![]() Along with its exceptional price-to-performance ratio, my favorite feature of all was the return to home graphic that shows up in the goggles showing you where you took off. While I’m accustomed to flying around the limitations of less-advanced systems, the DJI feed genuinely makes me want to swap over my custom-built analog drones.Īs an experienced pilot that has completed many long-range flights in the Arizona desert-sometimes traveling up to three-quarters of a mile away from myself-diving through the mountainous landscapes, I was thoroughly impressed with the long-range capabilities of DJI’s FPV drone. In my five years as an FPV pilot, I’ve only flown with analog video systems which offer far less visual fidelity and range. Starting with the pros the digital HD video feed going to my goggles was crisp and exceptionally immersive. ![]() This makes it really easy to be smooth on the controls, increasing your chances of getting buttery smooth footage. While DJI never really offered up any specs on the motors, they feel very biased towards efficiency rather than performance, giving me plenty of throttle resolution. Its fairly large 2,000 milliamp-hour six-cell battery offered a great balance of performance, giving me around seven minutes of flight time for fairly aggressive long-range flying-if I really managed the throttle I'm confident I could extract double the amount of flight time. Having said that, it only took me a couple of flights to realize that DJI had tuned the drone for control rather than outright performance. Initially, I was disappointed with the limited amount of punch that the motors offered up, which didn't cater to my aggressive flying style. Crashing in a virtual environment is much less expensive and allows you to instantly try again when things go wrong. Before you spearhead manual mode with your drone, I’d definitely recommend trying out DJI’s FPV simulator on your mobile device. If you take your hands off the controls while this mode is active, the drone will fall out of the sky. This turns off all of the collision warning systems and gives you complete control of the drone without the training wheels that you had in sport mode. Manual ModeĪfter reaching your maximum potential in sport mode, it's time to go into manual mode. However, if you use too much of any given control, the drone will still save itself by maintaining its position in the air. DJI is pretty vague about explaining what this means, but it feels like it allows you more breathing room to be a bit more aggressive on the controls. Once you’ve got the hang of normal mode, the next step up is sport mode-allowing you to go faster while giving you marginally more agility on the sticks. It also limits the maximum attitude of the drone to 15 degrees and sets a speed limit of 33.5 miles per hour. If you take your hands off the controls, the drone will maintain its position in normal mode. This engages all of the collision avoidance technology onboard the drone-forward and downward vision systems as well as infrared sensors-along with GPS to stabilize the quadcopter and prevent you from crashing. Normal mode offers the greatest amount of anti-crash assistance, something helpful for new pilots. ![]() This feature is especially helpful when it comes to learning how to fly FPV the “old fashioned” way as I did-a gargantuan challenge in itself. While I honed my skills as an FPV pilot mostly through trial and error (and tons of crashes), DJI’s drone has three different flight modes that will gradually ease you into fully manual FPV flight. Yaw to the right and your drone will spin clockwise, yaw to the left, and the opposite will happen. ![]() This is where aerial photography quads and FPV drones are most similar to one another. The final way to manipulate a drone is yaw, which controls rotation. This is why DJI’s FPV drone is such a boon, breaking through the traditional barriers to enter such a sophisticated hobby. That’s not to mention the mechanical side of learning how to solder and assemble the drone itself. Unfortunately, the learning curve to get anywhere in the hobby is quite steep-these machines take quite a bit of mental acuity to fly without crashing. While FPV drones have only just started to become mainstream, I’ve been flying and building them exclusively for five years now. For those who are looking to capture more dynamic footage and experience a more acrobatic flying experience, DJI has released a dedicated FPV system complete with drone, goggles, and a controller. While these are great entry points into the world of drone ownership, they are designed to be extremely easy to fly thanks to simplified controls that lower the level of skill needed from the operator. Most of the drones seen crashing through windows or flying away from their pilots are aerial photography drones like the DJI Phantom or DJI Mavic.
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