FPV series part 2: Learn to Fly

This article is part of a serie about the FPV drone hobby.

Here you will find the full list of articles

TL;DR:

Buy this Simulator, this radio and follow this course.

Flying an FPV quad is HARD and DANGEROUS !

Much harder than the average beginner imagine.

Without proper measures you can harm or damage

  • yourself
  • other people
  • your drone
  • properties.

Don't be stupid! LEARN USING A SIMULATOR

Traditionally FPV quads are flown in acro mode (also referred to as: manual or air).

When using this mode you are in full controll of the angles and direction of your quad.

On one side this allows you to perform flips, loops and other nice acrobatic moves, on the other nothing is gonna jump in and assist you when you loose control.

Only your experience and your understanding of how the quad will behave on you input will prevent you from crashing.

It is also very easy to get disoriented and loose control while learning.

For this reason the most recommended way to get started is to learn to fly using a simulator.

the financial arguments

Financially it makes a lot of sense to learn this way.

no need to buy all the gears

you can get a feeling of what flying feels like without having to commit to buy all the gears.

To buy a basic starter kit:

require an investment of at least 300 euro if you go for the smallest and cheapest hardware.

with few bucks for the simulator and the cost of a radio (that you will be able to use later to fly in real life) you can get the feeling if this is the activity you wish to invest into.

crashing is easy, expensive and frustrating

It is pretty simple. Crashing is part of the hobby, even the most experienced pilots crash. While you lear you crash even more and harder.

Repairing your drone takes time, skills and money to buy the parts. While your drone is broker you will not be able to fly!

other reasons to use a simulator.

practice often, learn faster

It usually takes few tens of hours spent at the simulator before most pilots feels ready to fly in the real world.

On a simulator you don't need to worry about chargin batteries packing and getting to your favourite spot.

Being able to fly wherever and whenever you want and as long as you want will make the whole process of learnign much faster.

build other skills while you lear to fly

Operating a drone requires a lot of skills beside the basic act of controlling your drone. Building, reparing and configuring your drone needs abilities that you can learn in parallel while you learn how to fly. Read the remainig articles of this serie and visit the recommended resources to lear more.

practice new tricks

Any trick, starting from the basic ones to the most complex can be practiced on the simulator.

Building the muscle memory to perform the trick cleanly and more importantly without crashing is a fundamental.

Even Pros use simulator to push their limit before attempting manouvers in real live.

Which Simulator to use?

There are few options out there but the one I've seen the most recommended is called LiftOff.

There are many ohter options. Some provide better graphics or physics, others require less powerful hardware (useful if you don't have a great PC on which to run the sim) or run on less popular operative systems.

I've seen on youtube many reviews that compare different simulators.

At the end of the day none will be perfect, so pick whichever yout believe is the most appropriate but pick one.

You need a controller.

Although you could try to fly with a gamepad like the Xbox or PlayStation gamepads, it is strongly recommended to use a proper Radio

Most Remote Controller (a.k.a. Radio) can be connected via USB to your computer and be used with your simulator, this will be the same radio that you will later use to pilot your quad in the real world.

Currently the RadioMaster Pocket is often recommended for being cheap but of decent quality, providing a lot of bangs for you bucks.

If you buy one, get also two 18650 batteries and if you don't know any better, then take the ELRS version.

follow a tutorial

Once you got controller and Simulator you can start putting hours on it. I've learned following this tutorial by the legendary Joshua Bardwell.

You could also try to learn by yourself but I believe it will be much faster and efficient to follow a tutorial that gradually guides you steps by step.

I hope I've convinced that using a simulator is the best and most recommended option to learn, I wish you the best of luck and a happy learning!