300X FPV

[Nelsonisms]

Following the astounding success of the Nano QX FPV, Horizon has now released the new Blade 300X FPV.

300X FPV Maiden Flight (5 min 5 sec)

Now that is friggin' fun. I can't wait to try it some more and really feel it out. I just had time for one quick flight this evening after work. All of a sudden FPV quads seem kind of boring.

P.S. Sorry for the wacky electronic background music. It was the only royalty free music I could find for the moment and didn't want to leave it a silent movie.

[thruster]

That looks rather stunning. Whoa! I must have THAT mod!

[Uriah]

Originally Posted by Nelsonisms

P.S. Sorry for the wacky electronic background music. It was the only royalty free music I could find for the moment and didn't want to leave it a silent movie.

I actually like the music. I think it goes good with the video. Looks like fun.

[thruster]

+1 on the music and editing, seamless presentation!

[D22597]

Nice! Since you're running the Icon, have you thought about using self leveling to assist with landings?

[Nelsonisms]

Originally Posted by Uriah

I actually like the music. I think it goes good with the video. Looks like fun.

Originally Posted by thruster

+1 on the music and editing, seamless presentation!

Thanks guys, much appreciated. Not bad for a 5 minute edit job in PowerDirector. Next time I'm going to try attaching a Mobius to get HD footage instead of only capturing the FPV feed at the base station.

Originally Posted by D22597

Nice! Since you're running the Icon, have you thought about using self leveling to assist with landings?

The thought occurred to me, but it can be a little finicky to tune the self-level to get a nice stable hover without drifting and the controls get really soft when it's enabled. In that video the wind was blowing a good 15mph+ which is why it took a little more effort to set it down. It was getting blown to the left. Even if you have self-leveling turned on it wouldn't negate the need to pilot it against the wind and might even make it more difficult due to the softer controls and it trying to fight you to stay level. That being said, I may enable it on a switch just for the heck of it and to have a safety net if I ever do get disoriented in flight, but I doubt I'd ever rely on it for landing.

I wouldn't suggest a heli for a first FPV rig, but I'm pretty used to flying FPV without any self-leveling turned on. A heli FBL system isn't much different than some of the flight controllers we're using on the quads we're using for FPV racing (Naze32, CC3D, etc). In most cases we're flying those in what's called acro or rate mode which essentially handles like a heli. All of these systems have modes to enable self-leveling, and even GPS position hold in some cases, which make the learning curve easier for beginners. But once you get used to controlling the angles you start to find that those modes impose a lot of performance limitations. So beyond a certain skill level they're rarely used.

[D22597]

Good info! Sounds like self leveling isn't a good option for entry level FPV on a heli.

[James Recard]

This might be a little left field, but if you walk towards the camera with the goggles on, will you fall over?.... If yes can you post the video?

Seriously though, great job.

[Nelsonisms]

Originally Posted by K-rash

This might be a little left field, but if you walk towards the camera with the goggles on, will you fall over?.... If yes can you post the video?

Seriously though, great job.

Thanks man. It's very liberating to fly something that performs like that via FPV when you're used to flying fixed pitch quads. It has me thinking about building out a relatively inexpensive 550 and rigging it out with more advanced components...OSD, GPS, UHF, 1.3Ghz video etc.

Believe me I've tried it at home trying to navigate through my living room with the camera in a fixed location on the table. It's disorienting but possible. Luckily no scars to show for it.

[Xciler8]

This looks like a serious amount of fun. I would love to be able to crawl into my 300X and go cruising.

Is this a fat shark kit that comes with everything you need? It sounds like I should maybe get a FPV quad for practice first before it's installed on the 300X?

Great video and looks like a great time. I want one!

[Nelsonisms]

Originally Posted by Xciler8

This looks like a serious amount of fun. I would love to be able to crawl into my 300X and go cruising.

Is this a fat shark kit that comes with everything you need? It sounds like I should maybe get a FPV quad for practice first before it's installed on the 300X?

Great video and looks like a great time. I want one!

Yeah that's pretty much all the standard stuff that comes with the Fatshark Attitude V2 bundle. Fatshark 250mw VTX, 600TVL camera, filtered balance lead adapter and the additional SpiroNet RHCP antenna. I upgraded my multirotors that I fly much further away with more powerful setups so I've just had this set laying around collecting dust along with the 300X that I rarely fly. So it just made sense to put them both to good use. The hardest part was figuring out how to mount the camera since there's not really a good flat place to mount it besides all the way under the skids. I had bought this little 3D printed camera mount for the 600TVL to go on one of the quads, but it was a little too big for that application. It worked out great for this to hang it right off the front of the frame.

I say that it's not the best way start into FPV just because it's very responsive and the cost of repairs and potential for injury are certainly more than on a typical multirotor. Most of the times I've put my QAV250 in the dirt it's suffered no more than a couple broken cheap plastic props. In those cases we're really pushing them by flying through trees, obstacles, etc. But depending on your skills you may be able to handle it with a heli if you stay out in the clear. A good way to practice this is to use the nose camera view on a heli in RealFlight. That only works in the CGI maps, so not any of the "photo" fields. But it's a pretty good simulation of how these fly for real. I haven't tried to do it in Phoenix, but maybe it has something similar.

[JustPlaneChris]

Very cool! I just might have to try that on my poor abused Mini Protos.

[Nelsonisms]

Originally Posted by JustPlaneChris

Very cool! I just might have to try that on my poor abused Mini Protos.

I bet the Mini P would make a great platform for this since it's such a smooth running heli by nature. I want to see some FPV autorotations.

[Xciler8]

Thank you for the info Nelsonisms. Now I have a clue on how to get started with my soon to be 300X FPV heli.

I've always found flying with the nose camera in RealFlight to be very easy. I hope RL is just as easy to do. I think the landings could take a little while to get used to though. I'm picturing having to rip my goggles off.

I've got my 300X flying nice and smooth and with all upgraded electronics so I feel comfortable putting FPV gear on it now.
But....until this thread and flight video.....I didn't really think it was doable successfully. I'm glad I'm wrong because this looks like a whole lot of fun!

[Nelsonisms]

Excellent. As Chris would say, I'm happy to be an enabler.

I was a little spooked about the landings as well, but it's not really as bad as you'd think so long as the camera is mounted level. With FPV in general I've found that the hardest thing to master at first is the height perspective and controlling the rate of descent. At first just leave yourself with enough battery time to make a few landing passes if needed and don't try to rush it. I said it before but in that video there was a lot of wind, so being aware of what direction the wind is blowing and anticipating/compensating for the drift is essential. But as far as judging what is level, that comes fairly naturally.

The next step would be to add some flavor of OSD on board that could output an artifical horizon, altitude, etc. I really wish there were some better options out there with heli specific programming. I guess we're creating a market right now.

For instance, here's a look at the kind of view I have from the Vector system on my QAV400 multirotor. I want this on a heli. The view in the goggles is the one in the PIP window of course. The HD footage is gimbal stabilized.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av0YLkDRRhY

[JustPlaneChris]

That. Was. AWESOME! Love it.