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10 Tips For Learning To Fly A FPV Drone

Flying a drone is easy if you know what you're doing. Follow these tips to learning to fly a fpv drone!

There are a few things that it will take you a few months to learn once you finally get your own fpv drone and you start flying regularly.

If you are lucky you will have a flying mentor with some pro pilot help guide you and tell you some of these tips, but if you don’t then feel free to study this guide：10 Tips For Learning To Fly A FPV
Drone. We Hope to help accelerate your learning and improve your FPV flying skills with practice.

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Always Keep Safety in Mind（Safety Rules）

Before you start, there are a few safety rules to keep in mind about FPV flying.

Take a look around before you start flying, including anything you can’t see in your goggles and monitor.
Be in an area as large as possible, away from people, traffic and other things. A grassy area is an ideal place and also prevents sand from getting into the motor.
When you arrive at the flying area, perform a pull test and range test on the radio and VTX to find signal dead spots and limitations.
FPV drones can cause some damage when falling from high altitudes, especially when there are also high-speed rotating propellers. Wise people should not attempt any dangerous maneuvers.
Pre-flight check, perform a hover test, and flight test around to make sure your drone and your controls are aligned and that your entire fpv system is working properly.
When the drone lands on the ground and you are ready to pick up the drone, be sure to make the radio’s throttle rocker low state (lock the radio) first, then unplug the battery cable.
After flight check, touch the temperature of the motors and ESCs with your hands. One that is too hot may be bad, or the paddles may be unbalanced or have been damaged. Multiple high temperature motors could mean that the aircraft weight is not balancing it out.

If you are a beginner in micro quads, don’t forget to check out the fpv drones guide for beginners.

Learning Radio Transmitter

You also need to learn about the role of the rocker of the radio transmitter of fpv.There are two sticks on the transmitter, they control the movement of the multirotor:

Throttle – makes the quadcopter ascend (climb) or descend (come down)
Yaw – rotates the quadcopter clockwise or counter-clockwise
Roll – tilts the quadcopter left or right
Pitch – tilts the quadcopter forward or backward

The directional controls are sometimes referred to as aileron (roll), elevator (pitch) and rudder (yaw). On a radio, there are also optional switches (sometimes known as AUX switches), which are used to change between flying modes, enable particular functions, etc.

Usually these radios are divided into left-hand throttle and right-hand throttle.

Left-hand throttle(Mode 2)：

The climb and come down of the left stick represents the throttle; left and right represents the yaw.

The climb and come down of the right stick represents pitch; left and right represents roll.

Right-hand throttle(Mode 1)：

The climb and come down of the left stick represents pitch; left and right represents yaw.

The climb and come down of the right stick represents throttle; left and right represents roll.

Two Types of Flight Mode

FPV has acro and self-level modes, as well as Flip over after crash mode.

Acro Mode：

Manipulate any direction stick after the remote stick back to the center, the flight will always fly along a certain direction, will not adjust back to the horizontal position, need to manually correct the attitude constantly, no attitude angle limit when flying.

Self-level mode：

Is a kind of assisted flight mode, when the stick is back in the middle, the quadcopter automatically restores the middle position. That is, the flight control automatically finds the level of the quadcopter position from time to time.

For beginners, it is best to start from Self-level mode, and then to acro mode.

Flip over after crash mode：

It is a way to get the drone turned upside down again with a radio transmitter when it flips on the ground.

You just need to lock the drone with the radio transmitter first and put the left stick(left hand throttle) to the lowest state.
Then turn on the Flip over after crash mode.Depending on the drone camera orientation and tumble position, use the right stick (left hand throttle) to control the drone to tumble over again. After turning over, turn off the Flip over after crash mode. Turn on the radio transmitter again to control the drone and fly normally.

After these controls and flight modes are understood, let’s move on to the real flight instruction.

10 Tips To Learning To Fly A FPV Drone

ONE：Exercises for Flying in Line of Sight

When flying line of sight (LOS), you are in direct visual contact with the drone (not through the FPV goggles or Monitor).

It’s best to have some LOS flying experience before diving right into FPV flying. This is helpful since it allows you to control and safely land your drone even if the video signal is lost.

Make sure you understand how to control the quad and navigate it about the field without losing your bearings; you don’t need to learn any clever tricks.

1.Hovering

You’ll want to lift your quad off the ground almost instantly to around 1.5 meter. When it’s too close to the ground, your quad might become unstable due to air disturbance (ground effect/prop wash). Try to hover and stay at the same spot, same altitude. It’s not easy as you have to control throttle, pitch and roll at the same time.

2.Landing

Reduce the speed slowly as you ready to land.Do not cut the throttle too fast, because your quad will fall freely and crash and will hear a loud sound!

Cut the throttle all the way off when the drone is only a few millimeters off the ground, then let it fall to the ground.

Repeat this exercise until you feel at ease hovering over the ground and softly landing safely.

3.Pitch and Roll Control

Bring your drone to a hover first.
Fly it a few feet forward by pushing the right stick forward.
To return to its start point, pull back the right stick.
Place it a few feet further rearward and then put it back where it was.
To move your quadcopter a few feet to the left, move the right stick to the left.
Return it to its starting place before flying it a few feet to the right.

P.S. If the drone begins to yaw (rotate), move the left stick to the left or right to keep it pointed in the same direction.

4.Yaw Wandering

Yaw refers to the quad’s center turning 360 degrees.
Use the throttle to take off and rotate your drone.
Push the left stick in either direction once you’ve reached a comfortable hover. The drone will turn in place as a result.
Turn it around once. Then, rotate the left stick 360 degrees in the opposite direction by pushing it in the opposite direction.

It is highly recommended that you practice more and more until you fully get the hang of it.

TWO：Flight practice with FPV goggles

Before you put on your FPV goggles and start flying, you should have your fpv camera facing horizontally (no camera tilt). You will fly more quickly the higher the camera is tilted.

Practice in an area that is open and not near people and traffic facilities. To assist in spatial awareness and distance judgment, use trees or poles as a point of reference.

5.Basic flying skills: take off, fly out and back, landing

Specific Steps：

Take off and hold a height of 1 to 2 meters.
Pushing the pitch stick forward will let you to fly for about 30 metres. By adjusting the throttle, you can always keep a steady altitude.
Pull the pitch stick in your direction to begin slowing down and stop.
Using the Yaw stick, reverse direction, accelerate once more (pitch forward), and fly back to your starting point to land.

6.Fly via an Air Gate or Tight Gap

Specific Steps：

In the center of a lengthy field, place one air gate. Start with a big gate, then move on to smaller, trickier gates and gaps.
Fly towards the gate and slowly fall to the height of the gate beginning at one end of the field, above the height of the gate.
Once you’ve made it through the gate, raise your altitude. Turn sharply, then continue.

7.Orbit

Orbit’s Main Point：

Maintain the same distance from the target object (radius of the orbit)
The same height as the horizontal plane (orbitheight from the ground)
Keep fpv to make a (near) perfect circle.

It also has categories：Orbit parallel to the ground，Horizontal roll tilt orbit

Specific steps for orbit parallel to the ground：

Finding the starting point of the action.Whether it’s FPV or helicopters, you need to find the starting point for the action that follows you best.（This is the key to a good start）
Once you find the correct starting point for the movement (flight posture + stick).
Yaw only need to keep the pressure left a little can be, do not need too much roll stick movement.
Elevator stays pressed forward a little bit (will make the tail of the drone lift slightly).You will be able to maintain the orbit’s flight posture. Then try to loop along the loop.
The throttle did not take sides，no need to go crazy with the throttle.

Specific steps for Horizontal roll tilt orbit：

If you would like to go clockwise,do the orbit movement.You can do it like this:

First orbit using parallel to the ground
Slowly increase the throttle
When the throttle is increased, the attitude of thefpv will be shifted a little towards the direction of rotation.At this time, use the yaw stick (to the right) plus a little roll stick (to the right) to control.At the same time. The flight height will slowly increase, and to maintain the flight height you need to use the Pitch stick (forward) to control.

For a clear explanation, you can check out rotor riot video.

8.Sharp Turns

Your ability to execute precise, sharp turns helps you escape crashes.Turning FPV is lifting the tail end of the drone to fly.

Specific steps：

Control the stick when turning to increase pitch (forward) + increase roll (toward the direction of the turn) + increase throttle = Force the FPV to turn

Remember, if you don’t increase the throttle, the fpv will drift to the far side. If you don’t increase the pitch(forward to the stick), the fpv will also drift to the far side.

However, different propellers require different throttle strengths when making a sharp turn, so throttle level should be determined by your drone.

9.Split-S

The Split-S move is the foundational step in many tricks. Essentially, it involves a 180-degree roll and flip. If you add yaw control into the movement, it looks even better.

Key Points:

Horizontal flight + thrust the throttle to climbing altitude
Roll stick rotation 180 degrees (FPV enters inverted flight attitude)
Pitch stick rotation 180 degrees (FPV returns to parallel flight attitude)

Specific Steps：

Fly towards the roll target (usually a tree) + thrust the throttle to climb higher
(The moment you fly over the target) roll 180 degrees sideways (enter inverted flight and reduce throttle)
(When descending the height) slowly pull the pitch 180 degrees (increase the throttle to resume horizontal flight)

Note：The skill of throttle control, must be clever with pitch and roll, to maintain the recovery of horizontal flight attitude.

Through continuous practice, get used to the timing of the movement into and out of the turn and throttle,Just know exactly how much thrust you need to do a really smooth.

10.Inverted Yaw Spin

Specific steps：

Rotate the pitching stick 180 degrees (usually a half back flip)
Maintain inverted flight attitude and do a fast 180 degree or 360 degree loop on the yaw stick.
Rotate the pitching stick 180 degrees (usually a half back flip),Return to horizontal attitude.

Note：When you’re learning this skill, Rates are important, and the timing is important.

I saw an interesting comment on YouTube where he succinctly summarized these flying tips for pilots.

Beginner mode = find flags one by one..

Advanced mode = Do Wide orbit..

Expert mode = Do Narrow Orbit..

God-like-Hero-For-Racing-only mode = pre-turn

No matter what way you want to fly, you should always practice over and over again.I hope this flight skill guide is useful to you.

Norix FPV

I'm a sale manger who is passionate about the RC drone industry.At first I played rc glider with friends.Now,I've been into FPV for over 3 years now. It is my main hobby at rc. rc glider,FPV drones freestyle, fpv builds, and everything else drone related is always of interest to me!