FPV Flying, Where gamers go to die, reality.

FPV (First Person View) The pilot flies planes and drones immersively using VR goggles called FPV goggles

Here we cover and rant about the the modern RC (Radio Control) hobby and it's many modern offshoots. Since the introduction of digital technology and cell phone sized electronics, it has become incredibly cheap and extremely capable. From meticulously constructed RC models of actual aircraft to long range foam FPV platforms and racing wings, to cheap EPO foam kits and planes, the plane part of the hobby has exploded. Then there are drones, from the DJI type that you remote control to get great aerial video shot, to FPV (First Person View) drones and they come in different categories and sizes.

This hobby is very affordable today and once you have a control transmitter, FPV goggles and a battery charger you can use them with RC planes, FPV drones, boats and even cars.

First we will focus on FPV racing drones or quads (quadcopter) are constructed on a carbon fiber composite frame that is very strong and light. They are controlled by the pilot' s transmitter through a flight control computer, that can also provide information on the video screen for the pilot called and OSD, or on screen display. Some quads are configured for racing, some for freestyle, some for long range and some are called cinequads and made for smooth flight and carrying a gopro, or some other HD camera. The HD camera video is what you see most often, sometimes they will show a recording from the ground to show how good the range is etc.

Here are a couple of short videos that show what you can do with a cinequad with image stabilization in the camera or done post production for that dreamy look. For most guys it would take about a year or maybe two to get this good at flying, there is a lot of technical knowledge required too, but a lot of great source of information too. This is called cinematic because he uses image stabilization, varies the playback speed, adds sound effects and music.

This guy knows how to employ his girlfriend in his video. These shots were planned and rehearsed in some cases. With an FPV drone you immersively fly the thing with VR goggles and are unconscious of the controls in your hands, the only thing missing are the gee forces, the pucker factor remains, cause the drone costs cash!

CINEMATIC DRONE INDONESIA 4K

This was done in one take with no edits, he didn't just fly through random people's lives, this was rehearsed!
RUSTIC PARADISE, Cinematic Flight

Or perhaps some mountains, much of this stuff is illegal today, or has recently been outlawed! Most FPV people who fly quads or long range planes don't fly from regular RC airfields, we prefer to take a drive out into the sticks or some other isolated location. People who race wings and quads do fly at regular RC fields though and if you want to learn or are just getting into it they are a great place to start, just don't mention long range flying and most clubs still don't like FPV much.
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Ultimate Visual Long Range FPV

In Canada where I live even this is illegal, which is why I won't be posting any of my drone or long range plane videos here. Other than the risk of killing a mountain goat there is not much risk other than forest fire, if you should crash and then burn. This guy is from Norway and he stopped posting new FPV videos about a year ago too, they have the same regulations in the EU too. It doesn't mean he doesn't do it, it just means he can't share it with other enthusiasts online and has to be careful about his posts, if he posts under another account, the video provides the evidence and complaint. Flying FPV is kinda like growing pot in a lot of places, ya keep it to yerself or among very close friends who are into it too and take security measures.

This is more my speed, out in the sticks away from people, if ya lose it here you will need to do more than the "walk of shame" to get your drone back! If it has GPS and you can locate it with in 6 feet in most cases, if, you can get to it!
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FPV drone diving a 1400m mountain!

First day of long range, let`s dive mountains

Here is a young guy who went pro in drone racing and freestyle, a smart young fellow with a heart of gold. This is his show reel, a compilation of his various videos set to music. This is a great video and motivator to take up the hobby and its technical challenges, it requires brains and skill, any dummy can throw a football and many do! Johnny flies freestyle, kinda like dancing with a tune in the sky, these high performance drones have massive power to mass ratios and can rotate on any axis, pitch, yaw or roll at up to 1000 degrees a second.
The sky is not the limit - Johnny FPV

Another showreel from 2017, he was only flying for a year of two.
The Ultimate Visual Experience - Drone Racing and FPV Freestyle (My Year 2017)

The great Nurk
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NURK Showreel 2017 // Proximity

I've been working on putting together a solid showreel from 2017, and here she is. Check it out.
I think there's huge possibilities for miniquads and cinemetography -- I'm on the search this year to find ways to bring these beasts to the mainstream.

Here is a video from france that shows the difference between DjI type photography drones that you remote control, from FPV drones that you fly, virtually through FPV goggles. The hobby/sport is rapidly evolving and only has been around to any degree since 2015, many of the pilots show in these videos only have a few years experience, most people who are into drones are young men, planes and racing wings attract an older crowd.
The Cinematic Drone Revolution is Here : DJI VS FPV

How high can you go? This is from 7 years ago, it would be much easier today!
Space Glider - FPV to Space and Back!

This is my attempt to send a radio controlled airplane to the edge of space using a weather ballon, and then via a live video feed pilot it back down again.

Here is a video from 2015, 5 years ago and progress in the hobby has been rapid, this plane was bought from a kit and modified with a FPV system with pan and tilt, they also made an animated pilot, some folks just got too much time on their hands! A classic tune to fly with too.
Doing this these days in not very expensive at all, most planes are electrically powered, many are made from though EPP foam, cheap and that removes a lot of the fuss and expense these days

Even if you total your foam plane (they are easily repaired with glue) You just collect up the electronic parts and others and use them in another cheap foam plane, most of the gear survives just fine.
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P-51D Mustang, realistic cockpit Scale FPV HD

Another FPV hobbyist who doesn't post videos anymore, they won't bother you much if you don't, where this guy lives and flies it would be easy for some asshole to bust him from his posted videos. Regulation has killed the hobby as far as posting things under your own account goes, they still have to ID you and prove it though! This guy flies wings and foam FPV planes, these aren't models of bigger aircraft, but are designed for FPV with better forward views.
Z3 Midnight flight

Follow me!

How long would it take me to learn how to fly a quadcopter and do freestyle and racing to start off with? Well it took this forty something guy about 10 months. If you don't want to watch the whole video of his learning journey, just go to 9:50 in the video to see the result. He does a freestyle "sky dance" to a copyright free tune and left the motor sounds in from the gopro camera. He flys good enough to have a lot of fun.
Learning FPV. 10 Months of progress.

Learning to fly fpv and mini quads has been a epic journey and a life changing experience. I still learn every time I fly and try to push myself as much as i can. 2017 has been an awesome year.
If you are a beginner, just keep flying you will only get better and better much faster than you think!

Feel the need for speed? Perhaps racing is your thing, here is Stu from down under who runs the popular UAV futures YouTube channel. These boys race in close proximity and are more or less legal. In Canada you need a spotter to fly FPV legally and the drone must be in sight at all times (no binoculars), most of the time when I want to go fly in the sticks it's alone, not too many into the hobby in my area.

Here is how Stu learned starting back in 2015 when it was just getting going, until quite recently you built your quad from parts or a kit. Stu was an elementary school teacher but quit a couple of years ago to do drone YouTube product reviews full time with a focus on racing quads and freestyle flying.
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3 years flying in 5 minutes LEARNING TO FLY FPV RACING DRONES

3 years of flying fpv racing drones from a total NOVICE to CRAZY SPEEDS. It feels like you are flying a jet through the trees, starwars style. These DRL style drones have powerful motors, escs and send a vtx signal to a pair of fpv goggles to make the pilot feel like they are actually in the cockpit of the drone. A real life video game.

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Here is a product review by Stu and his buddies of a dirt cheap set of FPV goggles with a unique design. I ordered a pair of these goggles but they haven't arrived yet, I ordered them because of the great reviews and because they were so fucking cheap! I figure they would be great to fly planes with, I wear glasses and the mirror flips up for LOS launching etc. The only problem is they make you look like a dork in public, but I don't intend on being in public when I use them! By all reports they are the best cheap pair of Box style FPV goggles out there, best value for the money and a great pair for a beginner, you can use them as spares or guest goggles later after you upgrade, or just pull the screen out and use that.

BEST CHEAP GOGGLES ON THE MARKET !!! $79 Hawkeye's are AMAZING
The hawkeye little Pilot Vr goggles are a cheap fpv goggle that is amazing. anyone who wants to try fpv for cheap is going to LOVE these - http://bit.ly/HawkeyeVR
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Hawkeye Little Pilot VR All-in-one 5 Inches True Diversity FPV Monitor 800x480 5.8G 48CH Dual Receiver Foldable Goggles for RC Drone

I bought one of these last winter it's a Sonicmodell Mini AR Wing 600mm Wingspan EPP Racing FPV Flying it's just $52. US add in a $20 dollar radio receiver and a $20 1300maH 3S Lipo battery and your flying. Add a Matek Systems F405-WING (New) STM32F405 Flight Controller for $50 US and get an OSD, auto pilot, level assist, a host of other features and add GPS for another $20. GPS will allow the plane to RTH Return To Home and orbit above you or even land automatically, it will also give you a RTH arrow, your GPS long/Lat in the osd and you always record that with your DVR. If the plane goes down, you can playback the last known location data on the DVR and go looking for your plane. If it is broken really badly you can often recycle the electronics and other parts into a new cheap bare bones plane or kit.

Here is what the experience of flying one of these small cheap wings is like, usually this kind of plane is flown low and fast and in racing. All the reviews raved about this little flying wing, so I threw $50. and bought one, I've yet to glue it together, but I recently ordered up some parts for it.
He uses an internal DVR on the plane for the main image and the instruments OSD is a DVR recording of his goggle view and you can see the OSD info in the smaller image (fills your field of view in the goggles).

Ya throw these planes to launch them and they land in the grass, or snow, or on the ice, no landing gear required, made for FPV. This guy is flying in manual mode without flight stabilization which would make for a smoother flight. In most places you are not allowed to fly above 400 feet and you fucking well wanna make sure yer not gonna run into any regular airplanes either! This plane would be like hitting a seagull, most jet engines would swallow it and spit it out, even if it hit a windshield, it's made of foam and would disintegrate while absorbing the impact of the battery.
Mini Ar wing clouds surfing

Very cool stuff. I always wanted to become a pilot but it never worked out. I'd like to get into this one of these years when I have the funds.

The space glider vid was especially awesome. Thanks for sharing.

WintersBones said:

Very cool stuff. I always wanted to become a pilot but it never worked out. I'd like to get into this one of these years when I have the funds.

The space glider vid was especially awesome. Thanks for sharing.

Click to expand...

I'm focusing on cheap ways for people to get into the hobby, like a $52 US plane and $79 goggles and a petty good cheap radio can be had for under $100 US these days. I'll be posting some sources of info and expert video reviews of products that tell you what to buy and what to avoid. This hobby used to be prohibitively expensive for most people and you needed a garage or basement workshop to build planes, now it is cheap and you can fly FPV planes and quads, even if you live in an apartment, your workshop can fit into a closet.

WintersBones said:

Very cool stuff. I always wanted to become a pilot but it never worked out. I'd like to get into this one of these years when I have the funds.

The space glider vid was especially awesome. Thanks for sharing.

Click to expand...

To learn how to fly you can use a simulator and hook up your regular field transmitter to it, even goggles if you want, but most don't bother. I use Velocidrone a fully realistic drone flight sim, the programmer's are pilots and they even have a real test track and use data from flight control computers etc. Here is my sim and here is my flight instructor, an Englishman named Ashley Davis, he's a programmer and a racing pilot. This is a real nice tune and worth watching the video for alone, here is one of the places ya practice. You can buy a transmitter and the sim and have a go at flying quads for real cheap, in acro mode it's like balancing a broomstick on yer finger.
VelociDrone Indoor GoKart Scene

Here is a typical review on the latest greatest radio and one I would buy one if I didn't have 2 Taranis QX7's transmitters already! There are other cheaper transmitters for less than $100 that perform pretty well, the cheaper version of this one in just $99.

Here is how you learn and learn what to buy and what to avoid, all the major reviewers agree on this radio, it works with all the receivers from other brands of radios (multi protocol) and is just $150.US. RadioMaster TX16S Hall Sensor Gimbals 2.4G 16CH Multi-protocol RF System
RADIOMASTER TX16S - EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW

I'm planning on flying long range waypoint missions with a nano talon over water one day to photograph the shoreline and to fly over water at a local park. I can safely launch and land the plane and avoid flying over people by sitting in the park and flying over water, if the plane goes down it's foam and floats, the problem is retrieving it. I figure if I build this FPV rescue boat and site the video transmitter and control receiver on 1 meter high masts and mount the FPV camera as high up as I can on a cheap pan and tilt gimbal, I could go for miles off shore and have gps return to home too. I can also rig a system to raise and lower a ramp to hold the rescued plane out of the water.

I like this basic design and with a few modifications it would suit my needs, this fellow already did most of the work in design, testing and setup. I could build this pretty cheap and I might take it on as a winter project and be ready for some serious flying next summer. I live close to the water and it's the best place to fly, provided you have the means to recover the plan incase something screws up, foam planes and wings float, you can even spray coat much of the electronics with plastic insulation and waterproofing. I like this idea and I might build it, it looks like fun all on its own and a great way to play with way point GPS navigation. It would fit in the back of the car easily or even the trunk and I can stick the masts on quickly when I need to use it.
Rc Rescue Boat build

This Starlink internet connection is low latency and it sounds like you could mount the antenna or come up with an alternate design for a larger fpv plane. As more satellites go up the antenna requirements will be reduced, I assume it will get down to cell phone sized if there are enough satellites in orbit. You could fly an FPV plane anywhere and not even use a regular radio or transmitter, you would be untraceable and the latency is a mere 25ms. You would be able to sit at home at your computer and control a plane hundreds of miles way, provided you had the battery power. With a gas powered engine, small model aircraft have crossed the atlantic way back in 2003, illegal as Hell now thought, but other than building the plane, all the GPS navigation and autopilot stuff got way easier and much cheaper.
The Saga of TAM-5
On August 11, 2003, model aviation history was made by a team of volunteers led by model aviation legend Maynard Hill. "The Spirit of Butt's Farm," also known as TAM-5, became the first aeromodel to fly nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean, setting two world records in the process. These were Maynard's 24th and 25th records! Highlights of the "Trans-Atlantic Model" Project which set two world records in August, 2003 by flying an eleven pound airplane across the Atlantic Ocean.
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SpaceX Starlink internet prepares for beta users
Thanks to its latest launch, SpaceX now has over 500 Starlink internet satellites in orbit. With this advance, the company is now inviting people to apply to become Starlink beta testers.
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Think doing undetectable unlimited range FPV via a low latency Starlink satellite internet connection is out there? Well you can FPV now using a 4G cell phone service and fly wherever there's service, and switch back to a regular radio if ya want. You don't need to buy this particular plane either, you can roll your own too, there are complete instructions and videos online. This hobby is very engineer heavy, progress is fast and there are new and improved products all the time, many of them form companies and sell to a limited market online.
Parrot DISCO Unlimited Control Range! - 4G LTE Mod Flight Test In-Depth

This is about as far as you can go using conventional radio equipment these days, if you're an expert amameteur. The further you go the higher you must fly, he most likely also mounted his transmitter module and FPV receiver on a high mast at his ground station too and controlled the plane from inside his home watching on the computer screen. Flying this high is illegal and a hazard to aircraft though, even though he had GPS and RTH incase he lost contact.

If he were using the new 4G cell system like above he could stay below 400 feet and go wherever there's service, virtually undetectable. A few years down the road when Starlink is fully deployed, he could go anywhere and fly with a low latency internet link, just like you would play a video game online, except for a video link.

Also in a few years battery capacity and longevity are expected to rise dramatically with a doubling or tripling of power capacity for the same mass and volume. That means an electrically powered aircraft can have 2 or 3 times the endurance than it does now.

This guy doesn't want you or the authorities to know where he lives, so he hid the GPS data in the OSD video. Like I said this hobby is a bit like the pot hobby used to be and still is, some are outlaws, out for the technical challenge and rush of success. This is a typical guy thing, man cave stuff, more time is spent in the shop building, repair and related projects, than flying, especially in winter
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Record 269Km FPV long range flight (134.5Km out and back) - Highlights
Full 5hr11min video coming up soon! This is just a highlights video showing the launch, plane reaching the 134.5Km point, and the landing. *** The bottom middle number shows the distance from home. *** Started flight at about ~3:30pm and landing around ~8:45pm just before sunset at 9:14pm.
Furthest point out: 134.5Km
Total flight distance: 275.2Km
Total flight time: 5hr 11min.
Total mAh reported (ET under-reported): 26,987mAh
Total mAh actual (after recharging pack): 30,995mAh After recharging the pack, the actual mAh's used was 30,995mAh which is a difference of 4,008mAh. So, the updated average mAh/Km: 30,995mAh/275.2Km = 112.63mAh/Km.

Here is a typical longer range flight, for this you use a standard JR module that fits in the back of your radio and converts it from 2.4 Ghz to 930 Mhz and higher power. These modules come as a cheaper $100 Frsky version or a better TBS crossfire system $2-300 range. You can easily fly over 10 miles with either system, most drones have limited range and don't need anything more than this UHF radio system, it can easily out distance most 5.8 Ghz analog video links anyway at low altitude.

He has permission to do this early in the morning, notice the security guy in the pavilion as he's power looping it and the other vehicles in the video blocking access.
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Long range powerloop

New regulations mean that for aircraft that weigh less than 250 grams you don't need a drone pilot licence or have to register the drone. So needless to say there are an awful lot of sub 250 gram products starting to come out and folks experiment on their own. Here is Diego again, this time trying to fly a tiny sub 250 gram drone across the mouth of SF bay and recording it with an on board mini HD camera system and DVR that costs just $69 US now for an even better version.

Here he is using a separate 5.8 Ghz receiver on a tripod with two directional patch antennas to boost reception for very clear video, this is then plugged into his goggles for improved long range reception.
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How to fly a cellphone-sized drone across the San Francisco Bay and back