Hello, again. It’s been a while.

Let’s get the non-drone crap outta the way:

Ok. Now for FPV drone content:

I am obsessed. I dove in head-first and now it’s all I can really think about.

Generally, FPV Drones are quadcopters you fly while seeing from the drone’s perspective. You wear goggles that let you see a live feed from a camera mounted on the front of the drone. I got hooked wile watching Youtube Shorts like this one: Fpv Bando Freestyle

It’s a well that goes very, very deep. I learned there’s different kinds of drones that are flown for different purposes. There are entire brands and ecosystems and cultures to this thing. I wanted to try it and I started on an FPV simulator called Uncrashed.

I maintained restraint for a few weeks while learning to pilot on the sim. But that didn’t last too long before I ordered my first drone setup. I started with an HDZero Crux35, HDZero Goggles 2, and the RadioMaster Boxer controller.

Here are a couple videos from that initial setup:

I AM HAVING FUN.

That’s about the time I found a local STL FPV community and started attending “TinyWhoop” meetups at Perennial brewery. I didn’t realize how popular these tiny micro-drones were. And it didn’t take long for my FOMO to commandeer my wallet.

Here’s a WEBM of me flying a “tinywhoop” around my basement:

The PVC structure in that video is a track for “RaceGOW”. RaceGOW is an online community of people submitting their best times on standardized tracks they build at home. So I’ll be practicing on this track and submitting my best times. They even send out prizes to participants. The drone community has so many neat & weird things!

I also started to attend the “Freestyle” meetups of the same STL FPV group. This experience was incredible because it was my first time being around people doing full-size drone flying out in the world.

We met at a really interesting & fun location: some warehouses downtown that had just experienced a major fire. Here’s a news article about it. Also, here’s an incredible video from an STL pilot flying thru the building while it was still on fire. (The fire chief said it was okay)

I didn’t fly through it while it was on fire. But here’s some flight footage from the freestyle event:

(Bonus video from another pilot during that meetup.)

I want to tell you about more drone things like LiPo battery management, wireless video ecosystems, FAA regulations, cultural words like “bando” and “whoop”, all the different drone form factors and purposes, radio channel partitioning for group events… but I’ll save you from those details for now.

The point is:

• I’m having a blast.

• I will have a cool freestyle drone that can carry a GoPro soon. So you’re probably going to get videos from that. Sorry.

• I absolutely love how this hobby combines flying, videography, electronics, tinkering, socialization, architecture/building/history ~appreciation, racing, etc. It’s amazing.

Thanks for letting me nerd out a bit.

…

How are you? How have you been? What are you excited about?

Where would be a cool place for me to fly around and get neat footage with a drone?! Got any ideas?