Nice place you have here!

What with RCGroups deciding to rename their entire Multirotor section to Multirotor Drones, I need a new home as the word "drone" makes me feel quite ill when I see it and out of all the various craft I have built, the only one that could rightly be called a drone is my Pixhawk based aerial camera platform.

I hope I can become a useful member here and pass on some of the knowledge I have built up over the last couple of years to help others. I am based in Stockholm, Sweden where the building season is (sadly) far longer than the flying season.

My latest build is the Armattan Chameleon and I'm really pleased with it.



I call it "The Purple Nurple".

Ha, welcome!

Didn't even notice that name change on rcg but yeah, i don't see a point in it either... Boris' betaflight blog is the only thing i bookmarked over there anyway.

A nice nurple

Welcome!  Nice drone er...quad!   (I've actually gotten used to the "D" word, but I still don't like it much!)

Thanks fftunes!

It's all about search engine optimisation for RCG, especially now that one of the admins has joined a "Drone Racing League". There's more than a few people there who are not exactly happy to have their craft described as drones just because mainstream media insists on using the word.

So I decided to leave instead of just putting up with it. It feels good to be honest!

The "nurple" is a beast and I'm just itching for some better weather so that I can get out and fly it more than the one flight I have managed so far.

Welcome to the forum

i'd say that we have drones and multirotors... depends how independent they are...
multirotor - you control it, and it is a architecture/build type
drone - "self aware" or gps guided - can be also a plane/glider/heli - or full size plane like predator

so if by the look on your screen your small rotor is still flying fast and you make it crash... yup it is a multirotor :p

Yeah i can totally understand, and i think Grisha put it well, but personally i don't mind the word much anymore, i got used to bypassers asking "is that a drone?", and i'm too kind to start an argument about the word with them...

But yeah, turning the whole rcg section into a kind of bad pleonasm i can't agree to either... As if they were going to rename the fixed wing section to "single rotor drones" lol...

(10-Mar-2017, 09:51 AM)Grisha0 Wrote: Welcome to the forum

i'd say that we have drones and multirotors... depends how independent they are...
multirotor - you control it, and it is a architecture/build type
drone - "self aware"  or gps guided - can be also a plane/glider/heli - or full size plane like predator

so if by the look on your screen your small rotor is still flying fast and you make it crash... yup it is a multirotor :p

Thanks for the welcome!

Absolutely my definition as well. A drone will fly itself without human intervention. Anything that crashes if you take your fingers off the sticks for long enough is not a drone.

The biggest hobbyist site on the Internet literally plastering the word drone over every multirotor section on their forum just because 'that's what people call them' is a genuine disservice to the hobby. Instead of lowering our standard to those of the lowest common denominator, we should be educating people about the difference.

It's bad enough that the horribly uninformed media calls everything with rotors drones. When the biggest forum starts doing it, just so they can improve their Google search rankings and drive more uninformed people to their site, well that's just wrong.

But, it has to be remembered that RCGroups is a for-profit company. Not only is there all the advertising on the site, they also use code from viglink that automatically adds the RCGroups affiliate code to every link that people click on.

Of course, I understand that RCGroups needs to pay their hosting bills - I've run high traffic discussion forums before and good hosting isn't cheap - but when a forum is more interested in making money for the owners than it is in supporting the community that gives them content, I personally feel there is a conflict of interest.

This actually leads me to a question that someone maybe knows the answer to as I can't find the answer anywhere on the forum. With respect to what people post here, who owns the copyright on the member's posts? RCGroups actually make it part of their terms and conditions that anything you post automatically belongs to them and that they can use your content in any way they want, including making money from it.

I don't much like that and I think that members should retain copyright in their posts, but I don't see any statement one way or the other here.

haha... I also dislike the word drone.. sounds really amateur! Welcome to the forum unseen! I think I recognize your name on RCG... you are (were?) very active in the multirotor section!

(10-Mar-2017, 11:58 AM)Oscar Wrote: haha... I also dislike the word drone.. sounds really amateur! Welcome to the forum unseen! I think I recognize your name on RCG... you are (were?) very active in the multirotor section!

Hi Oscar, and thanks for the welcome!

"were" is the right word.

Hiya, welcome from my freshman's seat as well!
What you say about the word "drone" makes total sense to me, and I'd like to thank you for putting up the subject:
Indeed, lately I've been subconsciously confused about the use of the two words "drone" and "copter, or quad, or quadcopter". People not familiar w the subject (..and up to a couple of weeks ago, I was part of them) use the terms undifferentiatedly, with no specific or malevolent intention.
"Drone" sounds far more menacing - out of obvious reasons - than "COPter", or quad (..which immediately evoques wilderness, moto-x-like bikes, and dirt spraying all over).
As you say, there is a big difference between a "drone", or cruise missile (same principle, different propulsion system),
and a helicopter, or quadcopter and their respective RC-versions. Additionally, there is this whole FPV-thang, which is not even specific to quads. (..not at all, to tell the truth. Endoscopy is as old as the owl..)
To my unexperienced eyes, flying quads is a mixture of artistic expression and engineering or science:
You will be able to tell a math teacher from a surfer by the way they fly. Quads are a complex language of expression,
based on differentiated underlying principles as electronics, aerodynamics, the first three laws of mechanics, radio technology, imaging technology, three-dimensional planning and a hybrid human-digital-system, principle of the future of society. If that's not *wow.., I don't know what....
Have a tremendous weekend and looking forward to reading more from all of you guys,
You're truly a delightful branch of exquisite nerds, my Dears!;-)
I finally don't feel alone anymore.. :-):-):-)

..oh bugger,
I meant "bunch of nerds", not "branch of nerds"..

---

..ah, yes (hm-hmm, I'm tired, why?..):
Tremendous build, my Dear! I don't really like purple, to tell the truth,
but I'd immediately buy your quad ;-)

(10-Mar-2017, 05:49 PM)campagnium Wrote: ..oh bugger,
I meant "bunch of nerds", not "branch of nerds"..

---

..ah, yes (hm-hmm, I'm tired, why?..):
Tremendous build, my Dear! I don't really like purple, to tell the truth,
but I'd immediately buy your quad ;-)

Welcome to the forum.  Thanks for clarifying, I was always under the assumption that nerds grew on trees

Nice post campagnium!

It can be a little confusing in the beginning, but getting the terminology right helps us all.

"Drone" does not dictate the configuration of the craft. It is the autonomous nature of something that makes it a drone or not.
The term "multirotor" is a good generic term for the things we fly. If it has two or more propellers on the same axis, it's a multirotor. Tricopter, quadcopter and hexacopter being variations on the theme.

Flying a quad is absolutely about artistic expression. As is writing computer programs, which may surprise you. Building and configuring your own craft is geek fun and also the wonderful feeling of creating something which applies to every creative endeavour.

Being able to navigate through 3D space as the whim takes you is an incredibly liberating feeling. It's also as hard as hell when you are starting out, especially when it comes to flying line of sight. Flying line of sight and flying first person view are essentially two completely different skills. When flying line of sight, you have to be able to mentally put yourself in the pilot's seat of your craft whereas in FPV, you are already in the pilot's seat.

To this day, I can't fly rate mode in LOS, but I have no problem with it in FPV.

Welcome Unseen,

I am also new and learning. For me the "D" word (almost a 4 letter word?) doesn't bug me. At the same time I never refer to my new hobby with it and hadn't really thought about the reason why until I saw some of the descriptions above. A drone is a robot, which is how I describe to people what the DJI and similar devices.

Thanks for the welcome Carl, I hope you're having lots of fun with your new hobby!