Frosh Orientation

What else makes for crappy videos? Herky-jerky flying. And, what makes herky-jerky? Shitty flying skills. Few out of the box quads are more stable or easier to fly than the Phantom. I could teach Tyke my cat to fly it. But flying is not perfect flying. Perfect flying is driving your little baby exactly where you want and keeping it oriented exactly the way that you want. What is orientation? Better go get some popcorn. This will take a while.

Unlike an airplane or a helicopter, a quadcopter is basically a flying square. To the sideline novice, the front, back and sides look all alike. To the pilot, it can be just about as confusing. There is an implied front and an implied rear and of course implied right and left sides. But rotate Tommy 90 degrees 400 yards out to sea and you just might have another ‘friggin opportunity to learn’. Turn Tommy another 90 degrees and every control on your radio is now backwards. Now Tommy’s front is facing us and moving the aileron stick right will push Tommy left. At this time, hopefully you understand why I suggested that practice thing. Perfect practice makes perfect. Like flying any remote control aircraft understand and keeping your brain properly oriented will keep you in control of your flight.

One of the most redeeming qualities of quadcopters is that when properly set up, they will hover. No matter where in the hell Tommy is out there in the wide blue yonder, if I take my hands off the radio controls, Tommy will hover in place until I figure out which way it is pointed and thus how to get it back to me.*

Another recommendation. Resist flying in a mode called ‘relative flight’. In this mode, manufacturers will claim that you can’t lose orientation because the quad stays oriented for you. In other words, if you push the right stick forward the quad moves forward. Left moves the quad left. Right is right. Perfect. Except it is far from perfect if you are using the quad as a ‘filming’ platform. As a filming platform, that quad is part cameraman and part flying machine. Remember that the camera is fixed to the quad pointing forward between the two forward motors. You direct the camera view by pointing the quad at the intended scene. Spin right, should point the camera to that right. Continue spinning right and you should have the camera pointed at you. Push the right stick up and the quad will fly back to you, with the camera pointed at you. This is the way to fly a quad if you want to take compelling videos. (Yes, I understand there might be situations where ‘relative flight’ is useful.)

As long as we are taking about orientation, I’ll touch on one more dimension of orientation; camera orientation. The GoPro is attached to the bottom of my Phantom 2 via a mechanism called a gimbal. The complete definition is ‘a device consisting of two rings mounted on axes at right angles to each other so that an object, such as a ship's compass (GoPro), will remain suspended in a horizontal plane between them regardless of any motion of its support.’

These gimbals are magic for very professional videos, however one last control is necessary to master; the camera tilt. I modified my DJI radio to remove the stock tilt lever on the back and installed a control pot on top. I also modified the speed and amount of tilt response from that control. The camera moves from almost straight out to about 20 degrees from straight down. The biggest benefit from the modification has been slowing down the tilt speed and thus a much smoother transition in the video.

 

Note: One recommended practice maneuver is to fly your quad in figure eight patterns. Both ways.