 Hey guys, welcome to this episode of Rotor Riot. I'm Alex Vanover. And I'm Ledreb, and today we want to share with you guys five tips for FPV drone safety. And not just, you know, this isn't obviously all the tips, but we think these are the five most important tips for drone safety to prevent accidents from happening. Yeah. A lot of these were suggested by a poll that we put up in our Rotor Riot Facebook group. So big thanks to the community for helping us pick out what are some of the most important tips to share with everyone on YouTube. Tip number one, remove your props when working on your drone. This was actually something that was like covered in one of the first ever Rotor Riot episodes. Calibrating the issues. Every time I do it, I remove the props. But there's that day that you go like, nah, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm chirping. Go soft the ground. And I just remember going like this. So we start kicking it. Literally kicking it. We were killing an animal at that point. Still so, so important. And a lot of people still have not learned their lessons about removing their props. And it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. So just remove your props because especially when you're plugging quads into configurators or messing around with your settings, motors can just randomly start, man. Even if your quad is just plugged in like this, it's very easy to accidentally flip an arm switch and your quad is in air mode. And that can really mess up your fingers. So if you're working on a quad, please, please, please take your props. Don't just loosen the props, take them all the way off because props can do serious damage to your hands. So you can't thumb or pinch anymore and you're forced to thumb for quite some time. We actually have a rule and it's called the one-plug rule. And that is if you have props on your quad, you get to plug in one thing. You can plug in your battery because you're about to fly it in a safe manner, or you can plug in your USB because you need to change something on the configurator. You should never, when your props are on your drone, plug in both USB and your battery. Even if you're using a smoke stopper, which theoretically stopped this from happening, don't do it, just don't do it. Why don't you risk it? We've just seen it too many times, broken computer screens, quads going into the ceiling and worst of all, chopped up skin. So yeah, bottom line guys is remove your props, do it for your own personal safety and that are the things around you. You're never gonna regret it. It's an extra 30 seconds that can really help out. Don't do the thing where you just loosen them up too. Cause I've heard that before, be like, oh yeah, I'll just loosen them because that, no, no, no, take them off the shaft. I know it's kind of a pain, but it's worth it. Alex, what's tip number two? Well, tip number two is one that's very, very near and dear to my heart, which is never leave Lipo's unattended on a charger. Bad things can happen. I'll give a quick backstory. I was putting energy into these lithium pads. Well, I mean, but obviously what can happen? I mean, you're just charging batteries and nothing really bad should happen, but things can. For example, if you are charging a race, may or may not be overcharging, you're in your goggles and then all of a sudden your battery catches on fire in the pit area and nearly sets, actually sets two bags on fire. The point is guys, never, never leave your- All these tips, by the way, are things that we're not saying that we've always done right. We've learned from our mistakes. We wanna make sure that you guys can learn from our mistakes. And never make any mistakes. There's a few reasons why you never wanna leave your batteries unattended. First off, batteries can heat up. You're reversing the flow of electrons into batteries and batteries do not like that. Don't even walk out of the room for a split second because things can happen really, really fast. So what are you looking for? So we always say, don't charge batteries unattended, but how do you attend to them? What do you check for? Well, I'm checking for two things. Number one, I'm checking to make sure the batteries are not getting hot. If your batteries are getting hot on a charger, that's probably not good. That probably means you're pushing way too many amps in them. Typically, we like to charge it what's called one C. That's one capacity rating of your battery. So for example, on a 1300 milliamp hour battery, to calculate one C, move the decimal point three places and that would give you 1.3 amps. That's the safest charge rate. That's the safest. If you're starting to charge it like five C or even three C, that's one of the batteries. I know some of the batteries say they're rated for it, but we really recommend the safest is one C. And if you're going to do that guys, be sure you're attending them. I'm checking my batteries every five to minutes. Usually I'm charging behind me and I'm usually working on a drone. So I'm always kind of looking behind me every few minutes. And be in the same room. I'll admit there have been times I've left room. I've been lucky. I just want to admit it just to be honest that like, we've all made these mistakes. I've always been lucky. I've never had an incident, but it only takes one bad balance lead or one charger malfunction or one whatever. And the next thing you know, your whole hobby room, your whole garage, maybe even your entire house is up in flames. But the other reason we check the batteries while they're charging is, I like to check and make sure the charger itself is not overheating. Most of these chargers have fans in them, but sometimes the fans get acquired. Yeah, what if that fan fails? What if the fan fails or gets, I've had my fans where they, you know, chargers have been sitting on my wall for five years and they get dust in the fans. It literally clogs up the fan from moving and the charger can overheat. Most chargers will shut down if they overheat, but some chargers like what I have from 2010, they don't do that. They're supposed to be smart, but anything can fail. Anything can fail and the charger itself can actually go off. It's more rare than the batteries, but it does happen guys. So just be sure. Tip number two, always check your batteries. Tip number three is about flying over people. You shouldn't do it. Don't fly over people. It is actually illegal. Now, let's say you had to fly over people. There is a way that you can do it and it actually involves getting an additional waiver to go with your part 107. You need your part 107 certification and then you'll need to get an additional waiver from the FAA. So this is something that you would do if you had some sort of job where you needed to fly over a crowd at the stadium or something like that. And if this were the case, you'd probably be using a machine with lots of fail safes that has been inspected thoroughly. Not like our quadcopters that we hand assemble and buy the parts from like China. And there's very good few reasons why we don't fly over people. Number one, these drones can fail safe. Props can fly off. Motors can literally just die midair. Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh, it's on fire. The likelihood of these things happening in general is sometimes one in a thousand, but these things do happen. And the thought of that happening over a crowd of people is very scary because these things come down like missiles and they're not light if you've ever picked one upside. Also, it can be really, really scary to people who have never seen a racing drone. I mean, these things are a lot louder than normal drones and that can really intimidate people. That can scare people. You can literally get the police call on you for making too much noise. So just don't fly over people. In fact, my rule of thumb is I try and stay as far away from people as possible, especially if I'm gonna be close to people. I always, always make sure I have a spotter. Yeah, well, I like to think that when I'm flying at any point, the hand of God can reach down and unplug your battery and this just becomes a projectile. And that really can happen. Your battery could actually become disconnected because the connectors were not, or you could have a reception problem because your antenna's damaged. Something could happen and mid-maneuver your quad, it just keeps going on the path that it's on. So think about the maneuvers that you're doing and what could happen if at any time it just became a projectile. So something that I see some inexperienced people do when they come to our events that always scares me a lot is they'll come at the crowd and they'll turn around. You know, it's not like they're that close but they're doing this pass by thing. But you're coming at someone. Don't just don't fly at people because if you're coming and even if your intent is to turn, even if you're mid-turn and it fails safe, you're just gonna keep going into his face and you don't hurt Justin. Don't hurt Justin Bieber. You don't want to. I hate you so much. Number four guys, if you're flying in a group of people, do not power on your drone while someone else is flying and if you're going to do it, you need to be in communication. You need to have your video channels well coordinated with each other. Make sure that you're on different channels and be plugging in away from other people and having tested it, knowing that if I'm gonna plug in, it's not gonna blast Alex's video. So for example, if Drew's in the air and I'm not sure what channel my drone is, I'm not just going to plug in my drone because it could potentially be on the same channel as his. Even if not, it could still be close enough to blow you out. Especially if you're using a patch into it. Even if I'm on another channel and I plug in, this thing is blasting out FPV feed. Your very sensitive patch antenna is gonna pick it up and it's gonna interfere with your video managing your video channels while flying with other people. Paramount. And this is really, really important when you get into racing in particular because at races, it's a big, big no-no when you sometimes have eight quads in the air and they really, really stress that when you're in the pits, don't plug in your quad. If you're gonna do it, make sure video transmitter is just completely unplugged or has a pit switch or something like that. Because it really can cost something bad to happen. You could be flying, I plug in, you see my video and you disarm and go into a house or potentially, God forbid, hit someone. If you're not sure, just don't do it because it can lead to very, very bad things happening. Tip number five, do test hovers. Anytime you've finished a build, made a repair. I just wanna fly down. No, dude, you've got to do the test hovers. Even if you've changed your props, you should do a test hovers. And I know it's a pain. And do the test hovers away from people. Don't do it right next to people. Because what you're testing for is you wanna make sure that this drone doesn't, Tasmanian devil, freak out, make a lot of noise, spaz out on control. It could hit someone, which that sucks, as we've talked about. But also even just the noise can be a problem. If you're flying and I hear, if I'm flying out of the goggles in focus mode and I hear a drone spazzing out next to me, my instinct is gonna tell me to take my goggles off because I know that drone can hurt me. And all of a sudden now you have a flying projectile that you just disarmed or whatever. And there's not enough time. You can say, oh, I just landed real quick. No, when there's a drone spazzing out next to you, you have a very, very small time frame. So guys, you wanna do test hovers, make sure your equipment is working. Obviously when your props are off, as we said, tip number one, you can check the motor direction, try and make sure these bad things don't happen. But always test over, especially after you change props. Even when I'm flying and I know everything's fine, I still put my drone away from people in general. And now this is actually a tip for test hovering that I learned from Joshua that I think is so, so smart. What you wanna do is, before you actually just hover the drone, you can test with the pitch and roll, the cyclic stick. So what you do, don't even raise the throttle, use the pitch and roll stick. So move the roll stick to the left and you should see the right motors lift up, move the pitch stick forward. You should see the back motors lift up. If you're on a smooth surface, like concrete, you can even give it yaw without raising throttle and you should see the drone kind of skidding yaw and make sure that every direction matches the stick inputs. And if there's a problem, this test for anything, if your board is misaligned in the configuration, if one of your motors is spinning the wrong way. What if your travels are wrong and you pitched forward to the Quacos backwards? Yeah, you could have the directions wrong on your radio or even if your props are the wrong way. This is gonna show you that. And then once it passes kind of all those movement tests, you can give it a little bit of throttle, lift it off the ground, then put the goggles on and get ready to rip. All right, you guys, I think that's all the tips. That's all five tips. Let us know though, what else did we miss? Actually, I know one thing you're gonna say. Here's bonus tip number six. Never say last pack. Because the Quaggots know when it's the last pack. And that's when you're gonna crash into the ocean. Or into a van don't lose all your best van don't footage. But seriously, let us know what other tips you think are very important for safety in FPV drones. We can make another safety video because this is such an amazing hobby. And as long as you keep all these things in mind, it can be very safe, very, very safe. Alrighty, guys, thank you so much for watching this episode of Rotary. Be sure to comment down below what you think we missed. Check out our store in the description down below. We have awesome stuff like all the products we're using out here today. I'm the drip. I'm Alex Banover. And we'll see you next time. Wee-haw! Should you go what? So you go check on the batteries. Check on the batteries that are charging that we're not watching. Yeah. Yeah. The irony. The irony. Oh no.