Humble(d) FPV Dreams

I sure love flying drones.

I started flying a ‘camera drone’…mass-produced, for the masses. As such, the ‘rates’ of control were turned way down, to make it docile and ‘cinematography’ compatible.

These Every-man drones have three basic modes: C or cinematography, P or position, and S or sport mode. Each mode has progressively higher rates, speed, and performance. The best I had available with these type of drones was the good ole ‘S mode’, and it was (to the relatively new pilot I still am) plenty zippy.

But after a while I got used to it, and it began to seem downright pokey, compared to the performance I saw posted in the aerobatic and racing forum videos. I wanted more.

Besides, those camera drones flew mostly in 2-D. Well, they flew in a sort-of 3-D, definitely much better than a car or motorcycle. You could (after all) go up and down, in addition to zipping side to side, and through turns. It was the basic definition of 3-D movement, and when I first started, it was epic, liberating, even transformational. But you couldn’t do barrel rolls or flips, no vertical dives or swooping ascent turns. No power rolls or yaw spins. I wanted more. I wanted real 3-D.

This was all before considering thrust to weight ratio (TWR). Those camera drones had maybe 2:1 to 4:1 TWR, and that seemed pretty zippy, at first. Of course, the weight had to be fairly high, carrying around GPS receivers and cameras and gimbals. And the big manufacturers weren’t throwing in some extra thrust to make up for that weight…they knew their market. The folks who were buying these camera drones (selling like hotcakes, by the way) wanted good video…which meant a stable aerial platform…which meant a slightly under-powered (and maybe even docile) drone, with a low TWR. It meant an easy-to-fly drone, a ‘stabilized’ drone. I wanted more.

So I got more. I watched a couple hundred videos and listened to a couple hundred reviews and comparisons. I studied facts and figures, compared motors and camera and components. Finally I chose; a great little drone, one of the type they call a cine-whoop, and the best of that bunch. It was called ‘cine’ because it has a High Definition camera, so it was sort of cinematographic. It was called ‘whoop’ because it is a sporty little thing, able to zip around so fast it would elicit a ‘whoop’ of delight from the pilot.

I tested everything, configured it and checked it out on the bench, and finally proclaimed it ready to fly. Oh, sure I had heard the advice that it was better to spend some time in the simulator, crashing fake drones, than it was to spend time in the field, crashing your own actual drone (and throwing away hard-earned money in the bargain). But my laptop was almost maxed out in memory, and probably a little weak in GPU power to run a simulator.

So, rather than get dragged further into the 21st century and getting an appropriate laptop (I’d already spent a ton of money on drones and peripherals), I decided that…well, heck, I was a pretty good pilot and A) I could pilot the heck out of my Mavic, so B) I could pilot this new cine-whoop, if I just took it slow and started out line-of-sight in a big field somewhere.

Now they say a mark of a good pilot is to be able to form an unbiased and accurate sense of their own skills, abilities, and shortcomings. They say a good pilot exhibits and practices good ADM (Aeronautical decision-making) skills. I figured I was a good pilot. I also figured I could ignore the advice of a majority of good pilots and skip the whole simulator bit.

After all, I ‘reasoned’, it was a nice day (albeit a bit windy). I figured I was in a pretty big field, and pretty much sheltered from the steady and gusting wind. I reckoned I’d be okay, and I was more than enough of a pilot to handle this mission.

So I prepped. I checked the area and the aircraft. I self-evaluated. I double-checked my equipment and reviewed my basic flight plan. That plan was to fly line of sight for a battery (or maybe even two) and get the feel of this new aircraft, before putting on the FPV goggles (as I was dying to) and rip around like an osprey, marveling at the new eagle eye view I had.

Yeah, I thought (mentally patting myself on the back), that would be a great plan. I was a real sport, knowing I needed to chill a bit and having the discipline to back it off like I did by going LOS (line of sight). I was a great pilot, with a great plan. What a guy.

Well, I did my checks, and spun up the props, and hit the ‘up’ lever a little bit, to get the aircraft hovering at around six feet…

…Well, faster than (insert incredibly fast metaphor/analogy here), that drone was up in the clouds. I mean that sucker just took off. God knows what would have happened if I’d have moved that lever a little more, or (God forbid) to the stops. As it was, that sucker took off like the price of Marlboros in a crisis. I mean, that baby was gone in two point two milliseconds. Gone, I say.

Did I mention it has a TWR of 6:1? Yeah, six times as much thrust (lifting up) as it had weight (pushing down). Saints preserve us! That thing moved out like it was late for a wedding. Now, the difference between 3:1 and 6:1 doesn’t seem like much…sitting here in the living room, or thinking about it in general terms. But in practical reality, it is worlds of difference. I mean, that baby took off…did I say that already?

Before you know it, a big gust of wind (and my fingers probably dead on the levers, as I gawked in amazement) took my little whoop up over the rooftops and headed towards…people. People out of my line of sight. That is not a good thing. That is not a legal thing. So, like the good citizen I am, I reached for the disarm switch, to let that baby go brick mode, rather than have it fly halfway to China and land God-knows-where.

Well, on my way to the brick mode switch (the disarm switch), my finger brushed the automatic roll switch programmed into my controller (not by me; I wanted that switch to be for something innocuous like a buzzer, and thought I set it like that).

Well, once I hit that roll switch, that little drone did a series of impressive rolls on its way toward terra firma. It was rolling as it went behind the intervening building, as my finger finally hit the disarm switch, to force it into a brick-mode landing.

I gotta admit, the suspense was high as I ran to the other side of the building. What if it was crashed on top of a nice Corvette, smashed to smithereens as it made a huge dent in the ‘Vette’s hood? What if it was laying next to a knocked-out kid? Oh, the what-ifs ran through my head as I raced over there, expecting to see…something.

Well, all I saw was nothing. A couple guys stood near where I figured it had landed, looking too casual (and not-mad) to have had a drone barrel-roll to the Earth, inches from them.

Well, the rest is anti-climax. I searched the roofs and bushes near the area I thought it had landed. I cursed myself (briefly) for not putting a GPS locator on the drone (my fixation with TWR kept me from doing it). I looked and looked…and found nothing. I widened my search. Still nothing.

I met a nice guy who lived nearby, and told him my sad story. He walked with me as I searched. When I went further away (thinking to widen my circle), he volunteered to look the other way. Well, I had just about resigned myself to having lost my new drone on its first flight, when some guy came and told me the other guy had found my drone.

The suspense was killing me…in pieces? Flown half-through a window?

But no, it was fine…not a durn dent or scratch on it (pretty impressive for going at speed into the Earth, from an estimated forty feet).

Well, I was sure glad to see it, and having already eaten a lot of humble pie, ate some more as I re-evaluated my decision-making and flying skills. So, rather than rush right back out into the windy field and try again, I decided to bring Baby home and review my rates and PIDs, maybe dial my tune down a bit.

Well, I know we are remote pilots, and anything that happens to our aircraft doesn’t really happen to us, but once I got back, I discovered I felt as if I had been through a crash…as if I had been found and saved, instead of my unmanned drone.

So here I sit, taking a break from watching (yet more) videos about rates and PIDs and tuning drones. Here I sit, with a belly full of humble pie, and a heart full of thankfulness, that I didn’t lose or destroy my drone.

Daaaang. I mean that baby took off.

This is an entirely different world than camera drones.

I want more.