First Flight

Received my packages from Amazon.

That was quick! Now, time for my first flight.

First indoor flight lasted about 5 minutes. All good.

On that 5 minutes, I was scared for about 4 minutes and 59 seconds.

Way different from the simulator.  More tangible. But was it fun? Hell yes!

Updated: Amazon reviews said that the customer service was very good.  They lied, it's exceptional! I received an email this morning from one of their representative checking out on my order and sending must-see youtube videos like this one.

Really impressed!

My first Drone

Soooooo..... I place my first order today.

Do I think I'm ready?

Let`s do this.

First Order - Holy Stone HS170

After doing my due diligence, I placed my 1st order on Amazon (Faster and more reliable).  I ordered theses:

• Holy Stone HS170
• Some extra propellers (I'm foreseeing a LOT of crashes....)
• Extra batteries and charger (For obvious reasons...)

Was about to go with the Hubsan 4x but went with Holy Stone only because of the customer service and availability on Amazon (Eligible to Prime Members).  Total is 85 CND$ which is very reasonable.  And both Hubsan dans HS seems to go crazy fast.

The first week of training

A week has passed. Results? Crazy fun!

First off, we need to talk about axis:

So, on the remote, it translates to:

What did I start with?

Obviously, the left stick is pretty easy and you get it right pretty quick.  The bitch is the right one.

Pitch down accelerates.  Pitch up slows it.  But the rolls?

Wait, there is more!  Auto-stabilization (which I call the beginner mode) can be turn on or off on the right stick.

There`s some people that got it always on the first try.  Not me.  So, I spend the week working on mastering using the left stick and using only the pitch angle.

And yeah, WITH the auto-stabilization mode.

The day my life changed forever

So, I decided to start with the simulator.  It's way more expensive (~250$) than a cheap plastic drone (~ 50$), I concur.  But the average duration of flight on a cheap drone is about 5 minutes. 

 Yes, you can buy extra batteries which mean 4-5 minutes of flight, stopping, changing batteries, starting over. I also saw somewhere that you should let the drone cool down a bit between flights.

Exactly.  

Real Flight Simulator 7.5 (RF 7.5)

There's different products for RF 7.5.  I took the one with the wired controller included.  Although I can use a real controller, I did not buy one, for 3 reasons:

• Practicing will wear off the controller
• I'm not ready

Also, I've been told that many pilots use it to practice next moves which will be a good thing... eventually.... I think?

Anyway.  Local store had it lower than anything else I searched for, 250$ including taxes (which is a BIG deal here in Quebec).  So, came home. EZ installation, ready to try it out.

First impression

Awesomely-awesome.

I practice 2 hours straight, never saw time flying by (Get it? Flying? I'm a killer...). So, now the practice time starts.

Recon time

Time for a recon.

Let's start with Google:

The first two best reading so far:

• FPV Racing (link)
• Best Drone for the Job (link)
• Specially this buying/starting guide (link)

I went on web stores like www.helipal.com and www.hobbyking.com, selected the perfect bundle and was about ready to put 1800$ CND directly on my credit card, and suddenly....

So I changed my strategy, went to a local store and speak with a technician (who happens to be a flight instructor too).  He said exactly what the previous sites said, start with this:

And learn the basics.  My reaction?

Then the guy smiled and say "Come with me".  he made me try a flight simulator on a PC.

Within 2 minutes, I crashed 17 times.

I felt like....

Ok, lesson learned.

I got out with a copy of the fracking simulator.  Will start with the basics...

The idea

One day, I stepped on this:

That's it.  This is what I wanna do.

And there's a voice in my head that tells me "Ok, hold on tiger".

There must be basics first (even though I want to go directly to race with these mothafuckas).

So, let's start ... with the start.  Let's do a little recon!

Why a Blog?

Ok, another blog. Yes.

Why? 'Cause I've search on the web and found a lot of buying guide but nothing really explaining what is the step processes to achieve drone racing.

... And also because the actual facebook groups are not really helpful.  At all.

So, here`s my experiences, from the (very) beginning.