First Day of FPV Drone Flying

Drone frying is definitely fascinating, having these quad copters be controlled very precise in the air. Videos show amazing camera movements that would otherwise unthinkable to do. So here am.

Actually, my first contact with drone flying I had at university, when my friend build his own drone, programmed it to fly automatically between GPS coordinates. But as he lost interest, and seeing his self build drone mostly crash and need repair, did not helping. So it was cool, but a that time I did not catch on. I was a web developer.

About two months ago, an other friend show me his new DJI mavic mini and the videos he made. Wow, he has the drone just since a few weeks, and the footage he produce is so amazing. Sadly, when he let me fly, I moved the drone straight backwards into a tree. But this time I catch on. But first I waited before buying a drone for myself. First I watched some more videos and read some information, to see how big my motivation is this time. After all the drone is quite an investment into a hobby, and knowing that I did not use my Canon camera not as much as I should have, I waited.

Now it is two months later shooting some deals at June 18. on taobao. Waiting again for the parts to arrive, but now the stuff is there.

First practice flying in the simulator, but the Radiomaster TX16S can’t connect to the PC properly. It just don’t get recognized as a game controller. So I practice a little with an Xbox controller borrowed from a good colleague.

Next the drone and the goggles arrived. But, how is that possible, the goggles come without battery. So order a new big battery and a compatible charger, wait again. At this point in know the value of ready to fly kits, such as from DJI or EMAX.
Aging all parts together now, I need to bind my Controller, the TX16S to the drone. After updating the firmware on my drone, the mobula6HD, I was sure to set it correctly into binding mode. But the radio still did not bind. After asking the RasiomasterRC support, I had to update the firmware for the radios internal multi-transmitter, not the controller itself. That feeld like an achievement now, to have the two bound.

Getting the video to show on the screen was almost automatically. The screen automatically search for the right channel. I as ready to go, but the drone did spin the props, but did not what it should. I used a video that described how to configure the drone using betaflight. Finally, I took of, and the drone followed the stick inputs.

After charging all my little 1S batteries, get out on a free area, because flying insight was not fun, for practising, I need more space. first I used a third party battery with 300mah. it worked, but I definitely need more practice. That was my first flight, but I have to learn not to crash to often. Next I used a happymodel battery, that came together with the drone. no, that did not work. the voltage of the battery was good, at 4.2volt, but when plugging it in, sometimes nothing happen, sometimes the video was missing, sometimes it disconnected when take off. that battery did not work. Trying another of the third party battery, hmm, there was no information on the screen, and I could not arm using the radio. This session was over, And I just had a dude standing beside me looking interested. but I could not take off anymore. Getting back home was able to reconfigure the drone. This time I made a backup of the configuration.

Going to fly again in the afternoon, I had a similar experience. I already thought one of the happymodel batteries are bad, But no, all four of them are bad. At least I did not lost the configuration again. Now that have the drone flying I really want to fly, but it was still wet outside from a previous rain. And as a beginner I also crashed into some water. The drone was not drowning, I even tried to fly out of it,but it was to late. it did not fly again. second flight session over on just the second battery. At home I plugged it to USB, it got connected to betaflight. but the gyro was lagging now 2 seconds behind. I left it lying, where the air conditioner would blow dry air on it, not telling her that the drone is probably broke. But with some luck, in the evening it flew again. I turned some moves line of sight in my living room, to bring the batteries down to 3.8 storage voltage.

So, for next weekend I buy some more extra batteries with 300mah. hopefully the weather get better!!!

Thanks for reading this article, here is a video of my first flights, turn the volume down, it is very loud.