this place is that kind of forum because so far it isn't.

Check out this link, Joshua Bardwell put together a list of FPV gear that he recommends. It's a good list, especially the tools and supplies. I have some version of most them. Owning them has helped me repair and build everything so far.

Fly your own path, just fly!
Welcome to the forum
 
Hey! Thanks for the post. Its all cool here. The discussion just got a bit heated but I definately got loads of helpful information from these two :) Could you tell me what flight time are you getting out of your tinyhawk freestyle? Also, what version batteries do you mostly use for your drones?
 
Hey! Thanks for the post. Its all cool here. The discussion just got a bit heated but I definately got loads of helpful information from these two :) Could you tell me what flight time are you getting out of your tinyhawk freestyle? Also, what version batteries do you mostly use for your drones?
Hi big guy, I’ve been following this thread for a little while and basically sitting eating popcorn whilst a couple of personalities thrash it out. As mentioned above, both have very valid points regarding setting out on this journey. There are some really useful threads in the search engine regarding beginner quads and the tinyhawk seems to be a firm favorite. They are a great intro into learning to fly, they crash with a bit more dignity than the larger quads and are reasonably easy to fix. Depending on your flying style, 2.5 - 3.5 mins battery life on 2S, so most folk have at least 6 batteries ready to go. My story was starting out on a sim (Liftoff) which had me bored after one day so I just went out and sent it. Probably not my smartest move but I’ve been flying helis, planes and gliders for years and I learned as I went along. First quad was a wizard x220 which was the perennial favorite back then as the smaller quads didn’t exist in the mainstream. I crashed, burned and rebuilt that quad and others many times and you will too when you get into it, regardless of what you end up with.
I have about 18 quads now, both analogue and digital and am currently into long range cruising. It doesn’t matter what batteries you run, the variable will be with the motors, tune, your flying style and props that you run and obviously the weight of the rig. I have a chimera 4 that will run for about 8-9 mins on slow cruising on a 4S 859 mah battery and that is fine by me but also have a iFlight DC5 that will destroy a battery in 3 mins on fairly aggressive acro.
Regardless of what you fly, remember to have fun and learn at your own pace. This forum is fantastic (mostly) for support so hang in there.
 
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