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I've been really wanting to get into the hobby. So, I recently bought an Emax Tinyhawk II RTF bundle. Along with that I also purchased Liftoff. I'd practice on Liftoff for a while (I think I'm actually doing pretty good too) then I would take out the Tinyhawk and it seems it's like a completely different ball game. Just wondering if maybe anyone knows if there are settings for Liftoff that I should be using or is it just, practice practice practice. I've also got a RTF DJI FPV drone (kinda worried about taking it out) so I've been using the DJI receiver that came with it in Liftoff.

Just keep practicing on the TinyHawk because its light and can take crashes without much major damage.

It will click one day and you will get the hang of it. You just need more stick time and calm the nerves.

I only did the simulator till I waited for my quad parts to get delivered (about 20 hours in total with an Xbox controller).

Once I started 3d printing and building my first quad and literally crashed every time and broke something when I went out.

Build/crash/repair is the cycle I followed for a while until I would crash less and start feeling locked into the FPV experience.

The sim will help with stick coordination and you can reset every time you crash. But real life is different, weather, wind, battery capacity, RC and video link, real obstacles, soft targets

I tried going back to the sim again often during cold rainy days but I can't take anymore than 10 minutes of the experience. Its just not the same.

additional the rc rates/stickfeel, sims often have some expo while betaflight defaults doesnt have any expo.
you could try to adjust the rates close to the simulator, to get a bit closer feel between reallife and sim. that might be some exploring and work, but you will go into it in longterm anyway... spend that time :-)
https://oscarliang.com/rc-roll-pitch-yaw...eanflight/

anyway that, as kafie told, it will click one day. mention as manual shifting, pretty difficult at the first try - if you got it, its not mentioned anymore :-) stick time is always the solution :-)

to increase sticktine, a tiny whoop can be nice :-)

Simulators help you to build some muscle memory with stick co-ordination and learn stick movements for certain tricks, but they aren't really comparable to flying the real thing IMO. I never even learned on a simulator. I just went out and flew the real thing straight off the bat although I did initially take advantage of angle and acro trainer modes to help me build confidence before I went to full acro.

Just lots of practice is what you need. Fly in a safe location away from any people and over soft ground (i.e. grass) so when you do crash you limit the amount of damage. One other tip is to make sure you immediately disarm if you crash because if anything gets caught up in the spinning props it can overload and fry the ESCs.

I recommend people focus on slow small stick movement. Beginners seem to have a problem with over-correcting.(myself included when I started out) Making huge stick movements trying to correct the quads attitude. Such as moving the sticks all the way to one side trying to correct a movement. That, of course, leads to a bigger problem. Your sticks never need to go all the way to one side unless you are trying to do a quick flip or roll.

I would focus on moving the sticks together in the same direction to do a smooth turn, and simple try to cruise around the edges of the football field in circles. I would do a battery pack on left turns, then next battery I would go the other way and do right turns. And I would consciously try to focus on SLOW + SMOOTH + SMALL stick movements. No sudden jerking to one side trying to make a correction.

Eventually I got better and better, until I would start doing slow figure 8's in stead of a circle, mixing left and right turns. Then once I had that down, I would start to just slowly cruise around the open field making random left and right turns.

Then one day I eventually get bored enough with that, so I get the confidence up to try some rolls + flips. (high in the air of course, so I have room to make a mistake).

Until now, 2 years later I can do some neat flips, and slalom between cones buzzing right along the top of the grass, or fly between tree branches to really get my heart going.


I know it seems SO HARD when you start. Especially if, like me, you had been watching pros on youtube make flying look SO EASY and natural.

Just keep at it, it starts out frustrating and embarrassing. Next thing you know, you catch people in your goggle view standing behind you watching you pull off tricks, ripping around the field, and it feels great!

I have a old laptop, so liftoff didn’t work well for me (I still want to fly Bardwell’s farm)! So I am limited to low graphics sims.. velocideone works “ok” (for me)but what has helped me more than any other “sim” is Flowstate. It is on steam. It is a racing sim… HOWEVER, I have not been flying ACRO, because of lack of stick time..
Also, the “feel” maybe it’s the rates in this sim felt more “familiar” and not so sensitive for me..
If u have a system with a good graphics card, I would try velocideone first, or just try flowstate..
I have heard and it can be somewhat true. “Every time you crash in a sim, it saves you $100”

I use Velocidrone as my sim.

I started out without any sim time. I just jumped right into the deep end and tried to swim. I got a sim after already flying for a year and wished I had done the sim from the start. It would have saved me a few crashes.

I noticed my over-all muscle memory with the sticks get a lot better once I starting playing in the sim. And my confidence got a good boost, because I could try things I would never try for the first time in real life.
I now learn how to do a move in the sim first, before I try it with my quad.

I chose Velocidrone for my sim because I read that is has very realistic flight physics. It's certainly not the prettiest, it has graphics straight out of 1999, but the overall physics and 'feel' are very good. No sim is going to be exactly like flying in real life, but they are great at developing muscle-memory, hand-eye coordination, and boosting confidence by letting you try whatever you want. If you crash, no big deal. Simply hit reset and try it again.

Spend as much time as you can stand in the sim. As others have said it doesn't fully translate but stick time is stick.time, it will pay your effort back. It's weird some things I can pull of better in a real quad but couldn't in sim when gaining experience. Of course the opposite is true too for moves like an inverted yaw spin where I don't have a similar object in the real world to practice on. .

Of course fly as much in the real quad too as that will truly build your confidence. Then eventually you can use the sim to disect a trick or.work on stringing tricks together.

I went through the same completely lost feeling but it will click and once it does then your skills will increase.
Flying 3+ packs a day helped a lot.

I had to level camera or even slightly pointed down to see ground.

The hardest part for me was getting used to not knowing where I was for all I seen was the sky and what was in front of camera or in goggles.Tilting camera down helped a lot.

Finding landmarks or putting a white 5 gallon bucket on ground worked for a marker.

I did the same training methods I used flying LOS with planes.
Start out flying in right hand circles,then left hand circles,then figure 8’s and then do them again flying in opposite directions.
Once I can fly in circles and figure 8’s then start picking things to fly around and stay 2 mistakes high if possible.
Trying to stay a few mistakes high in altitude can save your craft for if you turn too steep or cut power too much you will have more time to recover before hitting the ground.
Flying in large circles and figure 8’s will get you used to sticks and build confidence quickly.

Totally forgot… that’s right.. you may “see” a lot of quads on line with the cameras with a lot of “up tilt”.. unless u are racing drop the angle to flat to a little uptilt… it will help.. once u start gaining confidence and speed.. you may want to give more uptilt.. there are a lot of freestyle flyers that use little if not no uptilt.. so don’t feel like you have to use it..