 This is Road to Riot, hotel room edition. I'm Joshua Bardwell. And I am Stinger Swarm. And today we are going to shake up our transmitter. What? Throttle on the left, y'all on the left, pitch and roll on the right. That's just how you do it, right? I mean, that's what I've always done. But that's not just how you do it. Some people do it other ways. Well, let's talk about what these different modes actually are. Most people in North America fly mode 2. The other one that's really popular, somewhat popular the world over is mode 1. I have a sense that a lot of people like in Australia. Everybody I know who flies mode 1 is from Australia or New Zealand. So mode 1, the throttle is now on the right, but it's not just swapping the sticks. So the only thing that swaps is elevator and throttle. So y'all and elevator are on the left. Right. Okay, so pitch and throttle switch sticks. Yep, that's it. And that puts your pitch and your yaw on the same stick and your throttle and your roll in the same stick. Correct. And there's two more modes which we'll just make our editor stick a graphic up to show you which are mode 3 and mode 4. We're going to try these different modes out and see just how much it screws with our brains and how quickly, because we were actually debating this last night and saying could we even learn to fly a different mode? I didn't think, I thought that this was not even worth us filming today. Honestly, I made him try mode 4 and we wouldn't have to mod a radio. It's like we're going to fail horribly. Why am I going backwards? Why am I going backwards? Dude, that's just the same. That's a turn. Oh, it's just the proportions are not right at all. Hello, trees. Okay, F. Oh my God. Is this what beginners feel like? No, no, no, no. That's weird. That's okay. That's really hard. You're right. First thing we're going to have to do in order to try different modes is I'm going to have to open up my radio and I'm going to have to change which stick is the throttle because of course the throttle is not spring centered. Anytime you're going to open up your tyrannous, it's a good idea to take these shoulder switches which are going to fall out and just push them back because that way if they fall out, then you'll be able to put them back in the right way around. In order to change the spring loading on the tyrannous throttle, this thing here creates just a little bit of smooth tension on the throttle. This one here is ratcheting and if you press it down, you'll get the ratcheting effect. You can kind of see the ratchet mechanism here. We're going to loosen this because we don't want any additional tension. This screw right here is lifting the spring bar and making it not work. I believe I need to remove this screw. It's been a long time since I did this. So now I have spring there and I'm going to lift this and now I'm going to take this vertical piece here. I'm going to lift it and I'm going to insert the screw here so it rests. So now the spring is removed from this guy. We're going to just tighten this one to give us a little bit of smooth tension on our new throttle stick, which is on the right side. So now we've moved the sticks. We've got a spring-loaded left stick and a non-spring-loaded right stick. But OpenTX still thinks that this is the throttle. So the next thing we have to do is change the mode here for our model. So here's how you change that. I'm going to long press menu. Here in the radio setup screen, I'm going to go all the way to the bottom. I'm going to do that by just pressing up and rolling through. And here at the very bottom, we've got the mode of the radio and I'm going to change this to mode. Let's go to mode 3. Aileron, an elevator on the left, throttle and rudder on the right. By changing the radio's mode, I believe that's the only thing we need to do and our channels and everything in our quadcopter will automatically stay the same. Alright, well now that we've modded the radio, we've kind of talked through what we're going to be doing today. There's really not a lot more to do than go crash Bardwell's quads. This isn't going to be that hard. Without even thinking about it, I go like this to push my throttle down, but it's not my throttle anymore, is it? Okay, throttle is down. We're arming. This is not my throttle. I got to... Let's just get the axi sorted. This is going to be roll. Oh crap. I'm just going to take off. Where's my disarm? Okay, I'm so freaked out right now. I can do this. Oh my God, what's happening? Why is my quad... What is my quad doing? I'm going the wrong way. I haven't even taken off yet. I'm already freaking out. Oh my God. Oh, oh, oh. I tried to throw... I tried to pitch back and I throttled down. Check out the camera. It's so ingrained in my brain getting in the air right now. Oh God, oh God. Push forward. Roll, roll. Just I have no control whatsoever. The quad is pitching back and I have no idea why it's pitching back and it just takes me so long to decide what I need to do to correct it. All the while, my fingers are doing the wrong things. Like I want to pitch back so I throttle down. So it just gets away from me and out of control instantly. How high off the ground did you get it? I can't. I mean, I don't think I got it super high. I'm saying like pop it up 10 to 20 feet. But the thing is that when I go to pop it up, starts like this and you kind of go... And then you're flying. Oh, you're not getting the first part? I'm just having trouble leveling it and facing it. And then when I pop it up, it starts going like this. For some reason I don't know why and I just don't know what to do to correct it. So I'm scared to give it throttle. What do beginners do? I really, my fingers just do not know what to tell the quad to do. I feel like a total noob. Get it in the air with authority. No, why? Why? Why? Pitch forward, please. But not that much. Maybe I need to lower my rates. Oh my God. In the interest of acting like we're total beginners, one thing beginners do is start with low rates. So my rates are normally about a thousand degrees per second. And I'm going to take them way down like 600, let's say. And maybe that will help. That's the throttle right there. I don't know where I am. I have to get back on the property right now. You're over the property. I'm barely. No, you're right over where you were to start right now. You're about to be over the building. Yep. I'm yawning around this way. Oh my God. My heart is pounding. It's kind of got... No, no, no. No, it's not going right. I have to bring it down. I have to bring it down. Oh God. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. I put it down. Dude, you're not on the roof though, are you? No, I'm not on the roof. Okay, because you were close to the roof. I was looking. I'm on the ground. That was really tense. I need a much bigger area for this. I couldn't come down because I kept pitching back when I meant to come down. Oh, I guess it came down a little harder than I thought. My habits are actually making it harder for me, I think, than if I were a ranked beginner because I keep making the wrong corrections and that just makes the situation worse. Okay. Well, that's going to do it for me. Let's see how Stingy does. So the first thing that I've done is taken my crossfire out of my radio and put it into Josh's radio. Now he's got a model on here that's for crossfire, and so it's going to go ahead and pass the stick inputs through to the crossfire module. He has a whole different arming sequence and, oh yeah, channel order because I do the spectrum order, which is T-A-E-R, and I'm not sure what Josh does, but I'm pretty sure it's not that. So my quad is running Flight One, and with Flight One, you have the radio setup wizard. So I'm just going to rerun through the radio setup wizard with my quad, my crossfire, Josh's radio with the throttle on the right, and I'm going to set it up so that it's ready to go in mode one. Woo-hoo! We have arming. Ain't no reason to be scared. I'm going to rip this spot. I'm going to dive that roof cap. I'm just going to arm it. Whoa. Whoa. Your trim wasn't centered. And it also doesn't center very good. So when it centers, it's like off a little bit too. Dude, it really doesn't center. Okay. Come up. This arming is hard. Keeping it in the air is also very, very hard. I was like, all right, I'm up. I'm going forward. Now I need more, like pitch it back to slow down. No, that's descending. More throttle. No, that's too fast. Oh my God, pitch up. What is that? I'm in the ground. You see that stick flop there? There's no fighting for all of that motion. And so because of that, because I hold the radio like this, if I just let go, then it's going to just pitch back. So I can't just let go of pitch now. I'm just going to come up off the ground, down on the ground. Whoa, see? Dude, all I'm trying to do is gently lift it off the ground and put it back on the ground. But what keeps happening is I start to lift it off the ground and I'm like, oh, it's coming back. The nose is coming back. I'm going to leave it on the ground and I go to lower the throttle and I nose back and it flips over. All right, I'm in the air. Lower. Lower. Gentle inputs. OK. OK. That is not controlled. I got to lower these rates. These rates are my normal 1,000 degrees per second, like freestyle rates. I may even introduce some dead band to help counteract that on the pitch. At this point, all I am really hoping for is to get it in the air and make a controlled turn. It doesn't have to come all the way back. 90 degrees of turn where I maintain forward momentum and I'm going where I'm looking. So if I can go and I can turn and go, I'm going to call that a win at this point. I'm hovering. I'm going backwards. Pitching forward, pitching forward. I'm high. I'm high. Oh, my God. This is terrifying, dude. OK. I got this. Tell us what's going on. I'm flying, but like super stupidly high because I can't descend very well. OK. I'm descending, but I'm descending towards us. Don't be terrified. I'm going to fly it kind of backwards. Oh, my God. I turned. I turned this moment. That was terrifying. I had a moment like you did where I got too high, didn't know how to get it back down, was just like small inputs, small inputs. I have learned some valuable lessons about control of the aircraft in terms of what it is I actually do with the sticks because I'm having to think about it so hard that I'm like realizing what the components of a turn are. So there's tons of value in this exercise. But oh, my goodness, this is if you guys want to try this, I'm going to tell you right now, go to like the biggest sports complex you have that has like 40 soccer fields. This is not something for trying at your local like playground. One of the things we want to do for the episode is talk to some people who fly in other modes than mode two, which in the U.S. is certainly the most popular. You fly mode three, right? Yes, I am a weirdo. Okay. Tell us what mode three is. First of all, throttle and yaw on the right stick and then pitch and roll on the left stick. If I got this right, it's basically mode two, but you flip the switch the sticks. Yep. Have you tried to fly in other modes than mode three? Yeah, I have. I personally didn't enjoy the flight experience, but I think you're used to what you're used to. And when you change something, the dynamics change of how the flight characteristics are. It had more to do with me not being as familiar than it actually was a disadvantage or advantage. When you were first learning, why did you end up on mode three instead of like mode two, like many people do? Okay. Three years ago, we didn't have many resources, right? Three years ago. So I was like, okay, well, I want to get into this drone racing deal. And the first thing that I needed was a radio. And I was like, well, I don't know anything about... At this point, I don't know anything about what's common, what's not common. So what I thought to myself was, well, I'm right-handed. What's the most important aspect of flying? And what I said to myself was throttle. Throttle control is key. It makes the quad go faster, up, down. So I personally would want that on my dominant hand. So now it's years later and you're obviously a great pilot. How do you feel about that decision in retrospect? I think that there's advantages to that decision and disadvantages. So obviously, let's touch on the disadvantage here. It's not going to be an easy path to being a pro pilot because all the radio systems are mode two in the U.S. If you go to any shop or if you get hired by company to drive their equipment, the equipment is probably going to be in mode two. Have you ever run into a situation like at an event? I don't know if you go to a lot of events like Flight Fest or Rampage or The International Open where somebody is like, hey, can I check out your quad? Or they're like, hey, I got a new, I got a seven inch X glass. And they're like, here, check it out. You're like... I generally don't like flying other people's equipment. So I kind of stay away from that fray. But what I would say is that if you're running a crossfire system, it's easy to switch out the module. And then you could just put the module into your tyrannous and you're good to go. So that's really interesting. You're right about that. Actually, and Stingy did that. And it was easy for him to fly his own quad. There's that work around. The other thing that I think I went to a meet up, everyone wanted to kind of fly what my quad felt like because it was doing well. And it was really hard to do that, to let them fly because my transmitter, I'm open to letting people test my stuff out. It doesn't matter to me. They just can't do it. Now that you are a better pilot, do you still think there's an advantage to having the most important controls on your dominant hand? Yeah, that's pretty much the biggest advantage. Is that I'm going to be a little bit more precise because of my dominant hand. I think that right now, I would say that's the biggest advantage that you're going to be, you're going to have better ability to adjust your flight lines in flight than if you would on your left hand. Now, that's all subjective, right? Because you know what you know. So you would have to chest out both. Certainly, I mean, I'm left-hand. I happen to be one of the lucky left-handed people in the world. So when I fly mode two, in fact, throttle and y'all are on my dominant hand. But a whole lot of right-handed people out there fly mode two and well, once you've become skilled at it, I think switching is going to really mess you up. I wonder if you would recommend somebody starting out right now, who's right-handed, whether you would say, now, f**k the trend, fly mode three. I would personally say that it depends what your goals are because for, okay, so for me, going back three years ago, there weren't that many people that were doing trick tutorials and things of that nature would stick to him, right? And there was even less people flying mode three. So there wasn't that ability to learn easy. So I would study the approach of certain things I wanted to do rather than just look at the input because the inputs wouldn't do me any good. That's a good point. Yeah, cool, Vic. That's, I think that's it for me. I appreciate your time. It's been nice talking to you. I think the real takeaway from this is, you know, it's just fun to do weird things. But what can beginners learn about how to overcome? This is exactly what beginners experience when they first start to fly. Make sure your setup is tight. So your sticks are centering correctly. Your trims are centered. Start in the simulator. Oh my goodness. If we had have practiced this in the sim today, even if we had spent like 20 minutes in the sim before we came out here and did it, I think this would have been a much bigger success in the field. Speaking of the simulator, we got a plan for you guys. This is an episode that's going to go out on a Monday. And I stream on the Quadcamp online Twitch stream, Monday nights. We are not going to practice at all between now and the day that you're seeing this episode. And then we're going to stream tonight at 8 p.m. on twitch.tv slash quadcamp editor. Quad underscore camp. He's going to be mode one. I'm going to be mode three. And we are going to race to see like who is the first to like finish a lap in liftoff. Oh my God. We're just going to stream until we do it. I think a better challenge will be who can keep it in the air the longest. After all of that struggle street today, I need to go out there and show you guys that I can still rip. I need a pallet cleanser. We're going to put our radios back the normal way and we're going to rip this pack. Yeah. Yeah. I need that. Let's go. We'll be laughing in a minute.