This is about to get expensive

4 inch pistons · Nov 24, 2022

The weather here in eastern NC was wonderful today, so I took my Mini 2 for a spin. I still am getting familiar with all the bells and whistles and not just casual flying.

But the real adrenaline cranked up when I brought out my Cetus X and the goggles for the first time. All I did was run laps around a softball field for 4 battery sets, but the bug has bitten!!!! A little more simulator time and the credit card will be smoking I am sure.

slup · Nov 24, 2022

4 inch pistons said:
...A little more simulator time and the credit card will be smoking I am sure.

And maybe not the only consequence ...

This made me lose the interest in slow restricted photo drones... the 5" gets the majority of my spare time now.

Gagey52 · Nov 24, 2022

slup said:
And maybe not the only consequence ...

This made me lose the interest in slow restricted photo drones... the 5" gets the majority of my spare time now.

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Thanks for sharing Slup, next you’ll be racing through a bowling alley.

Regards

Lets Fly · Nov 25, 2022

slup said:
And maybe not the only consequence ...

This made me lose the interest in slow restricted photo drones... the 5" gets the majority of my spare time now.

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Fun to fly, dizzying to watch.

slup · Nov 25, 2022

Lets Fly said:
Fun to fly, dizzying to watch.

Yeah... understandable, it's hard for those that haven't got used to it & it's even worse when just watching not knowing what will happen next... than flying yourself.

Before starting with acro FPV flying I despised rollercoasters... just got sick of it. But after the decision to go FPV, investing $$$ & practicing a winter in the PC simulator standing up I've got used to it... I'm in the pilots seat when flying & I at most lean my head in sync with what I see in the goggles when flying.

This flight was for my own pleasure... not meant to record for a audience. If producing for viewers what you say must come into play... will be more cinematic but still fast, close up too but mostly leaning like in an airplane.

Lets Fly · Nov 25, 2022

slup said:
Yeah... understandable, it's hard for those that haven't got used to it & it's even worse when just watching not knowing what will happen next... than flying yourself.

Before starting with acro FPV flying I despised rollercoasters... just got sick of it. But after the decision to go FPV, investing $$$ & practicing a winter in the PC simulator standing up I've got used to it... I'm in the pilots seat when flying & I at most lean my head in sync with what I see in the goggles when flying.

This flight was for my own pleasure... not meant to record for a audience. If producing for viewers what you say must come into play... will be more cinematic but still fast, close up too but mostly leaning like in an airplane.

You're exactly right. I made the same comment to alex_markov on his FPV flights. He has toned it down a bit and won me over. He has become what I think is the best FPV flyer on the forum. If you haven't seen him, check it out.

DARKSeifer · Nov 25, 2022

The Cetus X is an interesting kit to begin with it's tiltable camera and brushless motors, but it has passed the price point where it seems attractive. Cetus or Cetus pro are at that price tag where I could pick up one.

I'll probably pick the Avata in the future if they release a bundle with the controller. The DJI FPV is currently at 900€, but they completely missed the point with that drone and it's form factor.

On the other hand, karens and legislation has been throwing me back from starting FPV at all; you need a spotter, the drone is louder, you have to fly at close range in order to have good connection and minimize obstructions, but you must fly in A3 open subcategory so that means at 150m from everything.

In the end, that basically means more confrontations and more chances to be fined, added to the fact that with the goggles on you can't see the karens coming.

I feel more comfortable long ranging to be honest.

slup · Nov 25, 2022

Lets Fly said:
You're exactly right. I made the same comment to alex_markov on his FPV flights. He has toned it down a bit and won me over. He has become what I think is the best FPV flyer on the forum. If you haven't seen him, check it out.

It all depends on why you fly...

Flying a "Photo" drone & videoing isn't hardly for showing off all the cool moves you've learned. It will be something between a good try but jerky movie where the subject is uninteresting for a casual audience... or a smooth cinematic fly through with a clear story, highest possible quality, exposure & choice of lightening interesting for everyone.

FPV acro (full manual control) on the other hand... it's a drug, boosting the adrenaline & flying skills as far as you dare (& can afford)... honing your maneuvering skills further & further one step at a time until the inescapable crash. Then you take the walk of shame, pick up the pieces, repair & do it all over... videos from this is mostly for other addicts

But yeah... FPV can also be for producing scenic thing's for a broader audience.

I'm mostly flying FPV in the first category... I'm an addict & will suffer badly now over the Swedish winter season until spring

Zbip57 · Nov 26, 2022

slup said:
FPV can also be for producing scenic things for a broader audience.

Watching flips and rolls only make me airsick. But the close in proximity flying is amazing.

Nearly ten years ago already, this guy's videos blew me away with his cinematic FPV flights. Robert McIntosh.

slup · Nov 26, 2022

Zbip57 said:
Watching flips and rolls only make me airsick. But the close in proximity flying is amazing.

Nearly ten years ago already, this guy's videos blew me away with his cinematic FPV flights. Robert McIntosh.

Yup ... that's how it can be & it's understandable, but once used, it easily becomes a drug... & then the $$$ needs to be there.

This summer I brought my smallest quad to my fathers place for some race style flying close around pine trees in a larger area just beside a lake. Flew rather fast kind of straight lined to begin with & dodging trees, then a break out over the lake with a massive punch out & a nearly vertical dive towards the water surface & turned in among the trees in the last second 0,5m above ground... added several 180 degree turns to it all & kept it going for 7-8minutes... but no flips or rolls though.

Later my father wanted to see what I saw when flying (the goggles record what I see on a SD card)... so put the goggles on him, asked him to sit down in the garden chair & grab it hard... & started the video. He was laying on the ground with the chair turned around after 2 minutes... he barely managed the initial straight tree trunk dodging, started to moan when I dived straight down towards the water surface but then in all following 180 degree turns he quickly leaned himself straight out of the chair... it all went so fast so I didn't have time to either grab him or the chair

FPV acro isn't video producing for me... it's purely being airborne and a challenge. I prefer to push it as much I dare in order to develop. Happens that I end a flying day with a bigger LiIon battery giving me 15-20 minutes of flight time (but with far less punch/power compared to a LiPo) in a cruising relaxing manner, but nearly always come in for an early landing as it's plain boring & totally without a maneuvering challenge to fly like that (but certainly much more enjoyable if someone saw the video of it).

***EDIT***
Actually had a shorter section from such a LiIon pack "ending flight" recorded ... some high speed low cruising in evening light... but towards the end you can see that I'm starting to get bored

Zbip57 · Nov 27, 2022

slup said:
[...] in all following 180 degree turns he quickly leaned himself straight out of the chair...

I don't know how you manage to do all those flights standing up without falling over while wearing goggles. But I do see you use a very wide stance!

slup · Nov 27, 2022

Zbip57 said:
...But I do see you use a very wide stance!

Yeah ... before I started to fly for real and actually before I made a complete investment for all gears needed I started with only the radio controller & a PC simulator... this to see if I could learn flying full manual & if I could manage without getting motion sickness.

This was just when the winter season set in... so didn't have any real flying opportunities anyway, so started up practicing standing up in a dark room with just the computer screen lit up ... even though I then didn't have any goggles yet I was leaning quite a lot, so much that my wife made funny comments about it. All got better, both flying skills & standing without too much leaning after about 20h in the sim. So I had the confirmation I wanted... I made progress & it would work. Ordered Goggles & chose my first quad model & ordered that too ... then batteries & a charger.

This is me in the sim after 50h ...

Spent the rest of the winter in the sim & once the quad turned up around January I took the opportunity to learn how the firmware worked (Betaflight) & learned how a PID controller works if I in the future wanted to make adjustments in the firmware due to some reason. All that was missing was the Goggles now... this was when DJI had stopped selling the Goggles V1 & everyone was waiting for V2 release. In April I had the Goggles & I could get airborne for real.

All went smooth due to all hours in the sim over the winter... only thing's like moment of inertia & descend speeds with zero throttle that was unknown for the first flight, but took it easy & figured it out.

Below is the third real flight occasion in a tighter environment instead of the soccer field I had tried before... looks like I was a bit hesitant to begin with, but pick up speed around a minute into the clip (recorded in the DJI Goggles, the disturbance that come sometimes in the left & right third of the screen, is a DJI function to judge the radio link quality).

So... with some heart & soul into it and a lot of $$$ spent it was possible to learn both Acro flying & to stand up flying not needing to drag & chair with me all the time

Zbip57 · Nov 27, 2022

slup said:
So... with some heart & soul into it and a lot of $$$ spent it was possible to learn both Acro flying & to stand up flying not needing to drag & chair with me all the time

I definitely understand the appeal of being able to fly like that, and I am jealous of your skills.

I used to fly model airplanes, but found it difficult to judge distance when flying line-of-sight. Is the plane going pass behind that tree, or this side of that tree? Nope, smack dead centre into the tree. D'oh!

FPV flight makes so much more sense. You're onboard and can see exactly where it's going. When I got my first drone, the original DJI Phantom, I loaded it up with a GoPro and video transmitter, and used goggles for the first time. It was awesome!

But I wear eyeglasses, so that's a problem. I bought the correct diopter lenses for the goggles, but it was still no good. The lenses fogged up. And I didn't like the feeling of being "trapped" in the goggle view, unable to see anything else going on around me. One time my friend nearly gave me a heart attack, snuck up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder while I had the goggles on.

If there was any issue during flight and I needed to pull the goggles off, it took me a while fumbling around to get my eyeglasses back on and trying to locate the drone. Which leads me to another question...

You are obviously fully aware of your surroundings in the videos you've posted. You know where the trees are, fences, and any other obstacles, and how close you can safely fly around those. You're all alone way out in empty fields, so it's perfectly safe. I don't know what the rules are Sweden, but here in North America there's always someone ready to jump on you and quote the pertinent regulation insisting that you need to have someone acting as "visual observer" whenever you're flying under the goggles.

I really don't care about any of that. But my question is, how on earth would any visual observer ever be capable of, or even expected to, keep your FPV drone within sight when you're flying like that??

slup · Nov 27, 2022

Zbip57 said:
I definitely understand the appeal of being able to fly like that, and I am jealous of your skills.

Thank's... but my skills are mediocre in comparison, I'm far too old to play it really rough, need to pay my own $$$ for every possible mistake. Besides that, I don't have a long RC flying history at all. Started with a second hand Mavic Air 1 autumn 2019, early winter 2020 I decided to go FPV & have flown now for 2 seasons. I'm totally convinced that if I could learn everybody can... just start out with a sim & a real controller, if failing to progress it would be easy to just sell the controller, not much money in just that.

Zbip57 said:
I used to fly model airplanes, but found it difficult to judge distance when flying line-of-sight...

Yeah... but I suck worse at LOS flying, it's a totally other thing than the Goggles. Can hover, fly a bit slow back & forth but not much more.

Zbip57 said:
But I wear eyeglasses, so that's a problem...

Me too... but don't have any problems to have them inside the DJI Goggles V2, the V2's also have a very good fan so a possible initial fog buildup disappears very quickly... all this with eyeglasses & fog is totally different with the newer DJI Goggles 2 coming with the Avata, they fog up due to a inefficient fan design & very little room for eyeglasses & really small lens openings making it nearly impossible to not have vingnetting.

Zbip57 said:
One time my friend nearly gave me a heart attack, snuck up behind me

Well... this with feeling confined & being bothered about what's going on around you was also a big thing for me in the very beginning, but not anymore. I "look back" at my location so many times during a flight so I have full control over what's happening around me, this as I rarely fly far away... more fond of nearby obstacles & being able to walk over & pick the model up if going down. Nowadays I think I have more control over my surroundings with goggles on & a quad in the sky... I have my hearing & see everything coming from a far distance.

Zbip57 said:
You are obviously fully aware of your surroundings in the videos you've posted. You know where the trees are, fences, and any other obstacles...

That skill came totally with the simulator... misjudge there costs nothing, once you got it, you manage it in real life also.

Zbip57 said:
...I don't know what the rules are Sweden, but here in North America there's always someone ready to jump on you and quote the pertinent regulation insisting that you need to have someone acting as "visual observer" whenever you're flying under the goggles.

The regulations is much the same... 120m (400ft)max, respect NFZ & altitude restrictions, LOS & don't produce offensive photos or vids. But you need to be smart... don't annoy anyone, especially not near their home, keep away from places in city centers with a lot of folks. I tend to scout places to fly from Google Maps... & don't bring your noisiest model if people is near doing other thing's. If using common sense you should be able to feel if you bother others even though you follow the regulations... then just fly elsewhere.

Below 3 examples (just goggle recordings) of locations not out in the middle of the woods... but all had some thinking behind them before I took off (2 first with a sub 250g nearly dead silent open prop quad & the last with a hefty 5". Just scrub the videos & you get a feeling about the place.

This is a late Monday evening at the local Campus nearby (all sensible folks are at home taking care of family business

) . Just youngsters & kids around & most of them bother me with questions about top speed, gear & what it costs. The 2 kids I sneak up on at 07m22s drowned me with cool talk & questions earlier

This one is at the same Campus but instead a late Sunday evening just after the rain had stopped. It's psychologically harder to fly above hard ground than it is over softer... feels like the asphalt sucks down your quad to crush it in thousand pieces, so good to fly some of that also.

A beautiful close contact at 02m21s ... & how I spot the Campus guard from a distance at 06m35s, following him & get a clearance to fly while using my quad as eyes.

And the last location just minutes from where I live. A rained away weekend & more rain on it's way... grabbed one battery and my 5" ran down to a small playground with a small park area. It's probably advisable to sit down if watching this, pretty confined place too keep within with a quad that can top out over 100mph if not careful with the sticks

Zbip57 · Nov 27, 2022

slup said:
I spot the Campus guard from a distance at 06m35s, following him & get a clearance to fly while using my quad as eyes.

Back in my university days, my room-mate and I used to spend hours taking turns late at night in the far corner of a snowy campus parking lot practising skid control, spin recovery, and drifting in my Chevette. Campus Security would come by occasionally on their regular patrol. Depending on who was on duty that night, they would either just sit there in their car and watch us for a while before leaving, or they'd come barrelling in with lights & siren threatening to arrest or shoot us. Sheesh.

We were of no danger to anyone. It's far more dangerous to be trying any of this stuff out on public roads. We learned all sorts of potentially lifesaving driving skills, all of which came in useful in my later ice-racing and rallying motorsport adventures.

Similarly, flying model airplanes (or drones) as kids fosters an interest in pursuing further aviation careers. Over-regulation or over-zealous enforcers (campus guards) can squelch any further interest.

Zbip57 · Nov 28, 2022

slup said:
[...] you need to be smart... don't annoy anyone, especially not near their home, keep away from places in city centers with a lot of folks.
[...] Just youngsters & kids around & most of them bother me with questions about top speed, gear & what it costs. The 2 kids I sneak up on at 07m22s drowned me with cool talk & questions earlier

In ten years of flying camera drones, I've only ever twice had someone complain directly to me, and both times it involved dogs.

This is one of my earliest videos, using a Phantom-1 with a GoPro directly attached. It's non-stabilized, so the image is very shaky. I had no video transmitter yet, so with no FPV image I had no idea what the camera was actually aimed at. I was just experimenting, letting the camera run the whole time and hoping it might capture anything useful.

I was flying in a park where people go to walk their dogs, so I hiked through the snow to find a quiet spot off the busy trail where I could fly my drone in peace. But some nasty lady (Karen?) followed my footprints in the snow to come yell at me. "Do you have to fly that thing here? You're scaring my dog!" Sheesh.

Instead I moved to the busy toboggan hill and flew there to get some shots of the kids having fun. Nobody complained, and nobody accused me of being a pedophile using a drone to spy on their kids. Everyone seemed quite happy and intrigued, asking a million questions about where they can get their own drone.

The second time was in Germany, this time flying my Phantom 3 Pro to get some shots of an old windmill on a hill, opening and closing with a view showing the old wind-powered mill in the foreground contrasting with the steaming cooling towers of the modern nuclear power plant in the distance on the horizon.

Unbeknownst to me, over in the next field, where you can see some blue and yellow objects and ramps and stuff, there was a dog show going on with some sort of obstacle course for the dogs. I orbited the windmill several times and must have overflown that dog field. Even though the drone was quite high at the time, apparently it drove the dogs crazy.

Someone came running over and, very politely but emphatically, asked me to pack up and go away.

slup · Nov 28, 2022

Zbip57 said:
Back in my university days, my room-mate and I used to spend hours taking turns late at night in the far corner of a snowy campus parking lot practising skid control, spin recovery, and drifting in my Chevette...

That's a really good practice... when I was training for my drivers license in the mid 80's my father usually came & said ...-come on kid, time for some serious drift practice, always late evenings right after or during a heavy snowfall, on public roads in the small place I grew up in (like 40 miles from the bigger town I live now). Completely empty of both cars & people... fun times, always a lot of snow every winter then, & all cars were rear wheel drive

Zbip57 said:
In ten years of flying camera drones, I've only ever twice had someone complain directly to me, and both times it involved dogs.

Only once for me...

When my Mavic Air was rather new to me I was out & shooting stills, was hovering a bit to get below picture... stood maybe 2-300m outside the picture to the left. Suddenly I saw a guy jumping up on a 4 wheel quad outside one of those red cottages & came in high speed towards me. He stopped with locked wheels & stated that flying there was forbidden, he then accused me for scouting & planning for a house burglary... I grinned a bit & showed him all the shoots I had taken & he cooled down & said he was gone let me continue to fly for now, I said thank's & he left (complete BS as I knew that he didn't own more land than just outside the cottage... I both stood & hovered the drone on public land

)

Dogs... yeah, have learned to keep my distance.

In the beginning I had a serious "dog encounter". Was flying my smallest quad at the campus wooded area, a lot of the students have their dogs with them when living there & I saw quite a few that was out & walking them ... or should I say, the unleashed dogs was out walking their owners (which constantly was looking in their phones) around the field I was flying.

Didn't think so much about it then, but tried to stay clear & only go down on lower altitude well away from them. Then suddenly the goggle image tumbled around (the 2 last frames in the recorded goggle video below). When I looked through the recording when getting home I could see that the dog had chased my quad a good 7 minutes before he could get to it

the dog was just in the edge of the frame all the time & caught up just when I stopped & hovered wondering why one of the dog owners didn't have a dog anymore.

The girl came yelling with my quad... when closer I heard her apologies on behalf of her dog

No damages neither to the dog or the quad... the dog just looked very pleased with himself, & said in his own way ... please, can we do it again