first flight....

[Toenee]

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...

[English Turbines]

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:

[pk-surfing]

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  :)

[Toenee]

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.....

[AdamG]

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?

[CurryKitten]

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

[Toenee]

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.

[BigT]

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/Model-Flying-Types/First-Person-View-FPV
http://handbook.bmfa.org/external-pdf

[Billy_boy_2010]

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 :)

[Toenee]

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...

[pk-surfing]

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  :)

[Toenee]

Thanks Paul, but I don't put much hope on the weather being nice. Fingers crossed..

[Coyote]

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.

[Loopdreams]

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.

[Coyote]

All the SIM threads are in here.

I have used Phoenix and Realflight, both very good and free if you know where to look ;) ;)