Hi all, a little bit of background...
I was introduced to your hobby by coyote and pksurfing just over a week ago. I was instantly hooked. by the following Friday parts were delivered and it was time to do a lot of googling. Friday night and Saturday was spent sitting next to a computer whilst building the plane.
I found I was spending more time searching for the simplest things than building the plane. things like, how does the receiver get its power? it turns out that everybody knows this so the answer is hard to find. A lot of time was also spent seeing how and where other people had mounted things like receiver aerials, OSD controllers, etc.
I spent Sunday setting things up like the taranis controller, OSD...well spent more time googling...
My rc flying experience is practically zero.. rc glider 20 years ago which was fine flying away from me but towards me confused me. I have flown a friends light aircraft a number of times but that's it.
Tonight I decided to find the biggest open area with the softest landing and with as few people around to watch. myself and my wife ended up on the top of the north Yorkshire moors with very little wind and a clear sky.
For my first flight I wanted to fly straight and land, but what happened was I flew straight carried out numerous turns and aprox 5 minutes later landed it with a surprisingly smooth landing. Oh and I forgot to press record on the goggles :(
So pleased on the first flight, I decided to carry out a second but recording it this time. took off... landed nose first.... not sure what happened, blame the wife's launching skills.
So the third flight, with the goggles recording, took off, flew around for aprox 2 mins then..... the noise from the planes motor stopped... the plane was heading back towards us into the wind, and heading down, I saw the ground approaching then lost video. My controller started shouting at me about losing the signal... Oops...
The plane had come down over a ridge losing my video signal.
After some searching I started getting video winch gave me its GPS coordinates, using my phone the plane was soon found.
it seems the propeller had come off therefore looing propulsion, the propeller was checked for tightness prior to the flight. Maybe the failed flight had loosened it, not sure.
For my first flight I don't think it went too bad and luckily not too much damage was done.
It has made me like it more and I look forward to more small flights and hopefully gain confidence and experience.
Tony...
Welcome to the addictive world of FPV flight....You don't have to be mad to do this, but it certainly helps....Sounds like you did pretty well all things considered...:)
:vulture:
Hi Tony,
In at the deep end then.... no fear there ;D
You're hooked now, glad the plane is still in one piece and repairable, small steps and not too far away for the first few flights to iron out any bugs.
PK :)
Thanks Paul it would be better if I could have lessons but not sure if you can, I am doing as much research as possible and intend on practising in the biggest most open space possible, with the least amount of wind.
One thing I found was how disorienting it is especially with a background as uniform as the moorland.
Good fun though.....
To be honest i'm impressed you managed to get up in the air ~2 weeks after finding out about the hobby :o :o good work!
It took me about 6 months of research/building before my first flight!
Out of interest, what plane have you built? with what gear?
2 weeks ! Took me ages to build and get parts and then insta-crashing commenced.
Of course, you might not be familiar with the rule here, but "video, or it didn't happen" is the name of the game, so lets see it :)
Well done - keep flying
Hi
I ended up, with recommendation from here, a bix3 trainer with taranis controller, cyclops storm OSD and fatshark dominator v3 goggles. The plane was pnf so mostly built.
I think there is still a lot of tweaking to do to achieve stick less level flight, but could not resist a little play first.
Hi Tony, its a great shame that you dont have the benefit of a club or mentor near you to help with the early stages of flying. You have done well to get this far unaided. If you where near me I would be there like a shot!
There are some really useful publications if you know where to look. I have listed the links below to some basic knowledge publications regarding radio, flight control and model type.
It may seem unnecessary to you at the moment but insurance is a must in these times of litigation. we had a similar model to your fly off on its own with a full battery and it ended up 5 miles away through a green house roof. It was traced back to the owner by the simple method of downloading the sd card and spotting the flight path back, plus there was a good shot of the registration plate of the owners car!
https://www.bmfa.org/Info/Getting-Started/Getting-Started-in-R-C (https://www.bmfa.org/Info/Getting-Started/Getting-Started-in-R-C)
https://www.bmfa.org/Info/Model-Flying-Types/First-Person-View-FPV (https://www.bmfa.org/Info/Model-Flying-Types/First-Person-View-FPV)
http://handbook.bmfa.org/external-pdf (http://handbook.bmfa.org/external-pdf)
Yes insurance is vital
don't rush it. it's a really enjoyable process and the first time you achieve something is the best. my first 6 months in the hobby were the best tbh.
learn the legalities of fpv and disobey them at your peril. You're 75% of the way to real safety if you fly in the middle of nowhere. the biggest risk imo is hitting a car and causing it to crash and hit a pedestrian. if you're miles away that can't happen :)
Hi
All insured, for the price it's stupid not to.
I am not sure if this is the right place to ask but, flight simulators, is there a realistic one for fpv? Would I benefit from one?
I'll look into the books, the more info the better.
Thanks for your replies
Tony...
Tony,
If the weather is decent this weekend I'll be out for a fly, will let you know when and where and see if we can meet up, should be fun if nothing else
PK :)
Thanks Paul, but I don't put much hope on the weather being nice. Fingers crossed..
First flight no video ........... Sorry it didn't happen then ( Them is the rulez :) )
Not sure the second did until we see the video :)
OK doze of reality time ......................
Not many loose a plane on their first attempts, you must have been far away then or flew behind something, the moors are flat so flying beyond LOS is pretty hard.
You're running before you walk mate, it will not get you anywhere. Neither did your autopilot you fit either. Your autopilot is powerless when you make piloting mistakes like flying behind things or parts of the craft fail.
Remember when I was flying over the steelworks and I said I must be wary of the towers ? They were half a mile away but I still knew that they would block my LOS so kill my video and my autopilot would just fly me straight into them. Its things like that you have to learn.
You need to learn the basics. Rushing into it is only going to cause more losses or an accident. Spacial awareness, keeping it close in while you check everything, getting use to the plane and your surroundings / landmarks / reference points. All these are basic fundamentals you should have before you try to fly off.
A sim will help no end, but again you're trying to cheat by asking about a sim for flying fpv, you need to learn how to fly a plane first, flying LOS is so important.
You can sit on a SIM and get very good at flying LOS without it costing you a penny in repairs. The SIM though as its name suggests is a simulation and can not be compared to the real flight when there is no "To reset hit spacebar" and mistakes can cost a whole plane. It will though give you the best possible training before hand. You also need to learn how to recover a stalled plane, if you can not do this then LOS / FPV ont matter. All these are basic flying skills that you really need.
What are you going to do when the video goes down ?
Take the goggles off and watch it go down hitting something / someone because you skipped learning how to actually fly a plane ?
Take a step back, start from the beginning, come over for a fly with us and start the hobby in the best way possible.
I know that all sounds very harsh but Tony you really need to start listening to good advice, not listening to what you want to hear only.
Yeah, definitely get a sim, they're fun in themselves anyway. Hammer the sim a few hours over a couple of days and you'll be able to fly LOS absolutely fine.
All the SIM threads are in here. (http://www.fpvhub.com/index.php/board,5.0.html)
I have used Phoenix and Realflight, both very good and free if you know where to look ;) ;)
I agree with Ian, there are no shortcuts in this hobby. If you dont want to join a club then why not go along to one of the model flight schools and pay for lessons?
Words of advice, in no particular order:
Dont be tempted to fly LOS in circles around yourself. Always fly in front of yourself so you dont get handed.
When the model is coming towards you put the aileron control stick under the wing thats dropping.
Dont fly so far away that you lose orientation.
The rudder is your second best friend, the throttle is your first.
Learn how to take care of Lipo batteries so you preserve their service length and dont burn your house down.
Always fly at least 2 accidents high.
There's some good learn to fly vids on the flitetest website.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Hi coyote, I take on board what you say, but I would like to comment on what you have said and please don't take this the wrong way.
The reason I lost my plane was not that it was too far away it was only 150-250 m it just came landed on a downward slope which was out of view. With regards to the auto pilot, this was to assist me in the direction of flight (the home position) and was instrumental in me retrieving the aircraft using the gps coordinates. It was never meant as a autopilot to control the plane.
The problem which brought the plane down was down to the prop nut unscrewing, I find it strange the adaptor having a right hand thread, combined with the direction of the motor makes the air resistance on the propeller unscrew the nut.
As I have said I would love to go on a training course and have lessons to fly LOS but as far as I am aware it's not possible and to ask someone to give up their time to help me I don't think it's fair.
I really do listen to all the advice given and really appreciate all the help.
I don't want to fall out with you, I am just trying my best to get into a hobby which I think in time would be very enjoyable, even though very technical and challenging.
On the flip side - I never had a single lesson, getting into FPV from finding it on Youtube.... I did for a long time bring my stuff back in a bin bag after every flight though. So you can do it, just take it nice and slow - and use that spotter, they are really useful.
Sims work well - although I can do amazing stuff in a sim I can't do in real life... it will give you some muscle memory in terms of being able to control a plane flying towards you without having to overthink it
Dont worry Tony, not falling out with you, just desperately trying to point you in the right direction.
There are numerous people in this hobby who will tell you not to do this, not to do that, Tony.
Mostly it comes from experience, crashes and expense - so while it might sound harsh I think it's mostly due to frustration because people really want you to do well. You might be an exception but most people who start flying FPV just crash then disappear because they're disheartened - which is a shame.
In a Bixler, you have the IDEAL plane for learning to fly LoS mate - the VERY best thing you can do is to forget about FPV for an hour, run some batteries through it just flying in front of yourself in figure 8s until it is second nature. Then you have your safety net if things go sour :) Get the thing trimmed out so that you can simply fly hands off at 1/2 throttle and then it's ready for AutoPilot tweaking time - they work so much better when the plane is set up properly.
Patience is a virtue, I hope you stick around :)
It is possible to get into this hobby using the forums alone which is fairly unique. I've never actually met anyone else who flies FPV, after nearly 2 years of it!
I did a similar thing to you except I mainly flew line of sight at first because I didn't have any goggles and just couldn't get along with a monitor. It was useful practice though and I set up a cyclops storm at that time - also on a bix3. It's still my main FPV plane, I really like it!
The best bit of advise is to keep it simple though, it's easier to pin down your mistakes that way!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Absolutely learn to fly LOS. I'm much better at fpv that I am los- but I can still fly Los safely.
Quote from: Steve W on April 20, 2016, 02:46:26 PM
There are numerous people in this hobby who will tell you not to do this, not to do that, Tony.
Mostly it comes from experience, crashes and expense - so while it might sound harsh I think it's mostly due to frustration because people really want you to do well. You might be an exception but most people who start flying FPV just crash then disappear because they're disheartened - which is a shame.
In a Bixler, you have the IDEAL plane for learning to fly LoS mate - the VERY best thing you can do is to forget about FPV for an hour, run some batteries through it just flying in front of yourself in figure 8s until it is second nature. Then you have your safety net if things go sour :) Get the thing trimmed out so that you can simply fly hands off at 1/2 throttle and then it's ready for AutoPilot tweaking time - they work so much better when the plane is set up properly.
Patience is a virtue, I hope you stick around :)
Nice to hear you speaking common sense for a change 👊😊😁😇
Quote from: BigT on April 20, 2016, 08:55:29 PM
Nice to hear you speaking common sense for a change 👊😊😁😇
Well I thought it was time to give the other hole a rest :P