My First Full FPV Flight with xAircraft x650 Quadcopter

FPV stands for First Person View, which involves attaching a small camera to your aircraft that links up to a transmitter and beams video back to a receiver on the ground and sends the video to a screen or goggles so the pilot can fly as if he/she were actually onboard the aircraft.

This type of flying has a lot of advantages over remotely controlling a machine from far away using line of sight.

 1. The controls are always the same, left is always left  and right is always right. When flying from the ground using line of sight the controlls are opposite when your machine is flying towards you, normal when flying away from you and somewhere in between when flying at a 45 degree angle, which can be very confusing - especially as you get further away and you can't tell which way around your quadcopter is facing.

2. You can film or photograph exactly what you want. With line of sight aeirial photography you have to fly over and/or around your subject and hope you capture what you need to film, your videos are made from whatever your camera happens to see. With FPV you can pick subjects from the air and go and fly to them, or follow them, to capture more precise footage and subjects.

3. You can fly beyond and/or over objects, such as trees, that would block your vision from the ground.

4. You can fly a lot higher because you do not have to worry about losing orientation like you do from the ground.

The video on this page shows only my 4th attempt at FPV flying. My first try was with an LCD screen as my visual output, but I found it too hard to look at and not be distracted by my surroundings and quickly gave up and flew normally instead.

After this I bought some Headplay video goggles, which are great, and had a try with my camera attached to the Gaui 330X S quadcopter. Unfortunately it was very windy that day and I found it too stressful to cope with fighting the wind and concentrating on the image in the goggles at the same time, and quickly removed them in favour of the more familiar line of sight flying.

My third try was with the xAircraft x650 with my friend watching the quadcopter and me using the goggles. I managed to relax a bit this time and it was quite a thrill, but only flew for about a minute because I was so full of adrenalin and excitment.

This fourth attempt I totally relaxed, on my own, and flew the xAircraft x650 quadcopter for the full durartion of the battery's power. It was still windy and I had to constantly push the sticks against the wind, but I loved it!

For anyone who hasn't tried FPV I fully recommend it, as I get better I will be using it more and more. The best FVP advice I can give is to use FPV goggles, start somewhere with lots of space and not many people. Relax as much as you can, fly high and trust in the image you see on the screen - it's very tempting to remove the goggles and revert to the familiar comfort of line of sight, so stick with it and trust what you see and everything will go well.

Also, if you're using a Gopro camera with the stock lens, or anything similar that gives you a surround fish-eye effect, do not use this as your FPV camera - buy a separate CCD camera specifically made for FPV because it gives you a flatter, more natural image. The Gopro will distort the image as you get nearer to the ground or object and give you a false impression of your surrounding and may cause you to crash.