In my last post, I discussed my experience with selecting parts for my quadcopter drone as well as building the danged thing. That all went reasonably smoothly, so I was all amped up to get outside and fly.

I headed to the back yard, and spun it up. All good.

Then I started to give it some throttle, and all hell broke loose. It zoomed around, seemingly uncontrollable, and crashed into our neighbor’s yard. Not wanting to be a quitter, I have it another few attempts, all as bad as the last. On one “flight,” I even nudged the throttle enough that I tossed the quad over the house and lost sight of it. I was sure that I’d find it planted in a car windshield, but strangely, it was right side up in the middle of our street.

I thanked God for that and immediately went inside to figure out what I was doing wrong. Turns out, I was flying in “acro mode,” which was more challenging for a complete noob to handle right out of the gate without really understanding it. Internet recommendations near and far recommended lots of simulator time with games such as Liftoff and Drone Race League.

But I wasn’t going to do that. Instead, I found the easier mode to handle, horizon mode, and started working with that. It’s a little bit more controllable, as the quad returns to level once you let off the sticks. I started getting a heap better at floating around the back yard and maintaining control of the quad. It was awesome! I loved it, and I was ready for more.

The next step was getting that first person view (FPV), so I could virtually fly through the skies on my quad. I ordered some goggles, a camera, and a video transmitter, wired them in, and I was all set to go….go crash a hundred times in the yard. The perspective totally screwed me up and I had to re-learn how to fly FPV after all that line of sight flying. I started heading out to a local middle school soccer field to give myself some more room to start to sort it out, and I was ultimately successful!

I also picked up a Tinywhoop – a small quad for flying in the house – and started zipping around the living room and basement. This amused the heck out of my wife and two step-sons, as it was a hoot to chase them around the house. Flying in the basement was particularly helpful to my overall flying technique, as I had to zoom through a bunch of obstacles and make plenty of tight turns. Winter had set in, so that also gave me a way to keep flying.

By the early part of this year, I had a hankering to build another quad. I swear, half the fun is just choosing the parts and building up the excitement of the new thing. So, I upgraded the motors on my 7″ to some 2806.5 Xings, and began to line up what I would need to use the old motors as a seed for a new 5″ quad. I ended up building a knock-off Armattan Rooster, a fun quad with a metal front cage for the FPV camera. I also put in some future proof components: Speedix BLHeli32 ESCs, and a Kakute F7 flight controller that can run Ardupilot if I so desire. We use that a lot at work on Pixhawks, so I’m looking forward to eventually installing that and trying out some of the autonomous features.

Since building the Rooster, I’ve been trying to fly as much as humanly possible. If weather permits, I go out and burn through 3 packs at lunch during the work week. Being an aviation company, they’re completely down with it, and I often get spectators hanging around to watch me zoom around the parking lot. I think I’m starting to get a bit more comfortable with all the acro stuff, but there’s still tons of work to do. Here’s a little video of me flying this past weekend at Peace Valley Park in PA! Apologies for the video quality, but the receiver on the Fatshark Scout is meh. Anyway, enjoy, and keep flying!