 Hey guys, welcome to Rotorat and this is episode 4 of First Flight to Freestyle where we are taking a new pilot all the way from his First Flight to doing full-on freestyle. You excited? Dude, today. I'm actually a little bit scared He's promised me a few things That are gonna basically leave this drone not looking anywhere near this pretty fine. Just don't crash. Just don't crash So I'm Ledrub I've been flying for many years now I'm all about doing freestyle. I like flow. I like doing tricks. I like going to awesome locations and finding great lines We are at a different spot now. Where where are we? So this is the Shally Suzanne It's a country in and been a breakfast that my great great grandmother started in 1931 here in Lake Wales, Florida It's been shut down now for about five six years and behind us We have a soup factory that actually made soups that went to the moon so we're gonna go out of this world a little bit and Go terrorize it because there's some cool lines I'm excited. This is this is like exactly the type of aesthetic I look for when I'm picking out a freestyle spot. We got rust. We got overhangs. We got gaps to hit But we're gonna be starting out in this open area because you're pretty fresh all this still right? I mean again, what's your flying experience going into all this? So coming at all of it. I'm a fixed wing pilot I fly power paragliders for a living. I teach people how to fly those which is a great time You can check us out at aviatorparamotor.com and yeah, so I've been flying my whole life In fact, we're on the runway where I learned to fly when I was a kid right now, but FPVs alluded me So I have a fair amount of experience with camera platforms the inspired to that sort of thing But FPV my only experience so far has been crashing really really hard until this series So I'm really excited to just start kind of leveling things up our last episode We got to try manual mode for the first time now for those of you guys in movie magic land That was a few weeks ago, and I haven't had my hands on a stick since he's like don't even try the simulator You're not allowed too much. No, we got to see the genuine learning here So when we started you out, we had the drone doing a lot of the work for you And we've stripped away a lot of those flight assistants is so at the beginning the drone was holding altitude for you Now you're in control of throttle and you have to manage your altitude by changing the power when we started the drone Mixed yaw and roll so you could like steer with one stick or is brandless now No, you've got to mix yaw and roll together I have to say that's something I love because when it was in the manual or the the beginner modes And you tried to roll so it'd be a nice smooth non-skitty turn It would only let you get to here and now you can actually use the speed We've taken all these things away and most importantly when we started the drone auto leveled So you let go of the stick and the drone would center itself and it limited how far you could go Now you're in control you got to put the drone at what angle you want and you can go upside down if you want Which you already did day one in manual mode this guy did flips. It was crazy. That was easy You just keep pushing the stick until it does the flippy thing. Well, hopefully we're going to push you a little bit more today We're going to build on that. So you're already doing some flips and today What we're going to work on is refining those flips and starting to do combinations Ultimately, I want to see you do a Rubik's cube today Okay, so Rubik's cube. So that's the thing that in you know, that will Smith's really good at It's a trick name. Okay. It's a trick name You know like in skateboard you do a kick flip and that refers to a specific maneuver with the board Rubik's cube refers to a specific type of flip and it's a combo trick, right? So you're going to do a half Front flip and to stop inverted then you're going to do a complete roll And then you're going to do a half back flip Okay, okay So it reminded me at first of an amulet in an airplane right where you that kind of makes sense But the back end of it And an emulment is a little bit more We could do emulments at some point That's probably my favorite trick where you actually power up and then roll out of it But this is it's really more like a skateboard move where you're not going to change your direction This is we're something we're going to practice out in the open air. You're just going to go Yeah, I'll still go in the same direction. I'd like to sound effects it really Like It really sells it for me different pilots might tell you a different combination of whether it's A front flip in and a back flip out or a back flip in front flip out or two front flips But the combination that I just told you where it's half front flip roll half back flip That's probably the most common interpretation of it That's how we've always explained it in past trick tutorials And that's what I'm a force you to do and it's less important that you're learning that specific combination As it is that you are learning a specific combination because It's going to be a really good exercise to force yourself to learn a particular trick because you might find it It might be more comfortable to try and do back roll back But i'm going to make you do front roll back back and front roll back This is going to be a great exercise for learning really good control over the right stick Which in other forms of rc aviation is sometimes referred to as the cyclic stick You're not going to need to use too much yaw for this trick But we'll get to some yaw tricks later on I've got one whole hour in a helicopter and I could hover it. So we'll see how it goes real helicopter real helicopter This guy flies real stuff and he's like excited to fly drugs. That's awesome. The dude gotta fly all the things all the things man Let's go do it. All right, so I think I'm going to start out with maybe a demo Again, the arming procedure is a little bit different. We're going to put the stick all the way down Into m And now did you see how the camera angle moved there? Another thing like we talked about when you're in normal and sport mode the Gimbal keeps the camera level now the camera tracks with the body of the drone So if you want to change the angle of the camera you do it with pitch or you can change the angle relative to the drone with this dial So I'm going to dial in a camera angle that I'm comfortable when doing freestyle and then I'm really not going to move it I'm going to set it to 15 degrees. Okay, I fly between 10 and 20 so 15 to kind of a sweet spot So in manual mode throttle stick all the way down tap tap the start stop button Give me motor starting and We are up all right, so When you first get up just make sure you know you get warmed up get comfortable with those coordinated turns We're mixing roll and yaw together on our turns All right, do whatever do whatever you got to do to get comfortable for me. That's a split ass, but But anyways, uh, I want you to start, you know doing some some rolls flips loops and um Just getting the drone upside down and getting comfortable that upside down Right and do them slow you can do them fast And and think about how you manage your throttle while you're doing it, right? So that's kind of the difference between what I'll call a roll and a barrel roll What I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna chop throttle roll the roll was nice and tight This time I'm gonna keep throttle in it And look I'm doing a barrel roll I kind of had to bail out of it there, but you see how when you when you keep throttle on You you track as the Drone changes angle So that's a barrel roll, but if you cut I didn't move I didn't move other than along with my forward momentum that roll Just flipped the drone without moving me left and right and same for for flips, right? If I cut throttle do a little bit of a flip If I cut throttle I do a nice quick flip keep going forward, but if I keep throttle on That's that's more of a loop We'll get to doing proper power loops around obstacles in a later episode But for now, we're just out in the open area. I want you to practice tight rolls Barrel rolls all that stuff just getting used to working that cyclic stick And then and then we'll start combining them, right? It's ridiculous Watching this is just awesome part of combining different Rolls and flips is going to be getting comfortable with stopping while not upright So we're going to go nice and high And I'm going to go upside down and look I'm powering to the ground So you got to remember if you're going to stop upside down to not do that And cut throttle. So this time we'll do it proper. We're going to go nice and high Go upside down cut throttle. Look at how long I can handle the drift It's that hang time and when you get comfortable with Stopping Being upside down now you can add in other things, right? And so that was what was that that was a roll then a pitch But what we're going to have you work on is Like I said, the half front then a roll then a half back and that'll be the Rubik's cube So again, nice and high nice and high Out to did your friend in all things aviation. Yeah, lots of room for error We're just going to pitch forward stop it upside down roll it Backflip it It was a little sloppy, but you get the idea, you know, I'm trying to slow it down so you can see it I'm used to doing I'm like bow. I know you can't see it, but I'm just grinning Grinning and pulling on your helmet gable, you know, we're okay. We're okay So that's what I'll have you practice. I'm just gonna have you practice getting up nice and tall Half pitch roll half back Geez Half forward roll half back You're nice and slow That's slow That's slow, man. That's slow. We'll get you going fast later All right, so I think that was a good first flight, right? Yeah, it was good you take over All right my turn All right, we ready? All right. Did you take him right off in in manual? Yep Well, I got a lot of jiggle. You see that I do. I think we got a bent prop from uh from the landing You want to power through or do you want to bend it back? It's smooth it out. Okay. Just get used to Being upside down. So why don't you flip upside down cut throttle and just hold it hold it. Oh my god Look a little more at the ground That's hang time. That's hang time, baby hang time is going to be a fundamental for a lot of tricks So I'm going to make you hold even long go upside down Cut throttle hold it look down at the ground a little bit more with pitch not that and now you're diving Hold it even longer. Oh, you're just getting really comfortable with being upside down You're a psycho and do it with uh do a half front flip. So we're going to break down the rubik So half front flip now at your leisure do a roll There you go. It was a nice half roll There you go. Once you get right side up again, you got to add the throttle back in. Yep. Yep. Yep So up Mm-hmm Half front flip. Let's do a roll whenever now. Well, we did too. All right now pitch out that That was it was an extra flip. I mean it was I think you did half front double roll half back So I was like a double rubix or something. So I'm going to go up half Now so you're going to roll. Yeah, see but it's a good exercise like again It doesn't matter when you're doing freestyle you can combo whatever you want But learning this specific one's going to be good. So half front do a roll stop it half back boom That is that is a rubik's here. That's a It's very slow. Ugliest rubik's given history. I've done worse. Don't worry about it But just work on getting more comfortable with that and having less delay So this time like go half front and as soon as you get upside down start the roll. So boom roll Oh, we see it gets wonky. Yeah That's be ready on that panic button. Yeah, I got my hand on it. Why don't you bring it down a little bit? So half front roll Oh, I over over rotated it and then half back I really like and I've never seen a new pilot do that before that you over rolled and said then you corrected To finish the trick that was some commitment. I gotta I gotta stop it at the inverted. I'm so accustomed to stopping it You know, I have a bunch of buddies that fly air shows and They would be laughing at me right now because they're perfectionists and I've never I've always been more of a flow kind of guy When I'm doing aerobatics All right, so I mean it all comes out in different styles, you know a lot of the snappy You know refined crisp a lot of the snappy crisp pilots will Tell you oh, you gotta stop at the horizon perfectly lie for every time. That's never been that important to me it does All right, so I'm falling out of it a little bit. You can see at the end as I start to pull the nose up I've kind of slid off axis Let me see it That's not it That was cool. Yeah, once you get lower. It's a lot more dynamic. Well, it's more dynamic and You can see that you're keeping flying forward. You know think about like On a skateboard when you do a kickflip No one wants to see you just standing still and do a kickflip They want to see you going at a good speed kickflip land it keep going And it's hard to see that forward momentum when you're that high so the lower you get oh boy. Oh nice recovery I lost the earth there for a second. The ground's all brown It's like which way is up. This is always the part that scares me landing. Yeah, I don't know why I'll just let it land for you. Boom normal mode. I'm gonna just out of the throttle stick a little bit That's cheating. I gotta learn how to do this right man. That was freaking fun. You did do a Rubik's cube You did do a Rubik's cube It's fine. It's a fundamental man Like you're learning the fundamentals of combining flips and rolls and doing more advanced acrobatics I really didn't think I was gonna be able to get it to go at all I felt like as soon as I started trying to combine multiple stages Which I mean I've done it in airplanes. I've done it in paramotors. So I understand that the philosophy behind it But it was a lot easier than I thought it would be like it obviously they're sloppy Like I could get better But it became intuitive as you started explaining like pitch roll stop pitch back It like it started to flow through and now I just have to do it a few thousand more times to make it look good You just got that repetition, right? Let me take one more pack give you a couple pointers to work on Let's see how much you can get these cleaned up But I mean for one day man, you're learning too fast. This is crazy. No, it's fun battery I'm going to start taking some of these moves to the next level And one of the things I'm going to do if you'll hold this for a second is I'm going to increase the rates of the drone So right now when you were doing the tricks We were banging the stick off the limit, right and it's still moving All right, I'd consider it slow. It might feel pretty fast I mean, it's not an extra or a pitch, but it's it's got a decent roll rate But you've seen some of the the advanced freestyle pilots and Yeah, it looks terrifying We're going to terrify you so I'm going down to settings gain an expo and they do it a little bit differently Than what I'm used to doing it in beta flight. So in the screen. I'm seeing what they're calling max rate They're set to 420. I believe that means that we're at 420 degrees per second when you're at full stick deflection I fly closer to 800 900 All right, we won as they're going to have I'm going to set it to 750 So just doubling it just to just a small little double. We're just going to a nice double Let's do a little double 750 on roll and pitch and if it's too much for you we can we can turn it down Oh, that's fast. That's fast. Whoo Okay, maybe I'm going to turn it down a little bit So I used to play a lot of Call of Duty and I played at the sensitivity 11. I was you know presumptuous. It's all right You'll be fine We're going to try 620 That's good. So that's still really fast full stick deflection But it's not so fast That you can't even tell where the horizon is I don't like doing tricks where you flip so fast that you basically exceed the frame rate of the camera You know what I mean where it's like did you even flip? I don't know because it's 30 frames a second I can't tell so this seems to be nice where it's quick. It's snappy. It's aggressive But it's not so much that it's disorienting but again ridiculous. You're in control. You don't have to flip that fast Look how slow I can flip just nice and whoo Just by gently moving the stick So that's that's what I'm going to have you practice is doing these tricks slow And fast That's what's going to start making your Rubik's cubes look a little bit more pro We were doing them and you were just like it doesn't seem like a real Rubik's cube, right? Because you're used to seeing them look like boom That And tricks like Rubik's cube will start to depend a bit on muscle memory where you're not just reacting to What's on the screen? You just memorize how long you hold the stick in position. That was a good one. There we go I was proud of that one right there But just get comfortable with the higher rate It's going to enable a little bit more freestyle, but you can still do the smooth flow things You just have to control the stick yourself All right, let's get you up there and see uh, see how you're responding to these higher rates again rates are a personal thing So you don't have to fly this fast I do think a little bit faster than the stock 420 is going to help you do more advanced freestyle moves So I do think that as you want to progress you want to go up from the 420 Um, my first recommendation seven whatever it was. It was way too high You might still find that even the 600 is too high So maybe we go down to five. Let's see. Let's see what you want. Let's see how it feels Yep, those rates are higher Those rates are higher Let me get you. Is there a turtle mode? Uh, there is a turtle mode. They did but we're not going to use it because that's how you chop up a lot of props Those rates are higher. Well now you're pointed out and you're pointed out into the open. This this makes me feel more comfortable Yeah, we should have we should have pointed you our mistake. We pointed you towards the danger the danger zone Now you've pointed you towards the safety There we go Whoa, it rolls better. Do you like that? I don't know If you want to try a lower we can we can go lower now. We're gonna try it Whoo, it's fun, right? It's really fun that faster uh Faster speed is fun. I do see a lot of newer pilots Just keep up and upping their rates because it's fun to just go like But then I think once they get more experience you start bringing them back down because I think Having that much rate like having a lot a lot of rate It's diminishing returns. You exceed the frame rate. You can't tell what's going on You lose the the resolution required to do some of this smoothness So you'll want to find rates that are right for you right for your style allow you to fly As smooth as you want while still being quick enough to do the tricks that you want So this I never do I want to do these tricks, but now I'm kind of getting into it It's a thing that you know, you're gonna have to have some experience You're gonna fly with some set of rates and as you start learning your style I just rescued myself because I totally lost the horizon. Oh my gosh. Thank you safety button Good use that panic button. All right back to manual. I heard that beep. I was like Yeah, it got ahead of me You want to try going a little lower you like where it's at. I'm trying to figure out Well one two slow three. Yeah, there you go. All right, so Forward down Roll back up back out forward flip. Oh too much. I'm over rotating down. So I'm looking back at this guy There it is Panic Now I'm seeing a reason to use the panic mode. Yeah, there's no question All right, so flip roll Back up there it is It's certainly not pretty. Oh, let's try and just fly through the gate Maybe try going through the gate and as you go through the gate, just do a roll This guy this guy this guy's all right low altitude roll. Let's see it Give it a little punch of throttle to to ollie it like a skateboard do the roll There catch it. There you go. It's punch cut roll catch it with the throttle That's how you do kind of all these low altitude snap tricks, right? So practice that with the roll, you know, I went I went straight for the Rubik's Cube, but So you're above the tree line see see how many of these little snap rolls you can do without getting above the tree line Get low get low. It's time for some real action. Get low get low get low lower lower lower lower About like 10 feet, but just pop it up before you free to the trick pop it roll it Boom. Nice. Nice, man. That's good. This is good That's kind of terrifying. It was awesome. It was awesome. It's a little bit off-putting You're going so fast also It just sounds cool, right? Yeah, it does. It is cool. It's definitely cool I think that's a thing to practice as you're going forward is is getting those tricks Lower altitude maybe start with just some basic rolls and flips and work your way up to the Rubik's Cube It's all about being low punch the throttle to get a little more altitude and as you punch you start in the roll It's like And I keep referencing skateboarding because I have that skateboard background and I just think it's it's very different from your perspective doing You know real full-scale aviation. Yeah, you don't you don't ollie a plane You don't you don't punch the throttle before doing a trick in a plane. It's so it's it's gonna be interesting and I do think I need to do one more battery and try to go through the gap I want to see it. I know the people. I know the the viewers the fans They want to see some carnage do it for the views Do it for the views. Let's get another pack. All right. Let's do it push you for it take off Yeah, I mean do enrolls and flips through gaps is like a real quintessential freestyle thing. It's like The first time back in the day we saw charpeau Dual roll as he went through this gap. It was like mind-blowing. Now. It's pretty standard, but I'm scared to even Go through this gap Just fly through it a couple times. You used to it Whoo Now do the roll going out into the grass not into the concrete It'd be biffid. It's not right under the hard stuff It's concrete on both sides. That's true. It's a little more grassy this way Whoo So I like how it sounded to me like you were practicing Kind of jumping through the gap right you were kind of blipping throttle as you're going through it It might be a good thing to practice I would say though that when you actually do the roll You're going to pop up and the roll is going to cancel out some of that upward momentum Which is why you blip it in the first place. So when you're going through the gap without rolling You probably don't want to blip it Oh I totally just lost like that was a bad one perception and I oh dude When you're uh When you're that low, you don't always have time for the panic, but no it's not running She's not running. Oh, dude. Yeah, I I like pitched and I was like, oh, I'm gonna hit the top crossbar Yeah, and so I was like And all of a sudden it's upside down because I'm just not used to those higher rates Yeah, I think I might have raised the rates a little too high on you. You were doing great. You were doing great, dude My heart's pounding, bro Oh my goodness. I think I see a broken arm I was pushing you I was pushing you I went through the gap you went through the gap We didn't get you flipping through the gap yet. It's okay I I can't imagine that any of the electronics are actually going to be damaged the motor still spins But we did crack the plastic arm. I didn't bend any props Didn't it's good My understanding is that some of these plastic pieces will be for sale so that you can do some of the repair work yourself At least that was the plan but with the supply chain shortages and everything going on in the world That hasn't really happened yet. So I think at this point it might be a send it to dji situation So if you guys are learning fpv, just be aware that if you go throttling into concrete This might happen I do want to point out That the average user is not going to do this because the average user is not going to have three weeks of between sessions And then trying to do all kinds of flippity floppities and gaffety thingies in their first two hours of stick time Right. I mean, we're really pushing you fast. You are learning very quickly. It's very impressive. What not to do We had a couple scary moments earlier today, but you're able to use the panic button That was nice now being this low you start to run out of room with the panic button I didn't have time to grab it. Honestly, there was not a chance. Eric, you're doing people a favor You're letting them see this is what as you really push yourself this this is what you end up risking, right? Mind you it had every right. I was doing like by 30 40 miles an hour Into the concrete but it is a very unique Thing in that we expect a level of durability and as you know, you've done other forms of rc flight You could buy a very expensive balsa wood plane And there's no expectation that that's going to be durable and people do all sorts of crazy Tricks with these things without crashing, but you have to take your time Right. We're pushing you way faster than we should for something that's not going to take a beating You know now that this has happened We're just going to keep pushing you man A lot more ground to cover you did do rubik's cubes way up there. I think Moving forward like see uh bring them down. Maybe start rolling flipping through gaps And maybe eventually rubik's cubing through a gap. I mean that's that's that's the goal for you to work towards All right, I like it. This has been so much fun guys Thank you so much for watching if you haven't yet click the subscribe button and the notification bell wrote a riot release releases new episodes Every monday we release new episodes on our aviator show channel. Yeah, link in the description of his channel as well Check it out. He's flying manned aviation. They're doing paramotor. That's real life fpv If you think this stuff is cool, you're gonna love what they're doing over there So definitely check it out. And like I said, we crash a drone in every video That's right, and apparently not that you're here We do the same now guys. Stay tuned to this playlist link in the description to follow along with eric's progression You can go back to the first episode and see his first flight just tooling around in normal mode and now look at him Just smashing drones next time. We're going to learn the inverted yaw spin So get ready guys. Oh lord. We'll see you next time. See y'all