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Welcome to the world of FPV Multirotors!
If you’re here reading this, then something inspired you to do a little research into FPV multirotors as an FPV Beginner. It can be a little intimidating when you are first starting out, but stick with it, the rewards far outweigh the challenges. This series of articles is here to help you navigate your way through those challenges, and give you a good deal of insight into what you need to know to proceed. While not all encompassing, you will have a good knowledge base with which to get started as an FPV Beginner.
What is FPV? Simplified for an FPV Beginner.
FPV or First Person View is the most unique experience of interacting with your aircraft through a level of immersion that is unparalleled by anything short of virtual reality. In its most basic form, it takes you, the pilot, and transfers your visual consciousness into the body of a fast, agile, and precise flying machine. It gives you a whole new and awe inspiring view of the world around you that only those who fly FPV get to experience. There are really about three different schools of FPV multirotor flying; racing, freestyle, and aerial photography. There’s nothing saying you can’t do more than one of these, or all three! They each have their exciting aspects and there’s a community out there to help support you through your journey.
Freestyle Flying
Freestyle flying is all about your environment, your multirotor, and the interaction between the two. It might be finding that new gap that your multirotor barely fits through, dodging ghost branches as you dance through your local park, finding cool new locations in which to explore, or finally learning that new trick that you saw on someone’s flight video. Freestyle is a form of expression in flight, more focused on acrobatics and exploring your environment. Freestyle also has the added benefit of helping to prepare you for racing by pushing the limits of your multicopter through learning control. As an FPV Beginner, this is most likely where you will start in your journey!
FPV Racing
FPV racing consists of flying either solo, or with a group of other pilots, through a series of obstacles, flags, and gates. As with all racing, the goal is to get first place, either by beating all the other pilots to the finish line or getting the best time on the track. While this may sound simple at first, most tracks will not only push the limit in terms of speed, but will also test your ability to maneuver your multirotor through all aspects of control. Many races come down to who has the fastest reflexes and can find the best line in the track.
Aerial Photography
Aerial photography is just that, viewing and recording whatever your chosen subject matter is from the air. This is a great way to explore the world around you, and gives you a unique experience of taking your photography literally to a whole new level. Aerial photography also has many practical uses, such as showing unique views of real estate, area mapping, or even filming movies!
How a Multirotor Works: FPV Beginner
A multirotor has four control points; roll, pitch, yaw, and thrust, and each of these work both independently from one another and can work together to create more complex movement. Let’s start with an exercise to show each of these controls. Hold your hand out in front of you palm down. Rock your hand from side to side, that is your roll. Now, tip your hand forward, then backward, that would be pitch. Keeping your hand palm down, turn your hand left then right, that’s an example of yaw. Last, again, keep your palm face down, and lift your hand higher in the air then bring it back down, there is your thrust. Now, when you start to combine roll with thrust, your multirotor will shift either left or right. When you pitch forward the multirotor will start to move forward, and when you pitch back, it will move backward. Yaw is generally used to change your heading, or the direction your multirotor is facing. The more thrust you provide the faster the multirotor will gain altitude, and the roll and pitch effectively change what direction is truly up.
To build or not to build, that is the question…
When you first get into the hobby as an FPV Beginner, there is that little thing in the back of your mind that we like to call “instant gratification”. While there is no shame in buying a pre-built multirotor, and there are some great builders out there that will be more than happy to provide that for you, a word of caution; you will crash your multirotor…. many, many times. There are times where a part will not survive your crash, or a wire will get jarred loose, and unless you are fantastic with electronics, you may not know how to conduct repairs. By going through the steps to build your first multirotor as an FPV Beginner, you will understand how the parts work in conjunction with one another, as well as how to fix anything that might be broken. Plus, there is nothing as satisfying as building something that once complete, can take to the skies!
Note: There are a few skills necessary to properly build a multirotor,
