Get a DJI FPV RC: The Cheapest Way to Learn FPV Without Crashes

Have you ever flown FPV (First Person View) drones?

Flying fpv is the kind of activity that only the brave at heart can stand and will try to repeat after their first flight.

Imagine being a normal human being with a standard style of living. Like waking up, meditate, entering Facebook, going to the gym, doing some business, eating, playing with your dog or with your kids, watching some Netflix and going to sleep. Normal. Being normal is good. But at one point in your life you decide it’s time to add some adrenaline to your life. But it’s not adrenaline, it’s adrenaline with Red Bull concentrate and ketamine.

You have the urge to fly a sharp beast that goes up to 120 mph (or more) with a remote control so sensitive that if you move one stick one millimeter in the wrong direction for a fraction of a second, you can destroy your whole inversion. Or injure you or someone else very bad.

So, why do some pilots choose the path of crazy speed and hard maneuvers?

I don’t know the exact reason, I just want to tell you that I am one of those drone pilots.

An FPV drone is a man-made weird species of mechanical bird. It consists of a chassis, an electronic speed controller or ESC, flight controllers, antenna, camera, motors and the controller. Of course you’ll also need the FPV goggles. Those goggles consist of two (sometimes one) little monitors that stand right before your eyes and make you feel as if you were inside the drone. 

You control them in a slightly different way than you flew stabilized drones. The left stick is a throttle, (and what a throttle, that stick will be your nightmare for the first few weeks flying these little demons) and the right stick is to choose where to send your drone. And that’s all. Grab this little Formula 1 aircraft and try not to crash at full speed against your car’s door.

Or your neighbor’s dog

Or your mom’s window

Or your next door friend kids

TRUST me: It’s not easy

But once you start getting used to the throttle (lying on the floor in a fetal position crying is one of the side effects of fighting that damm throttle) and you learn how to actually take off, you have to learn, again, how to fly.

And there’s the beat. Once again. You wanna know another fun thing about FPV Drones?

Their battery

An FPV drone battery can last between 3 and 7 minutes. A large one will last 20 minutes. Hey, this is not the Boston marathon. Especially if you develop an aggressive style of flight.

So, what are we going to do if we want our money to last?

Step number one: THE CONTROLLER

Get a DJI FPV Controller (don’t kill me now guys, I have flown analog for some time, and we are trying to help new pilots here, and as you and I know, the DJI path is the one with less resistance) Any DJI FPV Controller (new or used) will help you, the 1st, 2nd or 3rd generation. At this moment, as we are going to use simulators, the generation doesn’t matter. Later on, the generation of the controller will determine which system will we use to fly our FPV drones.

A couple bucks later, a package arrives at your front door. Never in your life have you been more excited than now.

If you live in a pirate-porch free area, even better. Rush to the door, and there it is, your brand new (or slightly used) FPV RC. Look at it, Precious Piece of Plastic. He even has his mother’s eyes! Plug it on a charger and jump to your computer. In the meantime, look for a small 1.5 mm Hexagonal Socket Wrench, you will need it later!

Step number two: THE SIMULATOR

Go to steam and download the installer, create your account and in the search bar write down: Liftoff FPV.

I have to insist on that none of my articles nor YouTube videos are sponsored by any brand (I wish), so in this moment my recommendation for this simulator is simple: I have a lot of hours logged on this one and plain simple, for me, it’s the more realistic one of the ones I have installed and use on a regular basis. Why? Because of its realism regarding accidents.

It’s simple, you crash = your propellers break and you have to reset the scenario. That’s something that other simulators won’t have (yet).

I think that the price is around $15. Sometimes you can get it cheaper, or in a combo with the mini drones add-on. You just need the base game. Install it, and get a GOOD DATA CABLE with the USB-C end. I play on Mac (I never thought of ANYONE saying that sentence, but after the release of Mac “M” processors, everything changed, nowadays you can actually play very decently on a Mac).

I have to insist on the data cable because I don’t want you to be frustrated (as your nice author on his first 50 times trying to connect the controller). My Mac Mini absolutely refused to connect to the controller if I used a USB-C to USB-C cable. So I tried with another cable. And another. Then, I started looking at old DJI boxes. And I found this DJI-branded cable,

USB-A to USB-C and VOILÁ! The controller appeared on the simulator as a C5 Controller.

After that the simulator will help you in the process of doing the configuration of the controller. Some advice that will make your life (and flights) easier is to configure the “reset” command, to the C1 button on the controller.

Step number three: HERE COMES THE BOOM!

FPV controller: check

Liftoff installed and controller configured: check

I hope you will be a very, very patient person. I wasn’t. But in my case, my first time flying was with an analog 5” quad. And It took me at least two weeks to learn how to take off (unlike DJI’s GPS-stabilized drones we are used to). Did I tell you that almost three or four times I brought the drone back to me? So, one of the main advantages of learning how to fly with a simulator is that your nose/ears/eyes/hands integrity is not at risk at all.

So the best you can do is to get used to grabbing the sticks like a pinch, breathe deep, and start very, very slow.

You have to just keep practicing. After at least 4-5 hours in the simulator you should be able to take off and fly at the same altitude without skyrocketing or crashing to the ground. Now you have one foot closer to the Drone Valhalla, where the real pilots live: the manual territory.

Step number four: MONEY SAVED

When I started flying FPV, the DJI FPV Drone didn’t exist. And yeah, there were simulators back then, it was just that I didn’t know how to use them or connect to them. And the expenses from EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I crashed the drone. It was $25, $60 and a couple of times $100. So if I knew that I could just buy the RC and spend a lot of hours there previously to just crash in real life, I could have saved some useful cash.

So, what are you waiting for? I want to see your flights!

Did you like this article? Do you already fly on a simulator?  Let me know in the comments!