Written by an individual who has spent 6 months as a foreign volunteer FPV pilot looking into effectivity of these drones on the frontline. He claims they are pretty much a fad with limited impact. The issues are:
- unreliable / cheap hw
- limited amount of radio channels for video / control (I thought they were running custom FCs - they aren’t!)
- weather and light conditions dependent
- suseptible to electronic warfare
- lack of qualified pilots / hard to fly
- not always the chapest or quickest option
Note: I am something of an FPV “pilot” myself, I am not sure I agree with everything being said (eg imo fpv drones aren’t toys for rich people - I am definitely not rich), but interresting reading anyway. Also - I’ve never been to a war - I know crap.
“Fpv drones are for rich people”
You can get into flying whoops for like $250, and if you wait it out you can spend that over the course of months:
- Radiomaster pocket and a free sim ($60)
- Cheap box goggles down the line to improve the sim and use once you get your qwad ($50 - $100)
- When you finally don’t suck you can get a mobula3 or whatever for like another $120, now you’re flying FPV
FFS, one of the most prevalent YouTube fpv channels of all time started out while the guy running it was squatting out in a box car and dealing with serious substance abuse issues.
I’ve spent far more money on old eBay servers and weed over the years. But no one calls you rich for smoking dope or playing with Linux on EoL hardware…
Also as an fpv pilot, the line, “lack of qualified pilots / hard to fly” makes me want to give it a shot.
These drones were originally designed to be toys for rich people. Before they were press-ganged into service as tools of war, they were used either in aerobatic displays or in races where a group of operators would compete in flying through an obstacle course. In either case, the drones were not meant to be easy to fly. They were meant to be highly maneuverable, but also unstable. First-person view drones cannot really hover, fly slowly, or linger above a target. The assumption among hobbyists is that enthusiasts will invest the time and money to become proficient at flying. As a result, training a highly proficient operator can take months. A standard, base-level course for Ukrainian drone pilots takes about five weeks. The quality of operators it prepares is questionable, and graduates of the course need extra on-the-job experience to become truly proficient. Most drone pilots I encountered did not go through this course. Instead, they learned to fly drones on the job. Even experienced operators routinely miss their targets and crash into trees, power lines, or other obstacles.
This surprised me also. FPVs can’t hover (it ain’t EZ but I thought I can)? 5 weeks for training? I believe I’ve learned to fly “acro” (on a computer) inside a month - and I am going to work… I don’t know what they mean by “highly profficient” though. There may be complexities I don’t appreciate, that aren’t mentioned…
I wonder what configurator they’re using because I’m pretty sure most have a hold mode now. And if not, why not use one that does? It won’t hold like a DJI drone, but def works.
I’d say I was a decent pilot when I was flying a lot but my skill level after a month vs a year of flying was vastly different, and I could still be a lot better.
I’d take a job building and flying drones in Ukraine.
