 Hey guys, welcome to episode 3 of First Flight to Freestyle. Today is the big day. Today we're doing the thing. We are going full manual mode, which is what Eric has been most excited for. I'm ready for it. I'm ready to get some of these nanny modes off, because it feels like a nanny at this point. I'm trying to get the drone to turn past this point so I can make the turn smooth, and it's just running into a wall. Normal mode was too easy for you. Sport mode, you picked up no problem. We started turning the crash. We started pushing you a bit with cruise control and making you do the roll and yaw mixing yourself. But you're doing great at all that. You started shooting gaps, started orbiting, started crashing. Oh yeah, really great at that. It's fine. Don't worry about the crash. It happens. It happens. You didn't even break the drone. But I think we're going to be increasing your chances of crashing a little bit. We're going into full manual mode this time. That means, most importantly, that the drone won't have self-riding. When you let go of the stick, which, by the way, when you want to recenter the stick, don't let it center it with your thumb. Don't let it do that, especially in manual mode. If you hear that, it means the drone is going to do that. Every little movement translates. I mean, it's not as important on some of the camera platforms that you're flying. You're cooking it on a phantom, and you want to bring it to a stop, and you just let it go and filter out some of that. But if you let it in the center, it'll in the drone. I love the technical terms here on this channel. It's very important. I do want to remind you, one thing. The last time I flew in manual mode, went like this, and then this, and then it fell over upside down, skidded underneath the cop car, and slamed into my building at what seemed like 100 miles an hour. So this may be the last time you ever see it looking this good. No, I'm very confident you're going to do fine. First off, we've been working you through all the flight assistance modes. Second off, you've got the panic button, right? So even in full manual mode, if you accidentally get upside down, you don't know why you're upside down, you hit this button right here, just one click, and it'll right back to center. Back to that technical terminology. Thirdly, we're not going to let you fly it just yet. I'm actually going to have you practice in the SIM first. Now, hang on. You teased this to me earlier, but I don't need a computer for this SIM, do I? Right, so with this system, DJI has come out with a SIM that lives on your phone, and we're going to plug my phone into your goggles, and you're going to be able to fly the SIM using your radio in the goggles, all just using a phone. You don't need a computer, you don't need to download, steam, or any of that crazy stuff. That's freaking sweet. I think it's pretty awesome. And what's cool is the SIM is built around this system and that it's got, it simulates everything. You can actually fly the SIM in normal mode and try to fly into an obstacle, and it'll slow you down. Like, it simulates everything. Oh, that's really cool. But we didn't really mess with that stuff before. We clearly didn't need to, you're doing great, but as we're going into manual mode, I strongly recommend, no matter how great you did, I'm just remembering this crash over and over again in my head. Don't stress about the crash. But the SIM is highly recommended because no matter how many of the steps that you go through, like we're showing in this series, the first time you go into manual mode, it's a whole different animal, and using the SIM can get you prepared for how the drone is going to respond when it doesn't have that auto leveling. So I'm booting up the DJI Virtual Flight app, and you can see there's different ways that you control it. You can, if you haven't bought the system yet, fly the SIM just using your smartphone by dragging little sticks on the screen. And it's a good way to try it out. And then the normal and sport modes, it works all right, but this is not doing the on-screen sticks is gonna be very, very difficult to fly in manual mode. So we're gonna go all the way over here where you can see you can connect the goggles and the remote controller and play that way. So we're getting to there. So you don't need to actually have the aircraft on for this. And then now we need to connect the goggles to the phone. DJI gives you this little adapter thing where you can convert a USB-A into USB-C to go into the goggles. You can just plug whatever you need to plug into your phone like lightning and iPhone. Whoa, very cool. Is it fully in there? Yeah. Let me see. No, it's mine now. It's awesome, man. It's like everything, even the menus are in here. That's awesome. All right, free flight. Here we go. Where do you want to fly? You want to fly a factory? No, a factory's the best, like a Bando. All right, Bando time. All right, goggle up, man. Whoa. Oh yeah. Yeah, remember, that's manual mode now. I feel the view is weird. You think it's not 100% what you saw in the actual drone? No, it feels like it's a little bit more aggressive. Well, I think that you're feeling that you're in manual mode now, so it's definitely gonna be more aggressive than sport mode because you're not fighting any sort of auto-leveling. Like the drone is just going where you're pushing it. Yeah, the problem is, I thought it was backwards. It's not. It's not, okay. I'll shut up now. Yeah, it just takes some getting used to it, right? See, this is why you do the SIM because the first time you touch the sticks in manual mode, it can be like very disorienting because it is so different no matter how much you've mentally pre- Like, look, you're upside down. Hit that panic button. Look at that. Panic button even works in the SIM. But I mean, see, you're so far up there, which I mean, it's good because... What's that? Oh, that was cool. Yeah, oh, you'll see that when you want to switch into manual mode from the normal and sport mode in the drone, there's a little bit of a stick sequence you have to do and they even mirror that in the SIM. So everything in the SIM recreats the experience of flying the drone from normal mode to sport mode to getting into manual mode. You can change the cam ring with a dial if you want. Everything. This is trippy. My kids are gonna love this. Can you shoot the, he in a gap. All right, so we're gonna let Eric get some stick time in on the SIM. And once we're feeling a little bit more confident that he's not gonna take off and do exactly the way he did the first time he take off where it's freaking out, which is what the SIM is for. We'll go out to the field, we'll put the actual drone up and hopefully have a really good experience. I'm having too much fun, man. We can't stop. We'll have some fun. Rip around for a little bit. There's no rush. All right, so you got your mode switched, right? I do. It's all the way up is N. Neutral, normal. Okay, middle, S, sport. Sporty. So all the way down says M on it, but they don't want you to go into that accidentally. So you're gonna have to go into the goggles to turn this on. So we'll pop it back up first. So go into, click your wheel in and look for settings. Settings. And look for, lose control. Button customization, RC. There you have button customization. There we go, sport mode. Manual mode. You wanna turn that into manual mode. So that's for the M button, right? Yes, so it's working. They block you out. They don't want you to turn it on by accident. All right, how do I get out of this? There's a back button. Got it. There you go, just back your way out. This is actually ridiculously easy to intuitively figure your way around because that's the first time I've used those buttons, so. Yeah, I was just like, it's somewhere in there, right? So you gotta turn it. Turn that button so that M actually means M. And now it does. But there's another thing, and we're not gonna turn this off yet. It's actually your angle limit. So you are in manual mode. It will not self-write. It's baby manual? It's kind of. It'll still stop you from going past a certain limit. So it's still manual, but it won't let you flip. So it'll get you used to floating it. That's probably wise. Let's be honest. That's really smart. So you're used to being in full control of the drone, but you can't accidentally end up upside down. Right? That's probably a really good plan. I think it's good. Baby steps. Yeah. The other thing, so I want you to have your finger on the panic button. Panic button. And just feel like you're out of control. Just tap. In fact, we'll even practice that. Okay. We'll even practice that when you get up. But let's go ahead and get the drone up now. Do you wanna take off in manual mode or do you wanna take off in? I'm gonna take off in manual mode. You wanna go straight for it? I'm going for it. Okay. You ready? Yeah. And nothing happened. It won't let me launch in that mode, will it? Well, no, it will. So, well, one, you weren't, were you in it? Yes. I was, I wasn't. So you can launch in that mode, but it's different. The start and stop button, that becomes an arm switch, but it's a double tap. All right. Because, I mean, think about stick arming and why stick arming is so bad. What if you were in doing an inverted jaw spin? So you've got your throttle all the way down, you're holding full yaw, and then maybe you roll out or something. Point at you do this by accident, now you disarm your quad. Like there are drone moves where you might do that. He did realize that he just spoke a language that I don't understand. If you don't know what any of that means, we'll get there. We'll get there. Episode 27. Episode 27. Okay, let's try again. Double tap. The old double tap start. Okay, so start flying forward and let's see a turn. Let's see a turn. You're panicking? Not really. Whoa. Okay, panic, panic. That is sick. Yeah, so if you get freaked out, so what happened there? I mean, if you get freaked out, we got you. It's all good. So what happened on that turn? I think I just kind of fell out of it. Well, let's see it again. Okay, yeah, so you're yawing and then rolling. Gotcha, so I gotta induce, kind of like an airplane. Should I induce it first? Well, it's just like, and it's just like when we were doing in cruise control, lead with the roll, you know? All right, you're going fast. This is gonna be a fast turn. Oh, God. Geez, that thing accelerates like mad. Okay. How'd that one look? Hey, that looks perfect. All right, so just roll. It's, you seem to be doing better with it at speed, but there, you know what? I think, yeah, see, not enough roll. You, the way you spun out of it and you still kind of washed out and ballooned up. Gosh, yeah. Roll more, like really carved that turn. Get that nose down. That was good. That was good. You came at it with a lot of speed. Oh boy. Keep reaching down there. Oh, that fell out of that one too. Yeah, it's just like we were practicing when we turned off the auto coordination. You got to do it yourself. And it seemed like it's a little better to lead with the roll, just nice, nice and together. Yeah. That was better. I had to come off the power a little bit too as I exited, I think. And once you, that one, you came out kind of under yawed almost. You came out still with some roll and then you had to correct it with roll. So you could have either used more yaw to have turned more or used less rolls that you didn't come out cock-eyed. It's a lot more sensitive to the throttle. I know it's probably not actually, but it feels like I have to use so much less. Oh no, it is going to be way more sensitive because now it's a throttle stick before it was an altitude stick. Gotcha. So above halfway was telling it to go up at some speed. Below halfway was telling it to go down at some speed. Now you are just controlling the throttle. It's a real throttle stick. So it's going to be way more sensitive. I feel like the one area where I'm really struggling is as I come back on course, I'm not getting the, I'm about to say wings level, you're not getting the aircraft level. It's kind of wishy-washy. It's real choppy, nice together. So that one's decent, but I still have to finish the roll. That was fun. I mean, I'm using about 30% power. Yeah, I mean, that's it. And I think that'll be a little something to get used to in that, in the normal and sport modes. It's always center stick. Right over the water. Right over the water. These are waterproof, right? Select a new iPhone. Let's practice a panic though, before we start trying anything advanced. So just hit that button and see what happens. There you go. So it just locks you in. And now, that's like, centered throttle though there. Yeah. So you have to have that center, you have to have your throttle centered to keep your altitude. And then now when you switch it back in normal mode, now I heard you switch it back in manual mode, but you get that on the screen, you're kind of that icon. Yeah, it says switch to manual mode. Use the control stick to move the cursor to the green line. Right, so you need to center the right stick all the way. And that throttle stick, you need to match the throttle though, telling you to match, because they don't want you to, when you switch to, there you go, that when you switch to manual mode, that altitude stick becomes a throttle stick. So if it's not matched to the hover, you'd balloon, which still happened a little bit. Balloon. Oh yeah, I punched it right after. That's where I've said it. I mean, you're cruising, man. I'm so blown away by how smooth and how good the visual is. Like compared to analog goggles, this is just silly. Yeah, I mean, the HD video is insane. You're going kind of sideways, oh God. You're in control. I don't know, okay. I was expecting way more panicking. I'm a little freaked out, but honestly, at any time just hit that panic button. It's confidence inspiring enough that it's like, it's all good. But as we start to do more of the advanced tricks, I think you're going to want to be even closer friends with that panic button. So we could, you know, we could practice that again. Maybe like something right in the middle of a very aggressive turn smack it, you know, really see just how powerful that is as a recovery. And panic. It's crazy. But you really have a lot of control in manual mode. Oh God. Okay. Are you going for a gap? First manual mode gap? Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. I hit it, I hit it. Okay. I hit a bunch of them. Okay. Are we okay? It's not dead yet. We got one down. We're just going to, we're just going to break our rule and bend it back a little bit. A little bit. I think, I think she looks good. So you had to, you had to double tap that button to disarm it. Yeah, I did double it. I did double tap it. I think you double tapped it after I did. Oh, did you, I heard you tap it once, it didn't stop. And then I came in, you, yeah, there's a little bit of chaos. Nice and easy. Nice and easy. I don't know nothing about nothing easy. I just shoot this gap. A little hard, a little hard, a little slower. Double tap. A double, a triple tapped. Woo, she's up, right? Let's do a quick prop inspection. I'm getting there. It's just, this is a difficult gap because it's so low. Yeah. And like I don't want to get too aggressive, but at the same time, I really want to be able to do this and not suck at it. So I was not planning on you doing gaps today. I'll do whatever you tell me to do. If you are into it, I think you should go for it. I'm into it. And then just find your speed and let it, let it go through. Just remember like cruise control mode. Once you're going forward, it wants to keep going forward. It wants to go through that gap. Just steer it in, steer it in. Oh, okay. Nice bail, nice bail. Nice bail, no shame. I was right there. When in doubt, throttle out. Just like a race car. It was right there and then it was not right there anymore. I mean, it's really going to feel similar to that cruise control mode where just get the drone going at a speed and find that sweet spot on your throttle stick where it wants to stay at the same height. It won't be in the middle or maybe it will be depending on your battery life, but just hold it right there and just let it, let guide it through with light roll and yaw. There we go. Just guide it through. There it is. There it is. That was amazing. That was amazing. What? Oh my gosh. It gets a heart rate moving. Yeah. It kind of will go upside down now. I mean, you ready for that already? And if you're ready to try and flip it, just bring it in for a landing. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh boy, oh boy. Oh, oh, oh, it's off. I'm hitting the button. I hit the button like nine times. Don't set up this close to the gap. We're not, it could have taken 30 seconds for us to drag the gap back out on the, being lazy. I hear him running away and I hear the drone bouncing close to me like, press the button. I was trying to get over to hit the button. I was like, dude, I had my hand on the button the whole time. I was ready. Dude, I had that too. And I just came in and I was like right here and I was like, I'm too high. Tunk, tunk. Rolled right over. That was nuts. If you guys go through this and it's not as easy as he says it is, don't be discouraged. This is a very difficult thing. He's picking it up very fast. I've hit the ground so many times. Yeah. I think it's still very impressive how fast you're moving through it. It's crazy. I mean, it's very impressive. If you don't pick it up as fast as I am, it's because you don't have a really good teacher. That's all there is to it. There we go. It's simple math. Let's hit the flip. So you go to gain and expo and then at the bottom do you see angle limit or something like that? In mode attitude limit. That. Okay, so go ahead and just turn that off and it's gonna warn you. All right, so first maneuvers. Obviously now I no longer have grainy keeping me from doing barrel rolls. Did you just flip it? I did a barrel roll. You just flipped it. Loop forward loop. I kind of went straight toward the ground at full power. But you didn't. Well, you're doing what's smart and you're several mistakes up. Yeah, I don't want to be doing this down low. You've got lots of altitude to panic and re-center. It's so weird. Woo! How when you come off the power, it carries the energy away. Like that's nothing else I fly. I fly airplanes, I fly parameters. I've got one whole hour in a helicopter. Nothing else carries the energy like this does. This is trippy. It's so much easier in acro mode. I hate to say that. Like it's scarier because there's no, like nothing helping me. No, this is how drones should be flown, man. It's like you're in control. You're not pushing, you're not fighting it. You're not holding that stick forward to go forward. We started in a full self-leveling mode, GPS holding all that stuff and just started pulling some of those things off, pulling away the coordination, pulling away even having to hold forward with the cruise control. And then I think each of those steps just kind of felt a little weird, but when you put it all together and you let yourself feel it, it's way more natural. All right, so DJI, please. May I get this? Can I find my inspire like this? That'd be nuts. Woo! Oh boy. I was going for it. Well, I see as you're approaching the gap, it looked like you were trying to correct with just yaw, but you got to use that roll. So if you want it, you gamed, right? So if you're a little off-center, you can strafe to line it up or you can steer, use roll and yaw together. But if you use just yaw, it's not going to help you line up for the gap. You're just going to be wagging your tail. Is it dead? Uh, battery came unplugged. Damage report is some more props you've been going through. I'm glad they're cheap. You've been going through props. Prop, that's the thing you want to break. Dude, I hit so hard. That's nothing. I think it's okay, man. Dude, that was like, here I am talking about how it's easy and it is easy, but when you try to get it precise and that low, it's a whole different game. I changed my mind. I don't want the inspire to fly like, no, never mind. Inspire, no FPV. No FPV. Don't do that. Our poor drone starting to look a little beat up. We got all sorts of scuffs. We got bent props. She's still flying though. I'm still flying. I think we do have to replace. Yeah, this props got to go. Yeah, I deserve that. I deserve that. No, it's fine, man. It's fine. You haven't broken anything yet. You got to keep pushing. I flinched so hard when I hit. That crash is crazy. Man. I mean, but you fly like real things. Your body is up in the air. This is still scaring you. I mean, it feels hyper real. It feels like you're a part of it because it's first person views. So when you slam into a two by four, you know, it feels like 70 miles an hour. And I know it's more like five. It's definitely, it wakes you up in the morning. That's for sure. I mean, that's why I find FPV so addicting is that you really feel like you're flying, especially when you're flying in manual mode. Like you feel truly connected to the drone. It's doing what you tell it to do. You're not fighting some sort of auto leveling. And you don't have anything to save you other than a little panic button, but you're truly flying. And so I, I mean, I really get that feeling, but I was wanting with someone that had actual aviation experience if this would still be thrilling. It definitely has a thrill. What I'm looking forward to most when I fly in my paramotor, right? There is, I've got to the point where I've flown so much that there's no thought. I don't have to think, okay, I'm going to turn left. I'm going to lean left, pull left, add a little power. It all just happens instinctually. Right. And I think that if I can do that point with this, it becomes almost a zen experience. It really does. It's like a meditative thing. I mean, because it's, it's something that I'm becoming aware of as I'm trying to give instructions. Now, like, I'm like, how do you, what exactly do you do with the sticks again? Because I don't really think about the stick movement so much as you just do it. And you'll get to that point too, the more and more that you fly. But I mean, you're already doing awesome, man. Super fun. You're doing coordinated turns. You did some rolls. You did some flips. You shot some gaps. It was awesome. Super fun. I can't wait to fly it some more and I'm, I'm honestly impressed because we had a pretty hard hit and I thought we'd see more damage than there is. I mean, honestly, me too. I mean, this is a plastic drone. This is not going to be durable, like one of our carbon fiber drones, but clearly it can take some moderate crashes. But we're going to need some more props. We're going to need some more props. So you're totally able to navigate this thing. I think with a little bit more practice, it will be time to start having you learn some real freestyle maneuvers. So in the next episode, we're going to take on an actual freestyle trick. So I think my next step is to take this thing home and spend some hours on the simulator, honestly, because that simulator time beforehand really gave me the confidence I needed to go into manual mode to feel as if I knew what I was doing. Yeah. And I know that my kids are going to love it. So I'm probably not going to get much time in it at all, but they're going to love it. Yeah, the same as a blast. Get in there. Get some more stick time in on it. And then in the next episode, we're going to teach you like a specific freestyle trick, either like a power loop or Rubik's Cube or Split S. Any one of those things are really going to start getting you a feel for what it means to do freestyle, where you're really doing multi-axial, very dimensional tricks where you're flipping upside down, pulling out, doing all sorts of crazy stuff like that. Things that you just can't do. I'm smiling, but I'm also just like that. I'm not going to do that. Don't be scared. Don't be scared. You're totally going to do it. More same time first. Thank you guys for tuning into this series. Make sure to check the link in the description to the playlist that you can follow this entire series. And if you're not already subscribed, do so and hit the bell so you can be notified whenever we post an episode of this series or our regular Monday episodes. And if that's not enough YouTube for you, again, check out Eric's channel, The Aviator Show. We'd love to have you guys. We do the new episodes every Friday. Lots of cool content coming out soon, including flying with some elk moose things. Guys, we will see you next time on First Flight to Freestyle on LaDrib. And I'm Aviator. See you later.