Hi all,

I recently bought an iflight protek 25 cinewhoop and i'm now learning to fly it.  I did the first flight line of sight (LOS) in angle mode, second a mixture of LOS in acro trainer (equivalent to max tilt of 30 degrees on cyclic) and first go at FPV in angle mode.  I don't yet have a computer that i can run a sim on so for now its all practical with the drone, i'm really feeling like a sim would be really useful.  I'm just wondering whether starting in acro trainer LOS makes sense before switching to FPV acro trainer?  I feel like it makes sense to get a handle on acro while being able to see how the drone behaves but i realise its a completely different kettle of fish to FPV so is it worth the time?  I was thinking to move to FPV as soon as possible but how long is a piece of string.. i.e. should you be able to do tricks LOS before doing this in FPV.  

As sad as it sounds a training plan would be good where it broke down how many hours at each stage you should roughly practice before moving on.  

Also a secondary question, but i will probably be flying alone quite a lot but this makes learning FPV more stressful as there could be people around and technically you're not supposed to fly FPV without a spotter but i assume most people do do this.  Its not a heavy drone but with the frame on its still over 250g whatever battery i put on and its enough to scare me when it gets close enough. I already had a 7 year old become fascinated with it and decided to try and chase it around which i didn't appreciate but this is the sort of thing that can happen, let alone prey driven dogs.  One thing i thought was that if i really lost control i could switch to angle mode to recover if it meant not hitting someone or disarm at least.

Thanks for the advice, sure all this is common stuff.

You don’t need a new/fast computer to run a sim. However you do to run a good one with heavy graphics..
I only have a older laptop and run “curry kitten”sim and “Flowstate”.. both are on Steam.. I recently JUST progressed to acro.. and I can honestly say Flowstate helped me immensely!!!
I have heard every time u crash in a sim, it saves u $100.. it may seem a bit extreme, but partially true. Flowstate (to me) was easier to get to respond like a quad more than others (I was just learning RATES also).
You may also want to become proficient in soldering, WHEN (not if) you crash, things WILL break..no way around it..
Also, in a sim you never have to swap batteries, worry about wind/weather.. finding a spot /time to fly..
any stick time is better than none.. a video editor at Rotor Riot flew for the first time after lots of hours on velocideone and did great.. check out the video

Ok thanks i've got an old mac so Flowstate is out but looks like i could try currykitten if i can connect the DJI FPV remote directly to the mac. My spec is 1.7GHz intel core i5, 4GB DDR3 RAM, Intel HD Graphics 3000 384MB, so not great but maybe it will work. Seems then that the SIMs really do work and i need to find a way to access one. Still need to find those quiet spots sometime to practice for real.

Just answering the title without reading anything else, my answer is: Don't. OR have a lot of spare money.

Velocidrone will work on that computer.

I'm also a beginner (7 months flying), and spent very little time in the simulator. Even that my laptop kind of runs Velocidrone, I prefer real life flying.  

My journey started with a mobula 6, crash it hundred of times, broke 3 frames, 2 motors, until my dog bite it mid-flight and the FC smoked. Always in acro BTW. I flew in my yard when I could. 

Quote: I'm just wondering whether starting in acro trainer LOS makes sense before switching to FPV acro trainer?  I feel like it makes sense to get a handle on acro while being able to see how the drone behaves but i realise its a completely different kettle of fish to FPV so is it worth the time?  I was thinking to move to FPV as soon as possible but how long is a piece of string.. i.e. should you be able to do tricks LOS before doing this in FPV.  

Move to ACRO and FPV now! LOS is a pain to make your brain understand (at least mine). Add a trottle limit to your radio to tame your quad

I'm not sure to recommend a whoop to start, but it's way easier on the wallet when it breakes and i's not a hazard for anyone, but it flies very different from a 3inch plus quad.

Quote:Also a secondary question, but i will probably be flying alone quite a lot but this makes learning FPV more stressful as there could be people around and technically you're not supposed to fly FPV without a spotter but i assume most people do do this.  Its not a heavy drone but with the frame on its still over 250g whatever battery i put on and its enough to scare me when it gets close enough. I already had a 7 year old become fascinated with it and decided to try and chase it around which i didn't appreciate but this is the sort of thing that can happen, let alone prey driven dogs.  One thing i thought was that if i really lost control i could switch to angle mode to recover if it meant not hitting someone or disarm at least.

• Keep the disarm switch easy to toggle and make and habit of disarming in any dangerous event. You will disarm earlier at first, but make that muscle memory. You will save property, the quad and, potentially, you will only hit someone, not cut it, even if it's a small 2.5inch.
     Starting with the 5 inch, it felt big and scary, I built a 3inch and flew better, just for not been scared. A whoop like the mobula6 may help you there.
  
• Find a local group of drone pilots, It makes the hobby much more enjoyable.
   You are from the UK, if I found a group of 8 pilots in a small city from the northern tip of Chile, I believe there are pilots everywhere. Facebook group can help.
  
• Find an isolated place to fly
   I have access to a mostly unused "golf club". Perhaps there is an open field somewhere close to practice.
  

Anyways, all you need it's stick time. Fly as much as you can ad you will get better and more confident. Beware, that as soon as you start getting the hang of it, you will try to do a flip, hit a gap, and you will be breaking your quad, so save some money

I started out LOS for months, no simulator, and in angle mode(no such thing as acro trainer back then).  After that I switched to horizon mode which allowed me to get a feel for flipping the quad in any direction, but still LOS.  Then I finally got a pair of goggles and after a few flights in horizon getting familiar with them just flipped the switch to acro and that was it, surprised at how natural it felt to fly in acro with the goggles right off the bat.  Had to be because I was very familiar with the controls and how to fly it from months of LOS.

Everyone always seems to say start out in acro right at the start, but the method above worked fine for me.

I could barely fly more than a few seconds on Liftoff with an xbox360 controller when I first started. Got better when a the proper controller came in but still took many hours to get used to the sticks. I figured there was no point in trying angle/horizon. After getting bored with flying around 3 different sims since I had no interest. While I still had a long way to go in the sim I figured I'd be fine at a wide open space. My only mistake was taking the advice that some throw out to fly LOS at first. I had no frame of reference how to fly that way and only damaged batteries and R-XSR antennas that came on the BNF. I put the goggles on and everything worked like it was familiar to me and never looked back.

After many packs now I've got the hang of it and am able to go back into the sims and actually somewhat run the courses. Now that I'm more comfortable freestyling in the real world I use the sim to refine the stick movements and muscle memory. Flick the reset button as you crash and take right back off.

My buddy runs Velocidrone on a laptop that's over 5 years old tech wise. It was sub $300 4 years ago.

I learned on FPV Freerider on a pretty low-powered laptop with the game graphics turned right down. it was fine for me to be able to fly FPV in Acro - not very well, but in control.

I can fly Angle mode LOS well enough to bring the quad back if I had to if the video failed. Ive never felt the need to try Acro LOS.

I have never really used a SIM. Tried it but got bored in about 2 minutes.

Acro is not that bad. To be honest it is more natural than flying angle or horizon modes. Just get out on an oval or somewhere with lots of space and practice. For any tricks just go a bit higher as you get more time to recover.

I personally learned on Velocidrone and found it immensely helpful. I would have given up had it not been for Velocidrone and it worked great on my cheap laptop.

Thanks all, for some reason not getting emails when a reply comes through even though i did select that so relying on me checking the thread! I tried currykitten-bizarre name last night and does work on my mac at low graphics settings. God knows how it really compares to my quad but its something. If nothing else you start to learn your orientation in 3D space and how different stick movements changes the view in front of you. I'd assumed that would be intuitive but sometimes it seems you think the drone is flying one way when actually its doing something else adn you can get disorientated. I contacted velocidrone a while back and asked them about my mac spec because i didn't want to buy it for it to not work and they told me it wouldn't work but i guess they're going to er on the side of caution. Interesting mix of opinions here. At the end of the day we're really there for the FPV experience so its easy to not have the patience to work your way up to it. I have access to either a fairly quiet park with some trees as i thought low precise flying would be a good place to start but maybe its the opposite adn you want to learn to cruise first and give yourself a lot of room for error.

I never actually bothered to learn on a simulator before I flew the real thing. I just started off with some basic LOS flying (which I suck at), then I put on the goggles and dived into FPV, first using angle mode, then moving onto Acro Trainer mode, and finally unleashing full acro mode. I had a few crashes while I was learning but literally only 3 or 4 with no real damage done to the quad after which I had then built up enough confidence that I felt completely comfortable flying FPV with full manual acro control.

I learned to fly helicopters with no simulator. The result was many many dollars going to hobby town for replacement parts! Did eventually learn to fly but LOS flying a helicopter isn’t easy cause it’s hard to see once it gets out a little ways. The saving grace was that drones use the same controls as helicopters so I didn’t have to learn anything new on the flying part which was a huge relieve. Simulators are good for learning how to move the sticks but real life flying is very different. I think a combination of the two is the way to go. Stimulators as we used to call the driving simulators back in high school, get boring and interest can wane if that’s all your doing. Being able to practice on a real quad will boost the enthusiasm for the simulator as you will have an idea what the end goal is. Happy flying!

LOS is much much more difficult than FPV. A few years ago I started learning piloting rc plane LOS in a sim. It was like take off - 5 sec flying - crash, practicing couple of hours every day, for 2 weeks, before I even managed to do my first controlled landing.

Even after a month in a simulator my first flight with real plane lasted 15 seconds, and then 20 minutes searching for it in the grass. So I went back to the simulator for another month. LOS with quad should be easier, at least you can put the thing in angle mode, stop in a hover and think what to do next.