 In today's video, I'm going to share with you how you can start flying FPV drones from zero to flying like a bird in the air in a way that works best for you. So without further ado, let's go. To address a question I've been getting very recently and very often, which is how do I start flying FPV drones? I do feel I'm at a point where I'm getting more consistent work professionally as an FPV pilot and I wanted to mix my experience with my research to give you guys a condensed video that breaks down everything and all these different paths you can take that will work best for you to get into FPV drones. This is a video you're going to want to come back to multiple times to understand where you are in what part of the process. Now I want to start by saying that there is no one true answer to get into FPV. There are a lot of different options and the right answer for you lies in a combination between price, performance and what you personally value. For some, it might be the cheapest setup. For others, it might be to pay the top dollar for the highest quality flying experience. In order for you to be able to find the best route, I've come up with three criteria you can consider as we go throughout this video and your own journey. The first is going to be price, of course. To know your budget and how much you're willing to spend. The second piece of criteria is longevity. How often and how long do you see yourself flying FPV drones? Is it just going to be sometimes whenever you have time on the weekends or are you planning on doing this every single day for a very long time? And the third piece of criteria you want to consider is performance. What do you see yourself using FPV for? Is it for fun as a hobby or for work? For me, when I consider price, longevity and performance, I know I'm going to be doing FPV for a long time. It is a business expense for me, but I'm still a pretty frugal person, so I try to find the best bang for my buck. So if you're like me, then hopefully some of these tips will be able to help you find the best bang for your buck as well. All right, let's get into these steps. Now, a lot of people think that the best way to get into FPV is to buy a whoop kit. And the reason why is because not only does it come with goggles, but it comes with a drone that you can fly and it comes with a remote all in one bundle. And that's actually pretty great when you hear it at first. The only reason why I don't suggest getting a whoop first is because it can actually be harder to fly than a five inch or a cine whoop. Yeah, if you can fly this thing, everything else will be easy. So if you start with a tiny whoop kit and you try to fly and practice on it, you're probably going to crash a lot more than you would practicing in a simulator that simulates a five inch drone or cine whoop and then going out into the real world. And that is why the first step I would recommend along with a lot of other seasoned pilots out there is to get a simulator. A simulator is still probably one of the best ways to get into FPV just because it's so cost efficient. It's not going to cost you broken frames, broken arms, broken parts, injuries, losing drones. You're not going to have to deal with any of that. Just get a simulator. And some of the simulators I'd recommend are Velocidrone, Liftoff are two of the longest standing, but I'd like Velocidrone because I think it's like $20. It runs on even the lowest spec computers, so you don't need a high demanding computer. And once you've got yourself a simulator for free to $20, the next thing you're going to want to get yourself is a controller. The reason you want to buy the controller first before anything else is because you can use the controller to link into your computer and practice on a simulator as if you're flying your drone without having your drone or goggles. It's amazing. It can be confusing trying to figure out which controller to get exactly because there are so many different kinds, sizes, price ranges of controllers. So the first thing I'd recommend you look into is the protocol that the controllers use. There are two main protocols at the moment that seem to be dominating FPV. The first one is, of course, TBS Crossfire, which is made by Team Blacksheet, the same people who make my controller, Tango 2. I would arguably call TBS the apple of FPV world just because they've been so consistent with their performance, their quality, and their products over the last couple of years. They've proven themselves to be one of the goats of FPV. And recently, ELRS came out, which is an open source protocol that actually uses a lot of Crossfire's properties. So in that sense, I'd compare ELRS and TBS to PC and Mac. ELRS tends to be more inexpensive because it's open source. So you can find a lot of controllers that use its protocol. While TBS, you have to stay within their ecosystem. You have to use their receivers and you have to use their protocol modules in order to use them, which costs a little bit more. I personally have been using the Tango 2 for about two years now, and I absolutely love this remote. It is just perfect for my needs. It's super compact. It folds up, so whenever I need to travel, I can just stuff it into my bag. Portability is a huge thing for my values. For you, it might be a completely different value. Maybe you don't care about portability as much as you care about price and having more space on your controller and more switches. Talking about all the controllers that are available to us would take so long, and it would probably get outdated quickly. So I'm just going to leave a list of resources down below in the description for you to check out yourself. And once you finally get into your simulator, you're going to want to practice understanding exactly all the movements that your gimbal and your controller has on the drone. The main things you're going to want to look up more and practice yourself is going to be throttle control. So making sure you understand how to make your drone go up and down, roll. So making your drone be able to roll. And understanding pitch, making your drone be able to go back and forth. Understanding those four basic elements of flying and then practicing turns and putting it all together to get the movements that you want. And you're going to want to practice in a sim as much as possible because the more time you spend in the sim, getting familiar with how to keep your drone in the air, the less money you're going to have to spend on broken parts, the less stress you're going to have losing your drone. It's just worth time exponentially. The next step that we're going to consider is choosing a video system. And more excitingly, choosing your pair of goggles. When it comes to choosing goggles, there aren't as many options as there are controllers and drones. So it won't be as much of a headache in that sense. But there are two very important different routes to consider. The first one is analog and the second one is digital. And this has been a very heated debate in the FPV community ever since I started when digital was first coming out. People didn't trust it as much because analog had been the only way to go for the last seven years. And there are very specific benefits that analog still has over digital today, such as latency, being able to react faster, which is really great for pilots that are racing for freestyle pilots who are really reactive in their movements. The other reason you may want to consider analog is for the price because analog products tend to be much more cost efficient and cheaper than the digital air units and the goggles. Besides that, I've never really flown with analog long term, so I can't speak on it. But I can say that a lot of community members who started in analog and eventually took the leap to digital have never looked back. Just because of the experience of the quality of the video, it's just so much more crisp. It doesn't look like you're looking through a 90 CRT anymore. And now with the DJI goggles too and the O3 air units isn't coming out, you can see in 1080p HD with low latency, all live. And this is comparing it to like the 48240p quality that you'd be getting from like your analog goggles. Once you have decided on your controller protocol on your goggle system, now it's time you get to finally choose your drone. And this is where we're bringing all the things together. Once again, I have two options that you can choose from. And once again, you're going to decide which is better for you. The first option I have for you guys to consider are BNF and RTF, which are basically drones that come out of the box, pre-built, and pretty much ready to fly from the get. These would include options like the DJI FPV drone and the DJI Avata, which the drone's already built for you. It comes with goggles and everything that you need. And you can kind of just start flying immediately. Now I do believe that BNF and RTF are amazing options, but I also think that there is something you may want to consider before you buy your first drone for FPV. FPV drones due to their dynamic nature and the kinds of groundbreaking, limit-pushing shots you can get, you often end up crashing them. And then when you crash a drone that you don't understand how to fix, that's where it starts to become a problem. That is the reason why I would consider my second option I'm presenting you. And the option I'd recommend if you have the dedication and time, which is to build your first drone. This was the only way that a lot of pilots, especially in the last couple of years had of starting to fly FPV. It was kind of like a rite of passage. And although it is a little bit of a learning curve and you have to kind of understand how to solder, which isn't that hard. Soldering isn't that hard. It just looks cool in the movies. And just having a knowledge of what kind of parts go into a drone like the flight controller, the ESC, the air unit, and the motors, and the frame, it's not too bad if you learn from the right sources. It just takes a little bit of time. But the thing is if you spend that time learning how to fix and build your drone, if you ever crash it, which is most likely inevitable if you're flying FPV, you can easily fix it for a fraction of the cost. Because motors, by themselves, they'll cost you like 20-ish dollars. Instead of sending it into DJI refresh care from a broken motor, they're gonna charge you like, I don't know, $50 to $100. And then you have to wait weeks for it to come back versus just being able to do it in your room or your office. It's actually a really empowering and confident building process too, just being able to understand how to do this. But if time is really not something that you have and building is not something you have a care for, and you're willing to just fly safe enough so you won't crash or willing to face the consequences later and deal with them as they come, then Bind and Fly, RTF, is still an amazing option. As far as brands for the drones grow, I would recommend the Avata actually for a lot of beginners because of how safe the drone is. And I'd recommend Cinewoops in general for beginners because they're a lot safer, they're not as powerful so you might not send it over a bridge as easily as you would a 5-inch. And they're protected. So in case you ever do hit something, hopefully not someone, at least you're not gonna rip their skin open. This is much safer. The two main drones I currently use are the Nubi Drone Cinema, which I wouldn't recommend to beginners because building this thing is a pain in the ass, if I'm being honest. One drone I know that's fairly simple to assemble is the Shen Drone Squirt V2. It is literally like six different parts. It's a frame, a base, some standoffs and the ducks. Yeah, building this drone is actually a really fun rewarding process. It looks nice, it's simple. And then the other one, if you want to go the crazy 5-inch rip at up to 100 miles an hour routes, then I would look into a couple brands for frames and BNFs, which would be Diatone, Nubi Drone, iFlight, or the TBS Source 1, which is also a very simple build with just the arms, the bottom, and the top. And you're pretty much good to go. I'll put some more links to resources that you can look into to decide which one's best for you once again, and I'll also include some links to the parts and the drones you can buy if you want to just grab them right now. If this video has been helpful for you so far, please leave a like, please leave a comment about what you're thinking, and please subscribe along the journey because I love you guys for watching the videos and it would be great to be able to talk and see you guys more often. So thanks again for watching, let's continue. Now you've gotten your simulator, you've gotten your controller, your goggles, and your drone. The next thing is just to start practicing to fly in real life. When it comes to finding a good practice space to start flying in, I'd recommend you find a vast open space with soft ground. Grass is always a great floor because if you fall into it, usually it won't mess up your drone and it'll catch it, so you won't smash into a million pieces like you would on Blacktop or something. If you have an opportunity, try to bring a friend because when you're in the goggles, you're not going to be able to see around you just for safety. And if you can, if you can find a fellow pilot who may be a little bit better or is learning with you to practice and exchange notes with, that would be even better. And another pro tip that I would give to you that a lot of pilots gave to me when I was starting is learning how to fly line of sight. Just in the event that the drone stops working feed-wise in your goggles, being able to take it off and be able to fly your drone back to you without your goggles may help a lot. Not only that, being able to just visually see your drone and how it's reacting to your controls without being in the first person cockpit may actually help you get a much better understanding of how your drone is going to fly when you're actually in the goggles. Once you are able to apply the previous steps, get in the goggles and up in the air. Congratulations! You have taken your first steps to joining the ranks as an FPV pilot. And if you're somewhere along this journey, the biggest piece of advice I can give you is to be diligent with your practice and patient with your progress. FPV has a considerable learning curve and it can be an arduous process at times. But the payoff is oh so sweet and it is the reason why FPV pilots are able to get these mind-blowing shots that the world has never seen before. You can get there too. It's just going to take some practice and some patience. Leave a comment if you have any questions. If you want feedback from me, you can tag me in your videos on Instagram at kaivertigo and subscribe if this video helped and you want to see more. Thank you guys for watching. It's been a pleasure and best of luck on your journey. This is Kai. Peace.