Staceman FPV

I met up with my buddy RanHam at a local college for soe flying. We had a great time. The security are great at the college, and it's got so much fun stuff to fly around. When I got there, a lady coming of one of the buildings asked me if I was going to be flying my drone, and I told her that I was. She proceeded to tell me she was a professor there, and asked if I would be interested in teaching her students about drones sometime. It seems she has a weekend thing there for kids who are under-privileged and are going to college as the first person in their families to do so. I told her I would think about it. I love positive interactions like that!

I tried an FPV sim again today. I have no clue how anyone an use these things. The camera look feels like I am trying to fly by a DJI Action 2 in superwide mode. It just feels so bad that I can't fly it at all. It's interesting since I used to use them, and was ok flying them. I haven't tried to fly one in a long time, and the camera not being fisheye makes it next to impossible for me to use now.

We went to EPCOT and got to check out the new Moana Journey of Water attraction early. It officially opens sometime early next month. They are just doing annual passholder previews right now. It is pretty neat, and kids (young and young at heart) are going to love it. There are plenty of little hidden things to find for those that love that sort of thing. You can stay dry, or get as wet as you want as well. With all of the trees and bushes lining the outside, it becomes it's own little oasis away from the hustle and bustle of the park, which is very cool.

I am definitely going to cut back on social media. I will likely read some stuff on certain servers, but likely not contribute. There are some servers I will be more active on, though. I just don't need drama. I cut back Facebook groups drastically because of this sort of thing, and I don't miss it. My big problem is that I have always been one who liked to argue, but as I get older, I have found that I have better things to do. Still, I know at my core, I have to be right, so it is better for me to avoid it. I know I can't be silent.

Ok, so maybe they aren't fanboys. They just don't bother to actually read what I had orginally wrote. In either case, the result is the same. They are unwilling to put aside biases when discussing anything. They know everything, and clearly I don't. Maybe I am taking it the wrong in way. Maybe they are genuinely trying to help. It's this sort of interactions though that brought me to ditch social media a long time back. I have since come back to it trying to find the useful bits, but unfortunaely, it always ends up getting to a point that irritates me a bit too much. I don't use notifications on it for this reason, and even still, I get to this point every time. I think it is time to cut back again.

Fanboys annoy me to no end. So I have an issue with a particular channel on my sub 250g drone with the HDZero Race V3 VTx. On that channel, if I try to run the VTx's max power of 200mw, it is really bad snow all the time. Every single other channel is fine. I found that strange, and so I reported it on the discord. I quickly got a response from Ryan that it is likely a firmware issue since it is clear on 25mw. That satisfied me. However, two other discord people are adamant that it must be my build, or that I have a bad antenna. Obviously, HDZero has no fault. These people wear me out.

A friend gave us a pineapple plant today. In a couple of years, if all goes well, we'll have a single pineapple. If you have ever wondered why pineapple is so expensive, that's the reason. Each plant only produces a fruit every two years.

I have really been enjoying flying my sub 250g drone around the house. It is just as much fun as I used to have flying my 5 inch drone, but so much less stress, and it handles so much better. I really think this is the future of the hobby.

I have been just freestyle slying around the house recently. I am just working on improving my general freestyle, and just working on trying to add more variety in a simple location. Flying around my house has a few simple obstacles and as such it takes a bit of work to make it interesting. And that fits my goal nicely. I want to get better at utilizing a spot that I am flying in general. I figure if I can make flying around my house look interesting, then I can make most any spot interesting.

The other goal with this is to just get more used to flying the smaller sub 250g form framework. I am getting a much better feel for it, and it's really feeling like my old 5" days, but more controlled. I am quite happy with my decision to switch.

We had a great time yesterday celebrating Kim's birthday. We did a few things we hadn't done before at Animal Kingdom. We were able to check out Rafiki's Planet Watch area. It is usually already done for the day by the time we typically get to Animal Kingdom, but since I took the day off, Kim and I were able to get to the park at opening. They have some interesting stuff up there to see, and an area where you can pet some goats and pigs. The part I enjoyed the most, though, was the animation experience where you learn to draw some Disney characters. he artists are really good, and they have some interesting things to share about the different films. It's a great experience that so many miss out on. If you go to Animal Kingdom, make sure to check it out. It's free, and a lot of fun.

Happy birthday to my wife, Kim! We are off to Animal Kingdom for the day, and Tusker House for dinner.

We went to visit my parents and picked up some Christmas decorations that my mother had. Kim loves to decorate. I hate it. You can see who wins that battle. Tomorrow is her birthday, and we are going to head to Animal Kingdom.

Managed to fly all my packs. I just flew around the house, but really enjoyed it. It is fun sessions like this that remind me of why I love this hobby.

I have batteries charged, but have not been able to fly. I have just been busy with other things. Hopefully, I will burn through the packs today. If not, I will need to discharge them using my charger, and I would rather not do that as it is so slow.

My wife has a birthday in a few days, and she has been on a mission gathering all of the free things from different retailers, and restaurants. I have to admit I thought it was silly, but she has managed to get quite a bit of free stuff so far, and has a few more things yet to get. She got a free half gallon of ice cream at Publix, a free sub at Firehouse Subs, a free item from Sephora that was worth about $20, a free cupcake at Sprinkles, and 3 free doughnuts at Krispy Kreme. She still has an item to get at Starbucks, some free pancakes at IHOP, and a free sandwich at Chick-fil-a. I may have missed a few things on this list.

I went out this morning to try the MattyFlip challenge. It started well, and I even got one really quick. It wasn't like I wanted, so I tried again, and then crashed. Battery disconnected. No big deal. There wasn't any other damage, which was great. I plugged back in, and no video.

At this point, I checked it over, and everything looked ok as far as connections go, and everything, so I was hoping that I didn't break my VTx. And thoughts in my head were going on, "Why did you do this stupid trick? What do you have to prove?" And so on... I get back to the house (a short walk down the street), disassemble it to check to see if the VTx is getting power from the FC or not. I was thinking that the 5v regulator had died. I was hoping that was all, to be honest.

So I plug it in, and went to grab the multimeter, and I noticed that the lights were on for the VTx. So I unplugged (not wanting to tempt fate and have it cook or short), and grabbed my goggles. I plugged it back in, lights were on, and I did a scan in the goggles. Boom! Working! Woohoo!

So, I am going to check over everything else while it's disassembled, and make sure it is all good. And then I will give it another go.

So I was challenged by Wallbanger FPV on his ThursdayThrown challenge to do a MattyFlip. MattyFlips and I have not have the best luck, so I have avoided them. I'm going to give it a go, though. I rewatched AustInspired FPV's tutorial video on it a few times, and I think I can do this. Well, I know I can. It's just a matter of if my drone can survive me getting to that point.

I updated the gear section of the website with the parts for the Acrobrat 3 inch build. I am thinking of reorganizing this page a bit to make it easier to find things, and possibly add some information about the items.

I got to fly today at the park I used to fly regularly when we lived in Davenport. The only downside, you may ask? I forgot to bring my SD card, so I have no footage. On the upside, I was able to enjoy flying the whole park with really good video. The improvements that have been made to the 1080p30 mode are phenomenal!

We went to EPCOT and enjoyed seeing TobyMac in concert. He puts on a great show. Driving home, though, was quite an experience. We left the park just as it started to sprinkle. By the time we were on the main road, the clouds had let loose with the heaviest rain I have ever driven in. It was like driving through a river all the way home. All the roads had standing water on pretty much the entirety of the road. The winds were crazy and the rain was going sideways, up, down, every possible direction. It was like driving through a hurricane!

Today, we chilled, and didn't do much of anything. It felt good to relax.

Wow, I have been slacking on this. To be honest, I have been pretty busy with life. Today, I was able to get back to flying again. I met up with my buddy RanHam at a cool college spot. HDZero performed great in this environment, much better than I expected to be honest. RanHam did a ride along running older version of the goggle firmware, and it was quite evident that the updates made some good improvements, as I was getting better results in my goggles than RanHam was getting in his goggles on the same flight.

I have decided to migrate primarily to flying 3" over 5". It gives me much more flexibilty in where I can fly, and I don't have to worry about the FAA and their regulations (for the most part), and that is a plus. Overall performance of the 3" build now is working great for me, and very similar to my 5" build, so I don't really see a reason to need to fly 5" anymore.

I just completely forgot to post here for these days... Sorry life happens.

I had to play catch up on the blog. Sorry for missing the past two days. I have updated them now. We are going to go to EPCOT after picking up Austin's and my wife's new glasses. I always enjoy that park, even when it's busy. The busyness there is not like the chaos I experienced yesterday at Buc'ees.

I made the huge mistake of going to Buc'ees. It was pure chaos, and not my cup of tea. It is basically a gas station with the crowds of Disney's Magic Kingdom. My wife loved it, but it was a bit overwhelming for to deal with the chaos. People everywhere going in every direction, and orders being called out over the loud speaker, and then from the brisket cooking area, the workers were hollering out stuff too. I have no desire to every return.

I got out this morning and was able to fly a few packs with the new setup at a school spot I have not flown in a litle while. It definitely handles way better than before. Battery life is considerably less, but it's more fun for sure.

Today was a busy day. I reorganized the garage, and installed a hanging system for our bikes on the wall. After that, I washed the car. And I swapped motors and props on my sub 250g Acrobrat build. The motors I had were still working, but I have found that the t-style prop mounts don't suit me so well, and I was looking for a motor that might be a bit more durable.

I decided to go with the Emax Eco 1407 4100kv motors, paired with HQ durable 3x5x3 props. I did a quick test flight, and the flight feel is so much better now. It feels much more like a 5 inch build. It is still under 250g, but a bit heavier than before, but only by about 8g. All up weight now sits between 233g and 240g depending on the battery I use.

I can't believe it is September already. Even more surprising to me is that I have been doing this daily blog entry for over three months now. There have been a few days that I had to basically back-post because I missed posting them day of, but I have managed to create an entry for every day though.

I got some packs in yesterday testing the updated 1080p30 mode on HDZero, and I am quite pleased with it so far. It is a much better experience overall, and I think more people will be able to enjoy it, though I don't know how widespread it's use will be. I am sure those that fly DJI and Walksnail will balk at some of the interference, and that is ok, as these systems have a different goal.

If I were asked by a new FPV user who just wants to fly what FPV system to get, I would likley steer them to DJI, with some caveats. DJI has a solid system that is relatively easy to get started with, and will give excellent results, particularly for newer users who have no idea about flying with interference in the video feed. They will have no idea about latency, and will just adapt to it with no effort. The caveats though stem from my concerns for long term. Do I think DJI might ditch FPV? Possibly, but my bigger concern is long term compatibility. If you are someone who doesn't mind upgrading regularly, then DJI would be a no brainer.

For me, I don't trust DJI long term to stay in the market. They have a history of being fickle, and dropping products. Even more concerning is the US government's distrust of China, in particular, DJI, and they could cause issues for getting products. Unfortunately, this would likely affect more than just DJI as much of the tech that we use in FPV comes from China.

I also like supporting a small company that is very invested in the FPV community, and that is the main factor I used to decide on the product I chose to migrate to from analog. The performance is acceptable for me, though I love the nice results that others get with Walksnail and DJI. There's no denying they have solid implementations.

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