Should flying a quad be a pleasurable experience?

Joined
Jan 26, 2015
Messages
1
Reaction score
0
I ask because after doing things by the book, I'm flying my PV2+V3 but it's quite an intense experience. I've spent the last 4 weeks reading documents, watching tutorial videos and practising manoeuvring on my land. I've had no bad experienes yet as in no crashes so all is going well. But yesterday I set the flight limits to defaults and ventured skywards but the experience was a bit tense. I'm guessing my confidence will improve as time passes. I've flown RC helicopters but nothing as high as these quads go.
 
Perhaps you should stick with altitudes that you're more comfortable with. Some people like to fly their Phantoms miles away from the home point. Others like to always keep them in sight. To each his own.
 
Like anything new and detailed, it can produce some anxiety for some. But with more experience comes greater confidence and pleasure.
 
The only person who gets anxious now is the Wife, she hates it when I fly it to the limits both vertical and horizontal, I just like looking at her face when I say the magic words "that's 800ft up Love" or the classic "**** where's it gone".

Like you I did have a hard time going more than 300ft or so away and no more than 100ft up to start with, and yes the very first time I test flew it in my back garden I was shaking like a leaf, however now I just start it up and let it rip and I love it.
 
tuxtopia said:
I ask because after doing things by the book, I'm flying my PV2+V3 but it's quite an intense experience. I've spent the last 4 weeks reading documents, watching tutorial videos and practising manoeuvring on my land. I've had no bad experienes yet as in no crashes so all is going well. But yesterday I set the flight limits to defaults and ventured skywards but the experience was a bit tense. I'm guessing my confidence will improve as time passes. I've flown RC helicopters but nothing as high as these quads go.

I get anxious getting into the batter's box in a softball game that is close... being good at stuff is important to us, not making mistakes is important to us. It get's easier over time.
 
tuxtopia said:
I ask because after doing things by the book, I'm flying my PV2+V3 but it's quite an intense experience. I've spent the last 4 weeks reading documents, watching tutorial videos and practising manoeuvring on my land. I've had no bad experienes yet as in no crashes so all is going well. But yesterday I set the flight limits to defaults and ventured skywards but the experience was a bit tense. I'm guessing my confidence will improve as time passes. I've flown RC helicopters but nothing as high as these quads go.

Dont go too fast, too high, too far, too soon.
However, on every flight make sure you push the envelope a little in each dimension.
 
It's normal to freak out a little when you start out with these things. Just take your time, work on your orientation control first, and keep it low for a while until you can control it with ease, no matter which way it's facing. Once you feel comfortable with that, I'd flip over to atti mode, and get used to that mode as well, as it can be very important to know, since you might lose satellites one day and it'll automatically go into atti mode, so if you're up high, you'll know how to control it and safely bring it back in. Don't worry about manual mode for now unless you just feel like crashing the phantom. Failsafe is another thing to test out before any high altitude flights or long range flights. If you don't feel comfortable with turning off your controller, you can set failsafe to your third position on the s1 (gps/atti) switch. Becoming a good phantom pilot simply takes a lot of practice, and once you're good at flying, you should fly some more, and throw in a challenge here and there, like try to land on small areas, fly through tight spots, and if you're flying fpv, try to focus on a point, and fly around it while keeping it in frame and centered the best you can.
 
I think it's good to have a sense of respect and a little concern when you fly a quad. I have it too, every time I take off.
The fact you're a RC heli pilot (as I have been also) helps to understand what the possible dangers are. And you're only a noob to quads, not RC aircraft operating. Too many people take a Phantom to the sky nowadays without any previous RC flying experience and without any understanding of the responsibilities of operating an unmanned craft. Although a quad is easy to fly in the basic auto modes, it is quite a difficult concept to understand and it doesn't feel natural at first, specially coming from heli's. I was amazed at first that it felt like a puck on ice, the first time i tried Atti (and it keeps that way). There was a lot of wind though. Now I use it all the time, but only for my shots, using the drift to carry me smoothly over the target, without any tilt. (I started without gimbal which helps to understand and analyze the movements and behavior of the quad). After that I switch back to GPS. If I want to go to the target fast really fast I'm in Atti as well. If you use it a lot deliberately, you also immediately feel when the quad switches out of GPS for whatever reason. Most people with no Atti flying experience panic when the quad switches to Atti. Sometimes they even call it a fly away while it only drifts with the wind.
 

Recent Posts

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
143,066
Messages
1,467,352
Members
104,933
Latest member
mactechnic