 Hey guys, welcome to Road to Riot. Today, we're talking about perching. Guys, what is perching? Perching is basically landing on like really a hard obstacle. So we'll take like a lamppost and land on top of that. I think the first perch I ever saw was, I remember Mr. Steele landing on top of an ice cream truck and I always thought that was really cool because he was like rolling around. Yeah, that might have been the first one I saw. That was probably a pretty early on like perch but it wasn't really called perching. Was it Gapit? Did Gapit call the perch, do you know? I think so. I think he was really the first one to like popularize the whole like landing on top of something small. Right, yeah. He started doing the small things, right? Anything that's like as small as your quad. I feel like the perch is one of the first contact tricks that you'll learn, right? So there's all these like air tricks and then you start seeing that you can skid and you can perch, wall tap and grind and all that stuff and like perching is probably like one of the like foundations of like interacting with your environment like in a contact way, right? So when you're starting out with perch it may sound a little silly but I think the first thing that you wanna learn how to do is just land softly. Just be able to come down and disarm without it bouncing all over the place or dropping three feet out of the air and flipping over. Like when I come in up for a landing I usually come in like all crazy and I just like drop it, right? But that's not gonna work cause you're trying to land on something with limited surface area. So what you wanna be able to do is just kind of come in and just rest it. And then, you know, little movements keep doing that kind of thing. Once you get comfortable with that then you can move on to an obstacle that maybe has a little bit more surface area. So like a picnic table over here we've got this ledge, you know? And what's nice about this is it has one short dimension and one real long dimension. So if you wanna start out by just kind of going long ways kind of work on your side to side placement and being able to land side to side and then work on your front to back by just turning 90 degrees. So now we've got a short front to back kind of surface something you'd have on like a light post like that. Ooh, just disarm it. And we're just working our way up we're trying to make the surface get smaller and smaller until you know you've worked to something like the size of the drone itself. And now we're gonna go to this light post that we've been working with today pretty much like quad-sized. So there's no room for error. If you miss it, you're just gonna fall off the side of it. Like that. Clearly I was demonstrating, you know when you miss it, what's gonna happen. So one thing that helps when you're doing something tall like this like a post is starting coming from underneath it and you can kind of spot it better because your camera is angled up and you don't wanna go too high above it because then you lose side of it. Like if I come up here there's no reference for like where I'm at and it's kind of just a guessing game on when you're gonna drop it. So if you come under and there you go, you've got your perch. You can disarm completely. If you've got air mode turned off you could just try to rest it. Take a breather, take a break. A lot of the time like when I fly I get like super shaky. And so, you know, I could take a rest take a drink of water kind of like get my nerves back. And the quad is just, you know it's safe up there. I've got a Vista probably don't wanna leave it and let it overheat. I have no video, but you know, you can take off, take a smoke break. So the term air mode gets thrown around a lot and it can kind of mean different things but in beta flight it's a way that the PIDs and mostly the I is boosted during low throttle. Even when you're doing low throttle maneuvers like a hang time it keeps you more stable, right? So without air mode and you're flying beta flight you might find that when you go into like this hang time it kind of like wobbles a little bit and air mode will keep you locked in. It's a really nice thing that improves the way the quad feels and how locked in it is when you're doing kind of low throttle things. The problem is if you're intentionally inducing an outside force, whether it's like a landing for a perch or skid or a grind or something the quad's gonna react very aggressively to that input as it should. But if you don't want it to, like if you want to be doing like a smooth skid or something without it like bouncing and trying to compensate for the fact that like there's something touching your drone if you put air mode on a switch you can stop that from happening. So you can intentionally let the PID controller reduce when you're at low throttle and doing those types of skids and landings and things like that. I will say, I don't turn it off when I perch. Well, because you disarmed. I just said, yeah, I get as close as I can. I would just disarm, that's what I would do too. I don't need the crutch of no air mode, I'm just doing it. We're talking about this perch I've never tried before but there's a style of perch where you do not disarm and you just try to rest it on top of something that you wouldn't normally be able to land on. So like the ball at the top of a flagpole or something. We've got these posts over here with a round topper. So I'm gonna try to like rest it on top enough throttle to like level it but that I can kind of like take it easy. Oh, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. It'd be cool to like rest and then do a little yaw spin. That'd be like a natus, a natus spin for my skateboard fellows. It almost sounds like not a spin. Not us. Not us spin is a skateboard maneuver pioneered by not us, cop us. Am I saying this right? Some heavy emphasis. But basically on a skateboard, you'd like pop up onto an object like a fire hydrant and like spin around on it with like your board centered on the fire hydrant. It's pretty sweet. So I'm gonna try and copy that but do it with my drone. Oh, this is really not easy, huh? That was pretty good. That was 180. I'm taking the 180, dude. I'm taking the 180. I was taking the 180. If you guys, if anyone could pull off a 360, tag me, hashtag Natus Drone Spin, I don't know, whatever, post on Instagram. I would love to see someone like one up that because that, it's gonna add it down but it took a lot of tries. Peter Vex's best perch ever. You didn't see it? Dude, wait, you really didn't see this. I need to watch it, what is it? Is this on YouTube? All right, everyone come over. Gather around. Storytime. Now watch. Here we go, here we go, here we go, here we go. We can hear it again, there's one over here. It's pretty good too. Well, I wanna see you do your power loop perch. I wanna see that too, yeah, I wanna see that too. Let me try it again. I wanna see his power loop perch, I wanna see your split-ass perch. So the split-ass is what I did to learn the power loop because I wanted to learn the whole setting. Now, because the setting down is the hardest part, doing it like smooth enough to not just like jump off and you gotta figure out where the bottom is. So sometimes you come way too high and you'll start to catch yourself and you'll be way above it. So you gotta figure out where that position is to set it down and then you move into the power loop. Let's see this approach to your fancy power loop. That's fun, that's fun. Right, right, you gotta. Oh, bro, if he does this, that's gonna be sick. Okay, okay. Oh, wow, okay. So the trick is you can't, it's not like a loop loop, it's kind of like you're powering up and then flipping over. Gotcha, it's kind of like a throwback trick. Well, because you want upward momentum so that you can kind of rest it on it. Yeah. Oh, that was so close. And then you just try it a dozen more times and then you'll get it. You got it, got it. This is like one of those things that I'll see and I'm like, I'm not even gonna try it because I don't think I can do it. It just seems like one of those stupid insane tricks. Did you get it yet? Oh, he's still going for the loop. This is what happens. This is what happens. I've hit it multiple times, but I keep bouncing off. Three more times. Yeah, I just have my headphones on right now. I'm just like trying to shut anything else out. You're just grinding that one trick. That's all I've been doing for the past, like three batteries. I gotta get it now. Usually your style is like to like go at the trick until you get it, like just pack, pack, pack, pack. Honestly, this is a different type of trick for me because usually if it's a trick, I'm trying to get it in a line. Yeah. Like for like a flight video, but this is like just one off trick that I want to really get. Yeah. Yeah. Let me see. You're still up there? Yeah. You're still up there? Let's go. Was it the power loop? Yeah, it's a power loop. Let me watch this DVR back. Wait, no, no, no. I gotta pick it down. No, dude. You're still gonna watch this DVR back? Do not delete that DVR. Hold on. I just wanna watch it. I wanna watch it. I wanna watch it. Let me guess my moment. I just wanna watch it. Drow! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Yeah!