A couple of weekends ago we had unusual but beautiful February weather here in the UK (16°C, 60°F), and with the wife and daughter away visiting the in-laws, I took the rare opportunity to be able to just disappear for 3 hours and do some flying Other than a bit of time on simulators over the winter period, this was the first time I'd flown my quad in 4 months, it was only the 4th time I'd ever flown FPV, and it was my first time ever flying a real quad in Acro Mode. Using the sims had given me enough confidence with stick co-ordination to actually try Acro Mode in real life, however I did wimp out of full rate mode and instead opted to start off gently using Acro Trainer Mode

The one mistake I did make was that I forgot to bring an OTG cable with me so I could make any adjustments in the field if I needed to. It wasn't a showstopper, but the biggest limiting factor was that I'd configured my quad for Acro Trainer Mode and had neglected to check what the default maximum tilt angle was. It turned out to be only 20 degrees which was way too shallow, especially when doing quick 180 yaws because there wasn't really any ability to get enough forward bite to pull out of a backward drift after doing a 180, which resulted in a few backward crashes or near misses. However, I wasn't going to waste time going back home for a cable, so I just decided to try and make do with the situation.

The places I'd previously been flying at turned out out to be less than suitable either because of power lines, dense tree lines (too precarious for a beginner), or a million dog walkers deciding to turn up in force at the same time as me. So at the end of last year I scouted out the area for some new places to fly. A lot of the area around here is private farmland so while there are some vast areas of open fields and woodland, it is mostly all off-limits and fenced/gated off, and I don't want particularly want to be had for trespassing by an angry farmer with a shotgun I did however find a couple of other potential candidates so I decided to give one a try.

This particular place has a huge open field with a couple of rugby posts, some pushed together football (soccer) goals, a few small trees at the far end, and most importantly soft ground, so it's an ideal training location for a beginner. The area is around ~200m x 300m, so plenty of room without having to worry too much about going outside the boundaries  The only downside is that while publicly accessible with no hard boundary or fencing, it's actually privately owned land which is attached to a science campus, and there's a sign erected nearby stating that use of the land was only for the members of the science campus recreation association. So there was a risk that security guards could turn up and move me on, but thankfully that didn't happen on this occasion. I guess we'll see how long I can use this place for in future without getting pounced on and kicked out.



I had 10 fully charged 1550mAh LiPos with me so I was all set for a nice long session  I was there for almost 3 hours with 2 of those taken up with actual flying, or walking 200m to retrieve a downed craft and then 200m back again The place was completely desolate of people and in those 3 hours only two dog walkers appeared together for a period of about 10 minutes, and then they left again. So I didn't have to worry about people and dogs, or the fact I didn't have a spotter with me

I had a few near misses with trees and posts but in those 2 hours I only actually crashed 3 times onto the deck, 2 of which needed manual retrieval, so I didn't think that was too bad going, although there was obviously no risky acrobatics involved this time due to the Acro Trainer Mode.

Unfortunately the battery on my Hawkeye Firefly died before I started to show some improvement at flying, so most of the better flying footage I came back with was poor quality goggle DVR only. There are a lot of science research tech companies in the area and as you can also see in my footage, there's a large satellite dish in the background. So I wasn't sure what to expect as far as RF interference goes on both the 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz frequencies, but with my VTX only set to 25mw it seemed to do well enough, and I didn't seem to have any noticeable issues with the RSSI between my X9D+ transmitter and the R-XSR receiver. After last years unexpected failsafe, my confidence in the R-XSR during this flying session has certainly increased again.

The flight videos below are fairly mundane compared to other ones on here from seasoned expert pilots but they form a record of my (slow) progress for my own purposes, so I decided to post them here anyway  In the first video I managed to do some lowish ground flying, some rugby post fly-throughs without hitting anything, and a reasonably controlled(ish) circling around one of the rugby posts a few times. Unfortunately I wasn't quite so lucky in the second video (which was actually shot a few packs prior to the first video) 

Now that I've started to build up a bit of muscle memory, next time I may try to be a bit braver and go full Acro Mode  I'm still holding back a little knowing that I only currently have one proper sized flyable quad and I don't really want it being out of action for weeks on the repair bench, so I definitely need to build some more quads...purely for backup purposes of course

Unfortunately the weather has turned sour again so I don't know when the next window of opportunity will arise to go back there. In the meantime I guess I will just be stuck on the sims 


Event time positions for the video below --> Low Ground Flying: 1:14; Goal Post Fly-Through: 1:36; Tree Scrape: 1:57; Goal Post Fly-Through: 2:12; Goal Post Fly-Through: 2:30; Goal Post Fly-Around: 2:50; Low Ground Flying: 3:42; Goal Post Fly-Through: 3:54; Bumpy Landing: 4:36




And the following video should hopefully get me an IntoFPV "Pole Dancer" achievement badge which I'll apply for later  

AWESOME !!  

I am in the same boat as far as acro experience. I would be real happy with that, I'm jealous

Scott

Very nice!
From your youtube videos I can see that we started flying in the same period, some months ago 
Before that I only had experience with stable los toy flying.
I can also see that we have a similar setup 

Don´t be afraid, put full acro on your quad and also airmode always ON, thrust me. Soon you will be cranking up your rates too.
The first time I flown fpv was acro with airmode on a switch and the quad was so stable that gave me much confidence.

I also understand your quests for places to fly. I do it all the time. I must plan my spots so I can get the proper authorizations and fly a little more relaxed, but just a little because I always fly alone 

I'll share with you my first video with maybe 6 to 10 batteries flying fpv.

Yeah, I haven't really managed to get out that much TBH. Family members and other family related commitments always have to come first, so if I get any spare time to get out somewhere then I consider it a bonus And until now, other than that dodgy field I was flying in last year which I gave up on, I've only really had a local park to try and practice in which always seems to be full of dog walkers, so any time I've been there I seem to spend most of my time just sitting around wishing for them to hurry up and leave so I can carry on  Since I started back in September last year I've only done about 20 packs in total with 10 of those being the above session, so that's pretty slow progress over a 6+ month period, but it is what it is and I shouldn't really grumble 

This was the first opportunity I've had to do a real full-on session and even then I ended up stuck with a 20 degree max tilt in Acro Trainer Mode which somewhat restricted what I could try and do, so that was a little frustrating, but I just got on with it and made the best I could of the situation. I've always had air mode permanently switched on from day one but I never did any rate mode flying until the session two weeks ago.

Awesome weather, it would appear!!! It has been a little cloudy and cold where I am, but have still been able to fly at least! Glad you where able to get into the air and that nothing got broken That is a cool field!

Yes I understand that. My kids are very young to fly so I also have limited time to go out   

I'm sure you know this but I find Velocidrone very good to put on some virtual batteries. It's boring I know, but can be good to keep you sharp on the muscle memory.
I personally don't try to measure progress. I try to have a good time within my skills and try to push it slow. I also like all the process of charging, packing, arriving to the places that I searched for, FLY, check some footage afterwards.
FPV is just great, it's always Maiden Flight for me 

Looking forward to see more videos from you!

Looking good, Snow.....based on where you are now, you will have this acro thing licked in no time.

What limitations does acro trainer mode use vs full acro?  Is it kind of between Horizon and Acro?  Or something completely different?

What FPV cam do you have on the quad?

(11-Mar-2019, 01:05 AM)Krohsis Wrote: What limitations does acro trainer mode use vs full acro?  Is it kind of between Horizon and Acro?  Or something completely different?

What FPV cam do you have on the quad?

Acro Trainer Mode is full manual flying (exactly the same as acro mode) but there is a set maximum angle limit that cannot be gone past. The default is 20 degrees in any roll/pitch direction. So it means you can't inadvertently flip the quad by mistake. If you hold the stick in any direction, the quad won't rotate past a 20 degree angle from horizontal. It just stops at that max angle like it's hit a buffer. That obviously means no flips or rolls can be done.

You can change the max angle of the Acro Trainer Mode in the CLI to be anywhere from 10 degrees to 80 degrees. After this episode, I've now set mine to 45 degrees.

I have a RunCam Eagle 2 Pro that is running default factory settings.

Good to see you are out there flying again! Keep it up!

(11-Mar-2019, 12:50 AM)kaitylynn Wrote: That is a cool field!

Yes, it was a fantastic find and the area surrounding it is also great too  I actually used to work on the campus many years ago but I'd completely forgotten about this little gem of a place.

(11-Mar-2019, 01:15 AM)SnowLeopardFPV Wrote: Acro Trainer Mode is full manual flying (exactly the same as acro mode) but there is a set maximum angle limit that cannot be gone past.

Sounds like ANGLE without the auto-level?  Have to agree, you will have it click pretty fast!

Looking good! That reverse gap-shoot through the tree was gnarly ;-)

I'll smack into trees all day (and regularly do), but metal posts scare me.

When I started with acro, there was one particular trick that really helped - Keep flying forward!
Great seeing you are making good progress! Day is getting longer and warmer hopefully we get to fly more soon!

(11-Mar-2019, 03:32 AM)kaitylynn Wrote: Sounds like ANGLE without the auto-level?

No, not really. It's RATE mode without the ability to invert the quad  The flight dynamics between ANGLE and RATE mode is quite different.

In ANGLE mode if you push the stick forward, the quad tilts forward at a constant speed until it reaches the angle that corresponds to the position of the stick and then stops at that angle.

In RATE mode if you push the stick forward, the quad tilts forward at a corresponding speed that is relative to the position of the stick and it keeps on tilting further and further forward at that speed until you re-centre the stick, at which point the current angle of tilt is then "set", so the speed of the rate of the change in angle can be either fast or slow depending on how far forward you push the stick. Irrespective of the stability aspect of ANGLE mode, this is distinctly different from how ANGLE mode changes the tilt.

All ACRO TRAINER mode does is to set RATE mode buffer limit. So you can still control the speed at which the quad tilts like in normal RATE mode, but if you try to go past the buffer limit angle then regardless of how fast or slow the change in angle of tilt (depending on the position your pitch/roll stick), it just stops tilting any further no matter how little of far past the centre point the pitch/roll stick is.

For anyone who just cruises in RATE/ACRO mode and never wants to do any acrobatics (i.e. some long range flights are probably a prime example), if they set the max acro trainer mode angle to 80 degrees, they would never know any difference between normal RATE mode and ACRO TRAINER mode. In fact, for those types of fliers, acro trainer mode could be utilised as a safety feature to prevent them ever inverting the quad by mistake.

(11-Mar-2019, 12:59 PM)Oscar Wrote: When I started with acro, there was one particular trick that really helped - Keep flying forward!

Yes, thanks for that

Easy to say when you're not limited to a 20 degree tilt angle in order to quickly reverse your direction of thrust when doing a 180 yaw  

(11-Mar-2019, 12:59 PM)Oscar Wrote: Great seeing you are making good progress! Day is getting longer and warmer hopefully we get to fly more soon!

It's slow progress compared to others but at least it's some progress rather than no progress