Had a few more thoughts on using LOS.  I was thinking that if i panicked in FPV and got disoriented and lost control i could potentially throw the goggles off, not easily and not without taking hands off the remote! then try to recover by LOS, but often i guess the drone might be too far away for that anyway.

(19-May-2021, 03:15 PM)mattp Wrote: Had a few more thoughts on using LOS.  I was thinking that if i panicked in FPV and got disoriented and lost control i could potentially throw the goggles off, not easily and not without taking hands off the remote! then try to recover by LOS, but often i guess the drone might be too far away for that anyway.

I can't see how you could do that! I'm start to feel that you are overthinking the problem. 

If you are in FPV and got disoriented, you will learn how to save it, or judge when you must just disarm. At first you will be disarming more often, then you will learn how to keep flying.

It's challenging, sometime frustrating and you will be breaking stuff, but all you need is stick time, just fly and you will be getting better.

(19-May-2021, 08:54 AM)Major Tom Wrote: 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.

I remember my first experience with RC. Buddy built a plane and no idea how to fly it. It went up in the air. Up and down then down into the parking lot. Come to find out latter it’s best to learn over grass! That started the life long RC hobby. It is difficult to fly a drone LOS cause the thing is square. It looks the same front or back/ right or left. You can put different colored props on and it will only help a little. 
It took a long time to be comfortable flying a plane towards me I can’t do it comfortably with a drone yet. I’m flying in acro so it might be a little harder to learn. With FPV there’s no need for LOS unless there’s an emergency, once the initial claustrophobic and vertigo issues pass there’s nothing that comes close to the experience of FPV.

Yeah well i guess this is what i'm getting at, thinking to halt with LOS now and try to switch to FPV asap after some sim use. As you say we're all there for FPV at the end of the day.

Most of the time you will be flying too far away to see a tiny spec in the distance by LOS and what orientation it is in, so recovery using LOS flying will be impossible anyway. As mentioned, just disarming in that situation and letting the quad fall to the ground where you can then go and recover it is the safest option rather than trying to fly it blind which could be dangerous. Alternatively fit a GPS module and configure GPS Rescue so you can flick a switch and get the quad to return back to you autonomously.

TBH, once you start flying with the goggles you will start to wonder what you were worrying about and you will never go back to LOS unless you really have aspirations of flying that way, but LOS flying is limited with a quad unless you're from an alien planet like quadmovr or RC Addict

Yep I was thinking:
1-you don't want to "throw" your expensive googles onto the ground
2-by the time you "placed" them somewhere safe you'd be in the ground already

However some LOS skills are needed to test out new builds to get a hoover and check controls. You can't see the controls on a quad like a plane where you have control surfaces you can visually see. So me thinks its best to know a little LOS flying and you would if you can fly FPV.

I just hover test any new builds in angle mode and then briefly flick to acro mode before flicking back to angle mode and then landing again, always keeping the quad facing away from me so the orientation is correct for the way the controller is facing. That is enough to to see if a quad is behaving fine. You don't really need to fly it around by LOS to do that shake-down test. Then if that goes fine I just send it using FPV

(19-May-2021, 07:49 PM)SnowLeopardFPV Wrote: I just hover test any new builds in angle mode and then briefly flick to acro mode before flicking back to angle mode and then landing again, always keeping the quad facing away from me so the orientation is correct for the way the controller is facing. That is enough to to see if a quad is behaving fine. You don't really need to fly it around by LOS to do that shake-down test. Then if that goes fine I just send it using FPV

Yep I do a good job of flying foward then back yaw left right then some roll left and right and done. That's the way to do it keeping your body always orientated to the rear of the quad otherwise orientation will be lost and bad things will happen and quick.

I tried to get slick a couple weeks ago bringing in my 2.5" (Taycan c25 repurposed into a Roma L3 frame) for a landing. I hovered it about 20 feet behind me, slowly turned around pulled the goggles up and attempted to bring it down. Rather than straight down the 3-4 feet from hover i threw it at a 45 degree angle backwards into the mud.

Turning around and sliding the goggles up all went fine, just not used to the sticks in that fashion. Instead of it being intuitive like it is for me with FPV, i had to overthink it.

Yeah its funny how much LOS fries your brain. Makes me wonder how RC helicopter pilots do it.

(20-May-2021, 09:32 AM)mattp Wrote: Yeah its funny how much LOS fries your brain.  Makes me wonder how RC helicopter pilots do it.

It’s very difficult!