Be successful with your FPV [UPDATE]

by SuperFPVbros | February 8, 2014 | (0) Posted in Tips

Hello fellow FPVers!

 

We Superfpvbros were asked to make an article on our set-up and how to get the results that we did on our FPV video, that made us win the FPV competition tha twww.fpv.no and www.fpvshop.no were hosting.


This is our first serious video:


 


 

The beginning


When we first begun flying FPV, our goal was basically to achieve the greatest distance and altitude we could achieve. So what we did was purchasing the most expensive and advanced autopilot, and put them in our planes.

 

We spent so many hours and days configuring and setting it up correctly, only thinking that we only need to do this once.


So we finally finished setting up our planes and decided to take it for a spin.

 

Our personal distance record:


Our personal altitude record:

 


 

Have to admit, we were both pretty excited and our adrenaline was rushing every time we broke our personal record. BUT those exciting times ended quickly, when we realized that we had to configure and adjust our autopilot quite often, so the FPV motivation simply faded away over time, not thinking that we actually could have a lot more fun with low-end equipment. Not to mention, the thought of our $1500 plane could be gone in matter of seconds.


So we both have been in that dark place, where our advanced FPV system/autopilot is not co-operating or working as intended. We both had one of the most advanced autopilot systems, which required a lot of configuration and pre-checks before every flight. We ended up using more time configuring and adjusting it, than flying it.



 

The competition


In the start of june 2013, we discovered that www.fpv.no and www.fpvshop.no were hosting a Norwegian FPV competition. As we wanted to participate, we were quite behind everyone else, as the competition already had started a few months before we discovered it. In other words: we only had 3 weeks to record some daredevil flying and putting it together.


Our competitive instincts kicked in and we were really eager to win it, so we had to do something drastic to have a chance at winning this competition. We decided to take out all our expensive equipment and only leave the necessary parts to fly and film, because we were going to focus on flying “like we stole the plane”, so we were quite certain that we were going to wreck our planes(and we did), and we were going all-in to win this.


Ahh... The feeling when we won. :)


Winning the competition was extremely fun, but what was really rewarding was that we learned that keeping it simple = much more fun.


Simple is fun, really? Yes!


Don’t take the expensive road like we did, and start out simple and wreck your planes!

 

By keeping it simple, you only want the components that you actually need to fly.


When you are thinking of making a FPV movie, you really want it to be great. But have you thought through on what you want people to see in the video? This is a big step in making a great video.

First off, think of what you like to see in a FPV movie. Imagine how the perfect movie would look like. And then think of what do you like to see in other videos? now remember these thoughts, write them down and go fly it!


Big tip, a video should contain allot of different locations, cause viewers get quickly bored from watching a 5 min video from the same spot, the same sceneries and the same angles.

This is our opinion.


Setup


Our setup, that was used during film:


  • Ritewing Zephyr 2

  • Bluebird servos

  • Turnigy 80a ESC

  • Turnigy 3648 1450kv Motor

  • 9x6 Props

  • 2x 4s 3300mAh Turnigy Nano-Tech in parallel

  • RMRC 1.3GHz vTX & vRX        

  • IBCrazy Pinwheel antennas(Both TX and RX)

  • Cheap FPV camera

  • LRS: Dragonlink V2

  • Turnigy 9x

  • Fatshark Base goggles

  • GoPro 3 Black

  • Turnigy 9x rTX

UPDATE:


We now got a sponsorship deal with Dragonlink/fpvpro.com.

And a few new videos on our channel, check them out!

https://www.youtube.com/user/SuperFPVbros/videos


We also made a new video for this years competition that fpv.no is hosting.

 





Got questions? Go ahead and ask!

 


-SuperFPVbros




COMMENTS

TehMaxwell on February 26, 2014
Awesome article and a great video! Congratulations on your wing and I hope to see more FPV from you guys!
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Sirglider on February 26, 2014
Great article, thank you for sharing!
What OSD do you use while flying?
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SuperFPVbros on February 26, 2014
we want to keep it as simple as possible, so we dont even use a OSD.
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Sirglider on February 26, 2014
Good answer, thanks!
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parajared on March 19, 2014
Ok I'll bite,
1) How do you guys find your plane when you down one really far away?
2) How do you control your pan/tilt mech?
3) What are some common questions people ask you (I find a disturbing amount of people asking if I can strap a gun to mine or... the ol' using FPV to do perverted stuff question)
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SuperFPVbros on September 28, 2014
1) We dont fly insane ranges anymore, but when we did, the only thing saving us was the autopilot with RTH. Now we just fly a couple hundred meters away from us.
2) On our planes we dont have any pan/tilt, but our quad does. Its equipped with a gimbal, and we got the pan/tilt assigned on free channels on our radios.
3) The most common question we get is "how far can you go?".

We got a few more videos now, go check them out, like and subscribe on our youtube channel.
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Be successful with your FPV [UPDATE]