 Hey guys, welcome to Rotor Riot and this is First Flight to Freestyle where we are taking Eric, our young Padawan pilot, from total noob to sky shredder. Or something like that, more of drone shredder, I brass drones a lot. If you guys haven't been following along with this series, definitely check it out, especially if you're new to flying FPV, because in the first episode we started Eric off just touring around in normal mode on the DJI FPV drone. We worked him up into manual mode, he was doing flips, rolls, we got him doing Rubik's cubes. This time he even did a power loop, we've been having a ton of fun. Today we are taking it to another level and we are going to teach Eric how to do some dives. Now, diving is something I think is really special to FPV drones. It's like a type of acrobatic maneuver that no other RC or any sort of aviation can do quite the same way. You can do it once, but I have to say honestly, the pullout capability is what makes it so special that you can drop, drop, drop, help save yourself. Watching these FPV drones, it seems physically defying. Once they dive, plane out and then span and throw all their inertia away, it blows my mind and this is the trick I'm most excited about wearing. With these high performance freestyle FPV drones, the power to weight ratio is just unlike anything else where you can just go, so I mean we're going to have a lot of fun out here. We're going to get you doing dives. It's such a unique and versatile trick, I mean it's a ton of fun for freestyle. You can be diving through gaps, but it's also a really good tool for certain cinematic shots. We've seen Alex Vanover do some crazy dives down the side of a building and then catch up with a vehicle. I mean you're going to see some of his shots in some movies and car commercials. He's really taking some of these freestyle maneuvers and turning them into very unique cinematic tools. For me, I'm hoping to be able to take the drone, come down a cliff face, join up with a paramotor that's kind of carving it up down the hillside, so that's what I'm excited about most. So Eric, where are we? Where are we going to be diving today? So we're in one of my favorite communities. This is called High Wind Park, Florida. I thought about, hey, there's a water tower here, pretty open and easy to get to. There's no things that we can run into, there's no cars and stuff around there are going to be an issue. So I think it's going to be perfect for us and I'm excited. This is going to be a great obstacle. I think buildings are probably the most quintessential thing that you want to dive. It's that awesome, really iconic look and it's a nice flat face that gives you a good wide plane, makes the dive a little bit easier. This is going to be a little bit more challenging. What I'm going to have you try to do is dive down one of the legs. If you kind of break this down into pieces, it's actually a very low risk and actually pretty low skilled maneuver, to be honest. It's just, it is a very mentally intimidating. As long as you don't make me go inside the legs, we're good. We'll see. Alright, we're going to do a little demo. Little demo dive. We're up. So the first thing you'll do before you even drive the tower, per se, is just get used to a dive. So I mean, the easiest way is just pitch forward, look down at the ground. Hold it, hold it, hold it. Watch back. Add throttle. I'm just going to have you do that a couple of times. Go up, pitch forward to look down, and as you come out of it, pull back and add throttle. But when you actually want to dive an obstacle like a tower, and I'll show you what I'm actually going to do, you're actually going to want to roll into the dive. Sick. So again, still in the open here, I'm going to have you practice that rather than pitching forward into the dive. Instead, we're going to have you kind of roll into it like a split-s, but instead of pulling out immediately, like we're with a split-s where you roll over something and then pretty quickly pull out from it, we're going to have you delay that pull out. We're going to have you go, roll into it, wait for it, wait for it, dive, dive, dive, and then pull out. It's a little scary. It's a little freaky, but I mean, just get up a couple of mistakes high. These have a lot of power too, right? So I mean, you can wait until you're pretty low, flatten out, and add throttle. Do you see how shaky it got? Yeah, you're going cavitating here. Yeah, it's something we covered before pulling out of those power loops. I went into that prop wash. It's the same concept as before that if I allow my drone to fall straight down like this, when I add throttle, I get all those shakes because I'm flying, I'm falling into the dirty air. I'm going to start practicing right off the bat so that you're diving, and now I'm adding throttle and pulling out together. And not only was it smoother, do you see how I like came out of it with speed? Yeah, yeah. It's how you conserve your momentum and make it way more smooth and cinematic. So you'll do that in the open air, and then you'll just start going up to the tower, roll into it, just look down the tower, hold it, hold it, hold it, pull out. Too much fun, man. Oh, that is a blast. So much fun. Absolute blast. Oh, she got Eric up in the goggles now. Let's just start out with what I was showing you, open air. Just look down at the ground and remember to gently cut throttle. And then rock it back there. There you go. And you also notice that by pitching forward to look down, you really keep going forward a lot, right? Versus if you roll into it, you shave off some of the momentum you have so that you turn it to more of a true dive. Like you do one more where you just pitch forward. Yeah, sliding forward. Yeah. So if you roll into it, you'll shave off some of that speed. So roll like this. Mm-hmm. Just split us. And the faster you do it, you can actually use kind of the back side of your dive, whether it's a building, water tower, open air or whatever, as a backboard by blipping the throttle. So if you do a quick roll, you can kind of blip the throttle to arrest any momentum you have. Like that? Yeah. Because what you don't want is you're going to fly toward the water tower. And then you're going to roll around to dive it, but you don't want to keep tracking backwards and basically run into the water tower. But if you think about it, you're going to roll into it. Your thrust line is going to be pointing toward the water tower, which means you can push away from it at any time. So that's how diving is actually very low risk, because if you're doing a proper dive, your power is going to be pointing toward the obstacle. So bailing out is as easy as adding power, right? Just punch power to bail. So if I'm coming up to the leg, I'm going to come. Whoa. So you're doing a very slow roll into it, which means that you're tracking more, because it's not like as you do that slow roll, your power is going to give you kind of some lateral. Oh, it's a moss. It's the moss. Can you move the moss? I'm not going to say shit. And then just going to roll into it. Yeah, you want to be real. I mean, it's a dive. You should be real close. Just roll into it. There it is. There you have some proximity. That's looking a lot more. It's looking scary, bro. Like you know what you're doing, though. It's scary, but how much better does it look? You're close to it. You want to be close. Nice and close. You have nothing to worry about getting stuck up top. See, that was more of a turn. You got to really roll into the dive. Get that nose down. I'm trying to use the y-axis, so my left thumb to kind of kick the nose over, right? Yeah. So I roll, kick the nose over, pull power, dive. Yeah, but you see how even you weren't really vertical? You were still looking kind of out, right? So use a little forward pitch. I mean, look down, you know? So roll it. And now, like, yeah, push. See, it was so much better. That was so much better. It's exited. I'm shaking right now. But take it even a step further. Get to where you were, but then push forward on the pitch stick so that the drone continues to tilt forward and you want to get more of the obstacle that you're diving in frame. So you've got to get the drone more parallel. You've got to get the drone more up and down. There, there, that was, oh! You had it, but you got scared and you pulled out early. That's what she said. Oh my lord. Low battery. Doop. I think the thought of half, because it really, when I was trying to do it just coming up to it, looking at it and rolling, it didn't work. You have to carry the inertia. You have to carry a little bit of speed into it so that when you flip it in, it kind of backs up and then it just nudged that power, that little kick you were talking about. Exactly, exactly. Let me grab the drone. Then it starts to feel better. But it's really, like the anxiety is real because I'm gonna have to come at the obstacle, kick it around, and as it slides back, it's actually going back toward the obstacle as I'm dropping the nose. And it's, there's something about that that just feels wrong. It feels like I'm doing something I should not do. No, this is, so you're doing exactly what you need to be doing, where you're going to be flying at a wall, at a water tower, that's something that you want to dive, right? So you've got momentum going toward it. If you just roll, you're gonna hit it, right? So you want to use it, think of it as a backboard, but instead of bouncing off the object yourself, you're gonna bounce off the air. So you're gonna roll, get that thrust line pointed toward it, get as close as you feel comfortable, give it a little bit of blip to stop it. And then drop the nose down so you're cruising straight down. Well, I mean, if you get really good at coordinating, y'all roll, pitch, all the different axes together, you can roll straight into what you want to be doing. I would actually maybe think more about like, you're really, you're using roll and y'all, right? Right. I mean, if you use a lot of roll and y'all, it's a turn basically, right? So the less y'all you use, the more rolling you do. And I think you're using a real sweet amount where it's giving you a nice turnaround, a real nice kind of integrated split-ass. But I want you to try and use even less y'all. I mean, think about if you use no y'all at all. You're pointed toward the object, you just roll, boop. Now you're upside down, and then you can find your dive spot by using pitch. You could kind of like break it down into two parts where you roll, then pitched into the dive. All right. And then what you want to do is find the right amount of y'all so that you don't need to do that secondary pitch. You can just get right into the dive angle that you want, but you're kind of over yawing so that you're a little flat. Like in airplane, I would consider like a wing over. I'm basically building the energy up and then I'm using the tail, the rudder, to kick it all the way back around. But I'm going to try not to do that this time. I'm going to fight all my natural instincts and try to make this better. Find some of that and try and just get... Drones are different, right? They don't. Trust me, they are. They don't glide, so you're thinking a lot about how to glide into this, and really you can just put it wherever you want. You want it down. And once you're in the dive, you can actually change how you track against that obstacle, right? So if you're down, look at the prop line. I know with this particular drone, the angle can be a little bit confusing because the center body is at an angle for the camera and all that. But so look at the prop line. Right now I've got the prop line perfectly vertical with the upward camera angle. We're flying with about 15 degrees. You're still going to be looking away from the object. So you actually want to be having the prop line a little bit past vert so that the camera is actually pointed down. And if you think about it, the more you look toward the object, the less you're going to track away from it. Again, with that more vertical orientation of the props, the idle, just the idle speed of the motor is going to pull you away a little bit from it. But if you are pointed down, that idle, it's still going to of course pull you a little bit away because there's still a little bit of that vector pointed away from the object. But you've also put some more of it into the down. So it's going to actually help pull you down the dive and make it a little bit faster, a little more aggressive. Let me go toward the ground faster and harder. Let's see how this works. I didn't get real crazy and just dive like this. No, no, no, no. Let me get you a fresh pack. With authority, a little less authority maybe. The faster you go at it, the more you're going to have to blip, you know, do the backboard effect like I was talking about. So go at it nice and slow like this, that's good. There you see, that was good. You see how I ended up pointed down more? Yeah, and I didn't use hardly any rudder at all that time. Right, yeah, just go no-yaw, just to even experience it. Just straight roll and then pitch into your dive, see that? I almost hit that tree. But you didn't. See, come on, that looks pretty good too. It's a different look. There's all sorts of different looks that you can give it. You got to commit, you got scared. Well, I feel like I was still carrying power too. Just got to blip it, cut throttle, roll into it. Woo! I just love that I could fly through a gap now and not like freak out. Yeah, I mean, remember this, just what you did right there, flying between two trees, that was like a whole event before. Now, it's just what you're doing on the way to diving a water tower. Boom. And if you feel like that fence is coming up, pull back on pitch, you know, look up at the sky. You're in there! You're in there, Doug! I was not on purpose, but I was inside the tower. Try to get into that exact same dive, kind of between the two legs like you did and really pitch so that you're really looking at it. Almost get upside down, just to feel more pitch, more pitch. More pitch. Whoa! Give yourself a break. I gotta take a break for a second, man. I'm shaking. Breathe, breathe, you're good. You're good, you're in control. I realize I've been holding my breath for almost the entire time. So I'm telling you, it's not difficult, it's just very like, this is a mental game. Because you're trying to, like, for me, it takes everything I've ever done, which is, you know, I'll come alongside an object in my paramotor and I'll kind of ride down the side of it, but I'm always taking my energy and trying to throw my energy away from the object, right? This, I'm taking all my energy, whipping it out the object, then tipping my nose toward it, so I'm traveling toward it even further. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, yeah. And yeah, I've got the punch out, like I can get out. You've got the punch. But man, there's that moment, like that's, I literally, like my left hand is just shaking. Yeah. So I'm saying this is a type of maneuver that just does not work the same way as it does in a paramotor, like you used to do on your aviator channel or in a fixed wing airplane, or it's very unique to drones. But it feels incredible, like the two that I got that we just felt right, that was cool. I'm, all right, let's get more batteries. You're just gonna remember it, like drones are basically just high powered stones. They have no glide. They just go where you toss them. Here, you know what, just go out into the open air, really high, enter a dive, hold it, now pitch forward. Forward. Yeah. Do that while you're diving near the obstacle. It'll change the perspective and it'll kind of show you how you can control your distance from it. Pitch forward, do it, do it. There. I'm scared, I'm so against like everything in my nature. I know, it's really weird. You're gonna get, it's gonna be more upside down. Pitch forward, do it. There it is, yes. See, if you hadn't, you chickened out. I saw you chicken out. I didn't chicken. Yeah, you did. I smarted. Pitch forward, do it, hold it, hold it, hold it, hold it, hold it, there it is. Look at that. How sick was that? That was, it's intimidating. I think because you're going so aggressively into that pitch. Look at that trick. What was that even? That was a nice little, little flow you did kind of over it. The problem is the power lines on the backside. And then if I, if I'm entering this way or I'm further away. See, oh man, you're really looking down at the ground now. Like, I don't want to see the horizon at the top of the screen while you're diving. I want you to be looking down at the ground. I think, like, if you're seeing horizon at the top of your screen, that means you're kind of flat. You're not really in a dive, you know what I'm saying? Just roll, cut throttle, roll. There it is, there it is, there it is. Shaky, you're shaky, you're scared, but you're looking good. I think it's because the object is so short. Uh-huh. Like, if this was an 800 foot tower, I'd be so much more confident. Oh, power lines. You can hold that dive longer. I mean, this has a lot of power. Just get ready to get on the power to pull out. Hold it, hold it, hold it, hold it. Power, oh, and that was smooth, that was smooth. That felt good. Hold it, hold it, hold it, hold it. Power, yes, yes, yes. So you can combo it, right? You could be orbiting and then flip it into a dive. Boom, you're getting that flow, man. This guy's getting some flow. That was excellent. That was excellent right there. That, if you had a taller object, you could have held a lot longer. Hey, upside down. All right guys, thank you so much for watching another episode of this series. Drew, I gotta say thank you for having me on. Absolutely, man, thank you for being here. Thanks for sharing your journey with everyone. It's an amazing journey and it's bigger than that because of this, Rampage was amazing. For all you guys who I got to meet at Rampage, thank you so much for being super cool people. Really was a great time. My first big drone event, like drone only event, a bit of flight fest, but this was totally different and the vibe was super cool. If any of you guys didn't make Rampage, I hope to see you at the next one. Yeah, I got to experience true FPV freestyle culture and share a little bit of his world with us. He did a paramotor demo and flew around the compound, all this FPV pilots were like, oh, that's way crazier than right over here. It was super impressive. It was really great just getting to share our love for FPV with you and seeing what you do on a daily basis and getting to see that in a whole new perspective. Truly my pleasure is such an honor to be a part of this community now and to be able to be pushing myself more and more to learn stuff from guys like you and from all the great folks that were at Rampage. So, dude, the dive is doing awesome, man. Hey, it's just a mental game. It is a mental game and I'm gonna get better at it. Really quick shout out to everyone who's still watching. Please smash that bell, like button and subscribe and make sure if you guys haven't, leave a comment down below. Let us know what you think of the series. Guys, new videos every Monday here on Rotor Riot, every Friday on our A. Beaters show channel. We'd love to have you there too and we'll see you on the next one. You just did the whole outro for me. You like that? Nailed it. Yes! Nailed it.