FPV

Somewhere around first week of July this year I tried a non-DJI drone, a BetaFPV Pavo and didn’t fly even 2 seconds in acro mode.

I tried in simulator that evening and that was hard. Eventually spend around 3 hours on a level with Hangar C03 level, where it is possible to fly higher and around big objects like cranes, which I find easy at the beginning when you are not very gentle with controls and need more head space and time to correct mistakes.

Same week I’ve got a used Cetus Pro Kit, which goes with simple box goggles and radio on FrSky. Was having some fun trying to fly indoors.

First weekend I’ve found Tyrantt, who announced a free Freestyle Bootcamp 101 to start on 27th of July. There was no entry level to apply, so I decided I was going. The problem was with DVR (digital video recorder) – those goggles, that I had were not capable of recording. So I started a list of things that I’d need (for the bootcamp).

I’ve started reading/watching about FPV drones and discovered EMAX Tinyhawk II Freestyle was a rather cheap (around 150,- BNF) one with open props, and Mobula6 was a good one tinywhoop at around the same price. Not going into digital to same money on crashes while still learning was my another thought.

So I ordered Mobula6 2024 analog (later I discovered how shitty the QC was for 2024 edition), Sky04X Pro goggles, two antennas (Foxeer echo and pagoda), Boxer radio, 6 more 1s LiHV batteries and got a used Tinyhawk II freestyle.

Mobula6 arrived just before me leaving for vacation, and a day before that the Tinyhawk arrived, when the first challenge of the bootcamp was announced. I had no experience on setting Boxer radio, ExpressLRS and new BNF Mobula6 2024, while Tinyhawk was using same protocol (FrSky) as the Cetus Pro, so the only problem was to bind it to the radio, which appeared to be pretty easy. So I’ve made a safe recording (the one you do as a backup) the last day before vacation using 8x 1s lipo packs on Cetus Pro and 1x 2s (and only at that time) on Tinyhawk.

For vacation to Croatia I took:

• Goggles
• 2x 4s lipos (for goggles and a spare one)
• 8x 1s lipos
• 1x 2s lipo
• charger
• Cetus Pro Kit
• Tinyhawk

These are flights from vacation:

Coming back from vacation, I’ve setup Boxer and bond it to Mobula6 2024. Sadly it flew only 3 packs one day and after a crash on kids playground it was cooked.

After last flight in Croatia I decided to switch Tinyhawk to ELRS, got into some debugging for couple of days and then eventually decided to switch back to FrCry.

It is still acting weird when connected to macbook via USB. It is working well for around a minute and then starts timing out and not connecting for a half day or so.

That day I did my first dive attempt:

And again RX was lost.

After getting some experience with USB connections of Tinyhawk, I was quick and set up rates as I saw from Joshua Bardwell for my Tinyhawk: and that was worth it. Also I decided to solder RX again, and ended up thinking I’ve toasted it: I disconnected antenna while soldering and forgot to plug it back before plugging it battery, so I saw no led. I did plug the bat via smoke stopper. When plugging antenna and then battery – nothing changed, I disconnected ground wire from RX and all leds went fine. So I decided I burned the RX. Ordered two more (plus 2 AGC mics from Rush FPV).

Around that time I’ve also bought 2 partially working used Tinyhawk’s on Marktplaats (which came with kit goggles and radios): one with not working FC, one with only 3 motors working, but with a spare set of props and on still good frames. As after vacation I did find a frame to replace the broken one, in UK, which turned down to be gold (because of delivery and taxes). Plus I also bought a Mobula6 (not 2024 edition) from one guy on Marktplaats.

I’ve lowered rates and made 90% throttle limitation in Betaflight for that Mobula6 and it was pretty nice to fly. But on the second session of me flying it (last Saturday), by 8th pack one motor started to twitch and I need to fix or debug it now :)

So far, so good: I have around 33 hours in Lift-off simulator and around 1 hour in Velocidrone. I hate buying on droneshop.nl as whenever I place an order, in less than a day I figure out that I need something else and that just annoys me very much.