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This series of lessons uses the free FPV Freerider simulator to teach a complete beginner how to fly an FPV multirotor in acro (no autoleveling) mode. You can learn to fly a quadcopter at home in front of your computer for almost no money. You can learn to fly without any fear of crashing and breaking an expensive toy. And yes, the things you learn here WILL translate over to real life.
The first thing you need to learn in order to fly a racing drone is how to manage your altitude. This lesson will teach you to hover in place and gain and lose altitude. Quadcopter go up. Quadcopter go down. Quadcopter not crash.
Thanks for this video series. It has truly helped me to fly in acro mode.
Your explanations and tutorial steps are really well done and really helped
me understand the flight mechanics. highly recommended to all!
joshua bardwell hi nice video tutorials i looking in to trying this myself
but i dont have a lead to plug my futaba ripmax T6EXA transmitter in to my
laptop can you tell me the name of the lead and were to purchase one please
I cant connect my devo 7e … tried with smartpropoplus. “device
disconnected”.
Maybe you could start with “how to connect your controller to the PC”
I’m really thankful for this series of videos of yours. Without it I
wouldn’t be able to fly my quad easily.
Thank you.. I’ve made my first flights with my quad and I’m very happy.
Thank you so much!
Keep up your amazing job!
Could I connect it to a Apple Computer
Thank you for making these videos
Thank you
you can learn how to fly on it i when from failing over and over again and
now i can fly in full acro but low rates
thank u ….
Needs an option for us slow-flying Phantom types…
I am a complete newbie. I thought throttle zero at center is for 3D flying.
Correct me if I am wrong.
I just started to fly a drone about a month ago. A syma x5sw – a toy I know
– I’ve also started flying planes this year as well. I swapped the mode
around on the transmitter so my yaw is on the right stick. When considering
a more hobby grade drone do you think this is a mistake? Should I swap back
to yaw on left stick and start retraining my muscle memory? One reason I
switched was I had a habit of punching or dropping the throttle when yaw
was on left and can’t set any dead zone on the syma transmitter. With the
yaw on the right I’m pretty much controlling it like I would a plane. Of
course with the syma I can’t roll it over like I can in the simulator here
😉 — Nice Job on the Vids I’ll be going through your series. Only took me
about 10 minutes to setup a dx6i transmitter with this simulator.
I’m flying level mode now, because acro is really hard.
I’m trying the lessons but I’m pretty impatient 😉
One question, in liftoff it’s much harder to fly level mode so how
realistic is fpv freerider or liftoff?
Thank you for this video Joshua! This is the one that made it all click for
me. after 30 minutes of practicing throttle control, all the rest of
everything I have been practicing clicked and I jumped forward by leaps and
bounds. It returned the faith that I can fly my drone. I just destroyed a
frame so all I have is this until my new frames show up. Once again, Thank
you!
is this real controll to the real life racing drone
Hi Joshua, do you think Freerider is better than Liftoff? Is it easy to
connect to the Taranis?
Hey Josh! The reason that the throttle is set to the center at the default
is because alot of people seem to be using playstation controllers or
controllers of that sort where the sticks are usually centered
thank you for that movies series, you are great :)
FTR, having the lowest throttle output in the center is a standard setting
for 3D flight mode with reversible ESCs. The bottom half of the range
produces negative lift and the upper half gives standard positive lift.
It’s a “poor man’s variable pitch”, so to speak. In normal mode, you’d have
a throttle curve of e.g. 0–25–50–75–100 and a pitch curve that’s always
positive. (The exact pitch value doesn’t matter for a fixed prop drone,
just the sign does matter.) In 3D mode, the throttle curve would be e.g.
100–65–30–65–100 (i.e., you don’t really go to zero, ever, because you need
your ESCs and motors to go into reverse as fast as feasible when needed)
and the pitch curve would be negative up to 50% and positive above 50% of
stick input. Newer (current) versions of FreeRider already support this
reversible ESC 3D mode.
great! thanks for sharing this lessons
Hi Dr DRE. I’m looking for your expert advice. It’s there any way to tame a
quad while learning. I am struggling with acro mode. Oh, and flying the
quad LOS facing towards me 😉 I have found your videos in this play list
invaluable. I even plug my fatsharks in to my laptop 😉 but I have a qx90
and an Inductrix which I find difficult, especially in confined spaces of
course.
What I think helps me is lots of expo on the transmitter, which I have
already done. Is there anything else? Like maybe some LUA script or
something for example that if I hit the throttle to 100% it takes 5 seconds
to ramp up?
Basically I wonder if you can think of anything to help a learner like me,
not just the simplistic things I can think of.
And thanks for your contributions to the community!
mode 2?
Thank you for these videos!
Any thoughts on learning LOS on it?
Iv just got a new teranis and i cant get the sticks right with this app
impossible to use
Thankyou so much and keep up the awsome work
Hey Joshua – your series here is terrific and really has taught me
acro/rate mode for fpv (tip ‘o the hat to you!). I am working on learning
acro/rate for LOS flying and find it much, much more difficult than
acro/fpv – I think there is something about being ‘inside’ the copter and
having more immediate visual feedback on your adjustments. For LOS, I’m
sensing there needs to be a completely different mindset since the
control/response loop is more abstract, if that makes sense? Wondering if
you have any tips on how to translate fpv/acro skills to LOS flying? Or
maybe suggestions/links if you know of any good resources? Thanks again!
zero at center is for 3d flight. i.e reversing the spin on props. you can
fly inverted. quite fun if I say so my self