How to start an FPV journey? Basically where to fly (long range)?

Racing Quads, Self-builds & FPV
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Hi everyone,

this might sound a little ambitious but I’m looking for a way to get into long range FPV. Having read the CAA info and now getting the A2C for my DJI Air3 (not really any point for me as I will never use my drone among people but it came as part of the package) I guess it just isn’t legal within local shores :frowning:

I bought the Air3 to use it outside of the country as down in the capital in the south east there really isn’t anywhere scenic to my preference and not to mention that it’s way over crowded with people and buildings which I just can’t stand as it makes me nervous.

So last year having an invite up to Scotland was fantastic and I got to make my first vlog/travel documentary video up there. Of course it was no where near perfect and to be frank the color grading was way off but many lessons were learned :slight_smile:

This was my first ever flight, and even at 3am in the morning I got busted in on by a van while I was down the road on the other side of the highway. I then moved to a bridle way that leads to nowhere and got some air time while completely alone:

Having watched a few videos online and especially Philip Halvorson’s vids from Lofoton in Norway:

and Ellis Van Jason’s video from Madeira:

I decided that adding an FPV element to the videos I intend to create while traveling would be a really good idea.

A great place to start for me could be Turkey as having family out there I know the country well and also know that there are really cool areas like the D950 interstate between Erzurum and Artvin - also they are far more relaxed with rules and regulations out there (don’t worry about the driving by the buses going on the other side of the road - as long distance drivers we are taught to do that during the driving lessons to alleviate fatigue while being on the road for a long time - say 15 hours straight):

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Instead I was just trying to give an idea of the types of areas of my interest :slight_smile:

Looking around at reviews and online footage I am quite keen on going for something like a 2RAW/iFlight 5" Afterburner, 7" Specter, 10" Helion then building myself up to the StarTruss cinelifter which can go up to around 240km/h (~150mph)

What is the best way to begin with this?

I guess being over “toy” wight at 250g I wouldn’t be able to use any of those in my garden either…
Does anyone know of something sub 250g with Crossfire/Betaflight/GPS/and the DJI O4 transmission system that might be usable in the garden?

If not I guess I’m just going to have to buy something, build it, learn the software and wait till I can go somewhere with lots of space again?

Many thanks for any ideas…

I guess this is really what my dream to do is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH4fBVF3PDY&t=14s

but with different types of elements :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

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Thats easy, get a flywoo LR4 :smiley:

I’ve seen videos of those little babies going 5km with the 4s 18700 Lion packs. No ascent mind you but impressive bit of LR kit in a tiny package.

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Thank you.

I’ll have a look.

Can I fly it in my garden in the city or are there limits for FPV like regular camera drones?

All I know is that you need a spotter and it needs to be VLOS for the spotter. Though I might end up flying the thing VLOS on my own anyway at first without the goggles as my garden isn’t that big - only a few meters

I have the CAA stuff - FlyerID and OperatorID

Still on the A2C course as haven’t taken the exam yet as I had no flight time but now I have 4 hours (in 1 year sigh!) so that at least meets the requirement :slight_smile:

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You’re not going to have much fun with anything bigger than a Tiny Whoop in your garden, unless you’re blessed with an enormous garden. Although there are Nano long range quads in existence, the whole point is that they’re long range.

For tiny and analog, there’s the HGLRC Rekon35.

Or maybe the Flywoo LR4 HD, as Iain has said. It’s sub 250, but that doesn’t make it garden-sized. :laughing:

If this is your first foray into FPV, and you’re wanting to fly in your garden because you need to practice, you’d be better off starting with a decent controller and a simulator. Then maybe try a whoop to get started in real life. It’s actually (I think) much harder to fly a small drone in a small space, so this would stand you in good stead, and the skills are transferable as you scale up.

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Yes precisely! I just want to use my garden as practice space before letting loose and getting out into the world.

I’m checking out the Flywoo now.

This is exactly the problem. I’m not sure how big the garden is, probably around 6m x 12m? With gardens around everywhere - think 1920s ish semi detached house heaven

The flight sim idea is also something I was looking into as I have seen many people suggesting LiftOff which also works on my Linux platform. Just confused about the version to get as there are several and the base one seems to be focused towards racing?

Controller wise I am thinking about the Radiomaster TX16S as it uses the EdgeTX OS which is popular and opensource.
I did have a look at Graupner and Futaba as well which seem to have better physical build quality but I was advised that they are a pain to use with quads and FPV, especially for things like Crossfire and external modules as the OS like Frsky in addition is closed source.

Possibly the TX16S in ELRS configuration and large Crossfire module would be the best option and going for the AG01 Hall gimbals:

there is also I think a Crossfire to Wifi Access Point which one can use with the TBS Agent M app to map the GPS location of the drone similar to DJI Google Maps integration. The only downside is that it seems TBS Agent M hasn’t been updated since 2023 and I have emailed Team Blacksheep about it wondering how I could get it to work with my Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra or even a rugged Samsung tablet…

More reading I’ve done too:

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Well, you’re certainly reading the right guy (Oscar). :slight_smile:

LiftOff is a good all-round sim - you don’t have to do racing. To be fair, for what you want to do ultimately, Tryp would probably be right up your street, but I don’t know how Linux-friendly it is.

@bmsleight might be able to help with that side of things.

The TX16 is a solid choice.

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Runs nice in Linux. Installed/purchase via Steam.
Runs nice really nice in Steam Deck.

Just the basic version for now - Liftoff®: FPV Drone Racing on Steam £16.99

https://www.velocidrone.com/ Also works on Linux.

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Too small to start, too small one you get good.

I fly my flywoo LR4 in local park. I dont fly my 5 Inch in the park (only dis-used gold courses or simular). I fly my whoop [BetaFPV Meteor75] at the end of my road (cul de sac) or from my very small front drive.

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Are you talking about LiftOff or Tryp?

I can see a LiftOff version Linux but is it this one you mean:

Tryp doesn’t seem to be Linux compatible:

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It’s a lot more space then my kitchen where I tried initially to practice with the Air3, until I crashed it into a cupboard. No damage just one set of props gone :frowning:

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LiftOff. - Needs steam to be installed. Steam, The Ultimate Online Game Platform I have this install on my main laptop

I have tryp but it runs slow on my linux laptop.. it runs ok-ish on SteamDesk (Steam Deck is a mini linux machine designed for gaming), if I turn graphics quality down.

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Thanks! I’ll check it out…

I run Arch Linux and mostly CLI so not very familiar with GUI based things

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VelociDrone FPV Simulator runs on a half good phone. With ELRS as bluetooth joystick

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Thanks so much everyone for all the input!!

I just got Steam up and running and purchased LiftOff. It looks like my DJI RC2 controller cannot be used as an external joystick sadly as the Android build inside has no driver for HID (human interface device) -according to my reading on Google.

I guess I’ll need to pickup a TX16S for this to work…

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Nobody has mentioned the elephant in the room / one thing that every FPV pilot needs -

An endless supply of Cash :pound_banknote::money_bag::pound_banknote::euro_banknote::money_bag:

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Don’t get into computer systems and network engineering!

You’ll soon find yourself bankrupt with the amount that, that stuff costs!!

A Cisco WLC (wifi) setup can easily set you back around $25k. So you end up buying something that’s 15 years old for next to nothing - price of a TX16 basically and end up spending more on repair costs then anything else…

Thankfully *NIX operating systems don’t cost $$$. Any *BSD, Linux distro, or even Solaris/HP-UX/IBM AIX
They can’t sell them as they will only work with specific processors in case of Sun Microsystems (now Oracle), HP, or IBM

Honestly that’s why I was quite surprised at the price differential between Futaba/Graupner and the EdgeTX based stuff… they are in different legues!
Not sure if that translates to higher quality components and materials but still… $200 for the TX16 vs. $1000 for a Graupner 32 channel