FPV, first and second tries

Okay, FPV is not as easy as it looks.  Or at least not with the Hubsan X4 H107D.  I, like any FPV dreamer who has spent too many hours on YouTube, have dreamed the dream of soaring among the clouds, swooping between trees, following riverbeds, all with the smooth grace of an eagle.  I think grasshopper might be a better choice than an eagle, in this case.  Now, keep in mind that I am new, and this doesn't fairly reflect on Hubsan or the X4 FPV.

So, yesterday I took the new X4 FPV (hereafter dubbed the Grasshopper) out and burned through my five batteries.  It flew as easy as Little Red and is a pure joy out on the open field.  I'm thrilled with the new controller.  The movement in the sticks feels a little smoother than the H104C controller, and doesn't feel as much like a game controller.  I rarely have time, so far, to look down at the screen while flying, but I love the fact that I can see battery statistics and elapsed time since power-on.  Now I can see how long my batteries are lasting without having to start the stopwatch on my phone.  The only downside with the controller is that it has chewed up a set of AA batteries in 90 minutes (yes, barely 48 hours since I bought it, and have clocked about 90 minutes of flight with it).  The old controller has a lot more than that on it and the battery bar for the transmitter hasn't moved off of full yet.  But that's to be expected with a color display running on batteries.

So, back to the flying.  Yesterday I went out and put my five batteries through the Grasshopper and discovered that flying FPV with the Hubsan isn't what I'd dreamed.  At least not yet.  What I did see, as I was zipping around the field, was the grass flying by underneath.  That's about all I could really see.  Either I kept the Grasshopper low and steady and watching grass blades whizzing by, or I got up high enough to see landmarks, and felt at risk of loosing track of it.  Also, the range wasn't what I expected.  50, 60 meters and I was getting static on the screen.  

But wait, the goggles!  That'll make things better!  Meh... I spent more time peering over the top of the goggles trying to keep track of where the Grasshopper was than actually watching the screens.  The screens inside the goggles are nice (at least to me, who has never tried a pair of VR glasses, Google glasses or any other close-view device other than my old DVR).  But they are fun.  And I get to look like Geordie LaForge (or so I like to think), so that's always a plus. "Engineering to Bridge, we've got an imminent warp core brea-- hold on, too much altitude, let me get back down to ... so, then a little yaw, back to me, right,  where was I? Right. Warp core breach!"  So after about two minutes of FPV I took a break from it for the night and burned up the rest of my batteries line-of-sight.  I think the H107D would be a little more FPV-friendly if the camera weren't angled slightly down already from the beginning.  Any forward motion to speak of and the camera is angled so far down that you can't see where you're going if you aren't above 15 meters or so (any tips, advice and correction are more than welcome in the comments!).

Today I tried again and made a lot of progress.  What I did, after a couple of batteries worth of zipping up and down the field and sweeping banked turns past the trees, was to try the FPV goggles again.  This time I took it low and slow and easy.  I powered up the transmitter, powered up the Grasshopper, donned the goggles, took off and just satisfied myself with trying to keep a hover.  I still climbed a lot and had to sneak peeks here and there to see how high I was, but I finally figured out how to get the knack of this:   I backed up and lowered my hover until I could see my toolbox/carry-case/launch pad through the goggles and just tried to hold steady.  Once I felt I had a good hover and kept track of my landmark I backed up more and climbed a meter or so, then dared to sweep S-L-O-W-L-Y to the left, then to the right, and back again, keeping the landmark in sight.  It wasn't sweeping down riverbeds, but it was good training.  After a minute or so of this I felt comfortable with controlling the Grasshopper without line-of-sight on it.  I think this is what it is all about, or at least at this stage of my learning.  So I ran out the last of my battery doing just this, practicing to hover and slowly move while in FPV.  And I'm totally, completely hooked, riverbeds and mountaintops or not!