 Hey guys, welcome to RotorWrite. I'm Ledred. And I'm Vortex. And today we want to find out, can you FPV a helicopter? Yeah, I guess you're going to stay in there. You can FPV anything. Yes. But what's the deal? Is it a good idea to do? Maybe that's the better question. Is this a good idea? I think yes, because it'll be fun. We usually fly quad copters. That's four separate motors. Today, we go on single rotor. Single rotor, i.e. a helicopter, i.e. death machine. These things terrify me. I don't play with these too much, but you fly these a lot, right? Yeah. Before FPV, that was my jam was helicopters. If you've seen the previous episode, I got a big, huge one, but never dared to put FPV on it. I tried to do some chase footage with him. That was a lot of fun, very scary. We got a lot of comments on that video. Could we FPV a helicopter? And today we aim to find that out. So what do we have here? Yeah, a 450 size helicopter. This is maybe like half the size of mine. So this is going to be a little bit less risky. And then the other thing is we're probably only going to get one shot, because if we crash, there's not going to be just flip it over and take back off again. That's not how helicopters work. Yeah, that's way more mechanical parts work in here. There's gears to strip out the blade. Blades are not made out of polycarbonate plastic. They're carbon fiber. That's very true. With our quad copters, we are so spoiled. We can run these things into the ground. Keep flying it. If you break something, it's not going to be that bad. Anytime one of these crashes, you're looking at a lot more expense and repair cost. So like Jeff said, this is a 450 sized helicopter. Everything's run by servos. So the servos are going to tilt the swash plate. And depending on the direction of the swash plate, that's the direction it's going to go, essentially. But then the other thing, the whole job of the tail is to counteract the torque that this is making. Yeah, because if this is whipping around, the body would want to wiggle it away. So that's just out there to try and fight it. This could be one of the things that might get a little awkward about flying an FPV. Because one of the things we deal with when we're flying these is tail blowout. So if you give it an abrupt pitch or a collective pitch and go up, a lot of times the tail will kick out on you. And it's really annoying. I actually experienced this tail blowout a little bit when I got to fly David Vindistal's tricopter FPV, which it was pretty acrobatic, but it did have the same thing where it has a mechanically tilting motor to give that yaw action, couldn't quite keep up. And I felt like I was getting whipped. Yeah, get a kind of baby and be a little smooth. Let's get some chase footage. Let's get a feel for it. But I would definitely love to get this thing upside down. We're out here. It's about to happen. How much would it suck if I just crash it on the first line of sight hover? It would ruin our whole episode. A little scary. Oh God, oh God, oh God, I hate it, I hate it. Oh, I hate this thing. Hasn't flown in years. Oh, it flies a little wobbly too. Does it? It's a little wonky. Yeah, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's going on? The wind affects your altitude a lot with a helicopter. When you get a gust, it can like make it go up or down. Oh gosh. Yeah, this is going to be crazy. Whoa, stuck the landing. Good job, Jaby. We're all alive still so far. Relax, it's all right, okay. Relax, just zen, be zen. Are you recording DVR? This is just weird. Oh boy. Oh, I hate this. Oh my gosh. Okay. Oh. It's, whoa. It's actually more comfortable than I thought. Really? Yeah. I mean, it flies like. But yeah, now FPV is a more comfort zone. Line of sight's a little sketchy because, whoa, I feel like I got to give it full throttle to stay up though. Go into the middle mode. That's what I was saying. Who wants to go now? Oh, yeah, oh, wow. It's like flying the worst quad you ever flew. And that's full throttle. This is probably battery. Oh, I think it's a bad battery then. Okay. Is that full throttle? Pretty much. It's probably a good battery. Maybe I'm gonna try to bring her in. Okay, well this would be a good landing practice. Hold mode. Oh, perfect. Yeah. There's, you nailed that landing. There's the landing. And it's far away from the danger. Okay, yeah, it flies awful. It's something about like, when you are FPV, it exposes how, like when you fly something line of sight, it can seem like it's flying well. Yeah. And then as soon as you're in the cockpit, you're like, what is this? Really? So it flies worse FPV. You notice that it's not flying good. When you're just looking at a flying line of sight, you're like, okay, it's going that way. Right. But like when you're in the cockpit and you have that reference compared to what a quad does, you just notice that it's like, ooh. Okay. You wanna try to chase it? I do. I kinda want it. I'm like getting, kind of want to try it? I kinda want to try it. You chase it and then you fly it. We've done this before with the helicopter, but when we did it last time, you were flying line of sight, which enabled you to do more crazy tricks. But now FPV, maybe you'll be able to fly under things and I'll be able to chase you. You're gonna get a little closer. We don't have to worry so much. I'm still worried. What was that? I don't know. I went to yaw. Whoa, it will not yaw that way. I can not right yaw. Really? I don't think you have your like mechanical parts set up correct. You can't right yaw. You go really slowly. I just did a right handed turn, right? But like, yeah. If I just straight up give it, right. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay. I don't know how I didn't just crash that. Cause he was just doing this on me there. What's happened? I don't know. It's your helicopter. But you flew it line of sight, no problem. Yeah. I wonder if something gave out on it. Something definitely just gave out. Yeah. So that usually means one of two things. That usually means that when your main rotor is spinning, the tail is not. Or there's something wrong in the linkage to where the pitch on the tail blades is wrong. So we still have that. We haven't stripped the gears. And I was able to move these. Oh, what was that? You're, this broke. We need super glue. Super glue. Yeah. That just glues in there. That's how that works. That's how you, that's how helicopters work with glue. Yeah. Yeah. Are you kidding me? I've never worked on one of these before. This thing just goes in the air and you just help each other by f***ing. That's so disturbing. Why did that happen? Just cause it's three years old? Probably. Do you have super glue? Do you think that worked? One way to find out. It's not yos spinning out of control. Not yet. Yeah, I can. You can yaw both ways now. What a concept. Oh boy. It's so like unpredictable on altitude. They're definitely a lot harder to fly in the wind. The wind makes it go all over height lies. Oh boy. How wild. It's just, are you not watching through FVV? I'm watching FV. I mean it's all over the place, right? Yeah. Okay, here we go. Oh gosh. It's awful. It's horrible. It's horrible. Okay, let me bring it in. It's landings though. They're pro at those landings. Just a pro. We're flying so fast. It's so bad. We got some decent chase footage. I kind of struggled with like the speed. What was not planned was for me to fly this. No, it's your turn. You're supposed to be the one to crash it. You've done too well. We haven't done 3D yet. So that'll be the last step. If you can get through a flight, then I'll... No, now everyone's giving me mad at me because I'm gonna crash it before we get to 3D. Or maybe I'll just go straight for 3D. Maybe. Are you gonna chase me? Yeah. Why not? Yeah, sure. All right, we're spinning it up. Give it a second to get up to speed and stabilize. Okay, that's new. That's a new experience. Right about there, yeah. Oh my gosh. This is... Yeah, this is like the worst flying drone ever. Oh gosh. How did you do what you did? It bounces all over the place. Yeah, it's not. I'm gonna attempt to fly under the trees here. Okay. All right, I'm doing it. I'm doing it. I'm weaving trees. I'm weaving trees. Going up high. I'm doing a roll. Oh, I'm down to 11.2. I think I got a bad battery. You know what? I'm gonna go 3D. What do you think about that? I'm 3D right now. I'm flying upside down. You're not. Yes, I am. Yes, I am. I mean, I'm not doing anything. I'm just hovering upside down. But I'm doing it. Where the hell are you at? With 11 volts. Okay, yeah, we gotta bring it in. We gotta bring it in. This is a bad battery. I'm struggling here. You're talking about, you don't know how it's flying. I don't know how you're following me. Yeah. Anytime I've been anywhere near it, it's like a little tiny speck and then I lose it immediately. I'm trying to land it. Oh, that's so weird. It's armed and still like flying. That is weird. That is so weird. Hold on, I want to know how to go at this with a... Yeah, it's kind of fun, right? Yeah. It's challenging. I think I'll just spectate this time because it's so hard to chase. It is really hard to chase. At least I feel a little validated. I thought I was like... I've always been a little better at telling you where I was at. I was like, yeah, let's meet up in the middle. You're like, I'm upside down. Where? In the field. What do I need to do to try and push it? Well, I mean, the impressive thing is go under a tree upside down. If I know anything about how Drew pushes the limits. Oh, okay. It was pretty fun. Just flying upside down. Oh, okay. Yeah, that transition is... Yeah, that transition is rough. Yeah. It looks so smooth. Don't you think that dolphin-ing it does? Yeah. Yeah, it's so annoying. Oh, God, it's like nausea. I haven't felt nauseous doing FPV in a long time. Like I'm very used to FPV. All over the place. Oh, boof. Oh, boof. We're hanging in there. We're hanging in there. We're hanging in there. Oh, it's... Oh, she's down. What's the damage? Gear. It did break a gear. Boom supports. This is why helicopters suck, because a quad would be like, oh my God, I busted a motor. I'm gonna have to replace the motor. It's one thing. This is like all the things. Yeah. There's pretty much one thing gone on all this. And that was just like, blit. Just barely, you're this high off the ground and you just kind of tap. So that's it. Like this thing is done. That's your standard helicopter. Like there's no flying this today, right? And this is normal. That's a normal amount of damage. That's a normal helicopter crash. I'm sorry for all the helly guys. So I don't think I'm even gonna bother fixing this to be honest. It served its purpose. We had fun with it. This is gonna now be a wall decoration. I kind of feel like working on one of my quads takes a while when I have to do just like a little bit of soldering to replace a motor. But this would be, I think it's a whole jigsaw puzzle that you gotta, I think I just broke more of it. So guys, today we set out to find out, can you FPV a helicopter? You can. You can. You definitely can. But it doesn't make for the best FPV experience. It's less than ideal. I mean, so when you flew a line of sight, do you think it flew all right? Yeah, as far as I can tell, it flew like a helicopter. It's out there buzzing around, going in a straight line, just fine. But then when you switch to FPV, it exposes all the little nuances that you just can't notice looking at it from afar. But once you get in the cockpit and having that frame of reference from what we normally fly, we're so spoiled. Yeah, the drones that we fly are amazing, so well tuned. The only movements is what you put in. Whereas this, like you said, is more kind of like riding a bull. Half of what's going on is the wind. I mean, so it's kind of fun. Yeah, as the wind gusts by, it'll shoot your way up or drop your way down. It's very unpredictable. And then it just doesn't track very well. Anytime I tried to get a good amount of speed, it would just do this to me, yeah. Yeah, which I mean, I definitely experienced when I got my chance to flat, but I also could tell that when I was trying to chase you because I'd feel like I was locked in. I was like, where'd it go? The interesting thing is, how was terrified to go FPV on an F-Rer? So I was like, that's scary. But then as soon as you get up, didn't you also think it was scary? I did. Well, these things are scary. As soon as you get up, didn't you also think it was scary? The noise and all the madness of a collective pitch helicopter usually really puts me on edge. I don't like these things being in the air. I think that outside, though, is FPV, you can get it out further away. That's true. Where in line of sight, you'd feel really uncomfortable, but now you're... Well, and that's what these are designed to do is they're meant to fly them line of sight closer to you, see what the machine is doing. So we were using this very differently from what it was purpose-built to do. I guess the other question would be, like, what else can you FPV? What would be another cool thing that we haven't thought of that you could slap FPV on? Right, so you saw us FPV the helicopter. Yes, it's possible. Definitely has its drawbacks, but it is a ton of fun. No, it's not a good idea. It's not a good idea, really. But it is a ton of fun. What else would you like to see? If we didn't get 50,000 likes on this video, all the FPV3D, the big heli... Would you really? For 50,000 likes? I don't know. I mean, I don't think that's gonna happen. If it does, guaranteed. No problem. You heard the man. 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