(20-Jul-2017, 11:51 AM)Carl.Vegas Wrote: So far I've only had three close calls so far. Interestingly enough I have zero footage (DVR or HD) for any of them.

about 80% of the time (probably more) I fly at an RC park with a sanctioned AMA club and we have safety rules that really keep us from flying too close to anyone. There is a designated flightline that we're not supposed to cross that's about 10-15 yards from the pit area and that buffer can be enough to significantly reduce the risk. 

I've done a few flybys,  but they were controlled and more "showing off" in an irresponsible way than they were dangerous situations. Something could have gone horribly wrong but in my mind it wouldn't and I was willing to take the risk. 

My first close call was at a park where I crashed into a tree as the quad was headed in my direction. I was sitting on the back of my car trunk, and the quad came flying towards me and the car and actually ended up under the car busting some props but otherwise still in good condition. 

The second close call was last Saturday. I was flying in a new spot after having a tough time with a new build, shaking off the frustration, and this location included me flying around trees that I was right next to. One of the times that I was circling the trees I swung a little wide and realized just as I passed myself that I was within about 10 feet or lessof hitting myself hearing the quad close up without planning it gave me the chills after it passed. It was very intense. 

The third close call was my LOS flight on Sunday that killed one of the motors on my favorite quad (bumble bee). I do not really have enough experience to fly LOS very seriously but I was out there and doing flips and going around objects and one of the backflips I did I was misoriented, pointed towards myself, I could see the danger headed my way, got it back upright, and busted it into a tree where it proceeded to chop every branch it could on the way down because I didn't decide to disarm fast enough because I started worrying about it getting stuck in the tree and decided the risk to the motors and ESCs was worth it (I am not sure if it was or wasn't but it did fall all the way out. I am glad the tree got hit instead of me!

This sacred the &*^) out of me!       I'm so worried I'm going to hit someone or myself.  It's getting better and I guess with practice that will subside.  For now, I have a very healthy fear of hitting someone or myself.  Maybe I should develop and market a "New to FPV" Body Shell Protection System that has a chair, solar power, a ground station made entirely out of vented polycarbonate with an air flow system.  Now that's protection!

(20-Jul-2017, 02:34 PM)FPVdroneshotz Wrote: O.k., so I have the TBS Triumph SMA Circular on my Quad and on my Fatsharks.  Didn't really know about the SMA/RP-SMA.  I bought them at the drone show and they both came together.  I'm assuming they are a fit?  I'm running the foxeer HS1177 and that's supposed to be a great camera, but man, it's just about unusable.  I did tweak the settings from a Youtuber and it got better when I can see something, but that's about 1/3 of the time.  What should my total range be?  I was flying about 100 yards to my left and 100 yards to my right and maybe 100 yards out.  So about 200 sq. yards in total - is that too far for these?  I'm also not running a patch antenna on the Fat Sharks yet.  Was looking at the Immersion RC  5.8ghz Spironet mini.  Any idea if that would help or is there a better option out there?  Seems to be pretty much personal preference, but what do I know.  

If you have SMA TBS antenna's (top left) then you will need to make sure both your VTX on your quad and your goggles port are using the SMA Female type (bottom left).

According to the Wizard X220 specs, the VTX it comes with is RP-SMA, so it's possible you're using the wrong antenna on the quad. The Fatshark transformers I think are SMA (someone please correct me if I'm wrong) so the goggles are probably ok.

(20-Jul-2017, 02:46 PM)Snuffypot11 Wrote:

If you have SMA TBS antenna's (top left) then you will need to make sure both your VTX on your quad and your goggles port are using the SMA Female type (bottom left).

According to the Wizard X220 specs, the VTX it comes with is RP-SMA, so it's possible you're using the wrong antenna on the quad. The Fatshark transformers I think are SMA (someone please correct me if I'm wrong) so the goggles are probably ok.

Thanks, this was great.  On the Wizard, I wrecked the VTX during one of my first flights, so I replaced it with the TX-795t-2 recently.  It looks like I have the right matches with the TBS Triumphs, VTX and the Fat Sharks.  All SMA.

Make sure that both antennas are either right hand polarized or left hand polarized. They have to match or you will get crummy reception. I just had this problem haha makes a big difference.

(20-Jul-2017, 02:34 PM)FPVdroneshotz Wrote: O.k., so I have the TBS Triumph SMA Circular on my Quad and on my Fatsharks.  Didn't really know about the SMA/RP-SMA.  I bought them at the drone show and they both came together.  I'm assuming they are a fit?  I'm running the foxeer HS1177 and that's supposed to be a great camera, but man, it's just about unusable.  I did tweak the settings from a Youtuber and it got better when I can see something, but that's about 1/3 of the time.  What should my total range be?  I was flying about 100 yards to my left and 100 yards to my right and maybe 100 yards out.  So about 200 sq. yards in total - is that too far for these?  I'm also not running a patch antenna on the Fat Sharks yet.  Was looking at the Immersion RC  5.8ghz Spironet mini.  Any idea if that would help or is there a better option out there?  Seems to be pretty much personal preference, but what do I know.  

One more thing to check:
- make sure your FPV frequencies match exactly on both VTx and VRx!

Last week I got myself brand new Fatsharks Dominators, with diversity receiver. I had both cloverleaf and patch antenna connected. I changed the channel on the goggles to match the VTx. I got the video feed. Awesome!

I went out to try those shiny new goggles. Plugged it in - good picture - then I flew about 20 meters and, boom! signal lost and crashed the quad!

It turned out that I had missed the correct channel. Fatsharks don't show the selected channel number?! And on that particular band I had chosen, those frequencies were pretty close to each other, so the goggles were able to show the video feed, despite the wrong selected frequency.

After adjusting the channel, everything has been working fine ever since.

My current record is about 800 meters (open field) so far with my setup, and even then I had pretty good video and possibly I could have gone further. So, the range should not be a problem. It was on my old setup with just a cloverleaf antenna - with Fatsharks diversity, the range should be even better.

(21-Jul-2017, 01:52 PM)rapidsh0t Wrote: One more thing to check:
- make sure your FPV frequencies match exactly on both VTx and VRx!

Last week I got myself brand new Fatsharks Dominators, with diversity receiver. I had both cloverleaf and patch antenna connected. I changed the channel on the goggles to match the VTx. I got the video feed. Awesome!

I went out to try those shiny new goggles. Plugged it in - good picture - then I flew about 20 meters and, boom! signal lost and crashed the quad!

It turned out that I had missed the correct channel. Fatsharks don't show the selected channel number?! And on that particular band I had chosen, those frequencies were pretty close to each other, so the goggles were able to show the video feed, despite the wrong selected frequency.

After adjusting the channel, everything has been working fine ever since.

My current record is about 800 meters (open field) so far with my setup, and even then I had pretty good video and possibly I could have gone further. So, the range should not be a problem. It was on my old setup with just a cloverleaf antenna - with Fatsharks diversity, the range should be even better.

Good catch.  I was playing around with the VTX now that I resoldered the battery leads.    . I tried playing around with the FS, A, B and E bands on the VTX.  It's push button with LED's so I can easily tell which channel.  My question becomes, is any one channel better than the other?  Should I stay with FS 1-8?  Or are the others just as good or better?

(21-Jul-2017, 06:26 PM)FPVdroneshotz Wrote: Good catch.  I was playing around with the VTX now that I resoldered the battery leads.    . I tried playing around with the FS, A, B and E bands on the VTX.  It's push button with LED's so I can easily tell which channel.  My question becomes, is any one channel better than the other?  Should I stay with FS 1-8?  Or are the others just as good or better?

I like to pick channels that aren't very close to other channels so that my scanner doesn't accidentally land on the wrong one (but I mostly fly alone).  Here's a chart with relative spacing of frequencies:

The only reason one channel would be better than another is if there was already some other noise on that frequency from a different source. Ideally you want to pick a channel completely open, but without a band scanner that's not really possible. More then likely they should be fairly clean and shouldn't matter much.

thank you for sharing your story with us here, i feel so motivated and entertained in the same time! i want to share my experience to with you,
me myself just getting into this hobby few months ago, i'm start learning flying FPV from FPV Freerider too for like 2 moths before i fly the real thing.

i'm glad that i have a community here in Indonesia that help me progress and giving me advice like for example "never build a quad before you mastering the car park lot in FPV Freerider", i remember the first time i fly my real quad on LOS i just crashed it 30 seconds after take-off and break 2 of my propellers and the locknuts, and then i try to fly it on FPV and i just crashed it on to the mud and the ESC was dead, i'm trying to be calm and try to dry it using a hair dryer , miraculously the ESC was come back to life!

after many crashes finally i start to feel the "click" and confident enough to put my old Gopro Hero2 on my quad, and you can watch it here:


this hobby was very fun, exciting and challenging.
congratulation for you & welcome to the hobby!
Greeting from Indonesia!!

Nice flying Daniel, I'm sue that you took a leaf off almost every tree on the field, lol!

(12-Sep-2017, 06:17 AM)Tom BD Bad Wrote: Nice flying Daniel, I'm sue that you took a leaf off almost every tree on the field, lol!
  

LMAO 
well, my friend said that HQProp was so durable, so i just want to test it 

(12-Sep-2017, 09:03 AM)Daniel45 Wrote: LMAO 
well, my friend said that HQProp was so durable, so i just want to test it 

lol, you can say that HQs have "turned a new leaf"   with their durable line of props because their standard ones break like nobody's business. 

The first prop I ever used were HQs and man did I bust those things up... Recently I got a new set and they have done much better. I am still stuck on Cyclones for the most part though.

(12-Sep-2017, 10:14 AM)Carl.Vegas Wrote: lol, you can say that HQs have "turned a new leaf"   with their durable line of props because their standard ones break like nobody's business. 

The first prop I ever used were HQs and man did I bust those things up... Recently I got a new set and they have done much better. I am still stuck on Cyclones for the most part though.

i got those HQ's from my friend, Zhong zhong (HQ owner) send him 30 sets of those props, it's quite durable but not as durable as DAL Cyclone, and i like the more Locked-in feeling from Cyclone.
and also the HQ's are quite expensive here, so i think i'll just stick with the Cyclone V2 as my all-around props 

Sorry for late arrival..
Fark me... but your first post was AWSOME
i see a lot of common stuff along the way
one more resource to look into is Painless360 he has a nice tutorial in like 10 lessons/steps what you should master (los wise)

for everyone... remember that sometimes fpv fails... then los is a chance to recover your quad quite unharmed... of course you might be a pro pilot who has 10 exactly the same quads... then do whatever you want , if you are not just get a bit of los practice.

your expository skills rival david foster wallace; who cares if you aren't charpu.