by Jack
1. Smoke stopper
When you are building a new multirotor, there is generally a lot of fiddly small soldering involved. If one of these solder pads shorted to another, the "magic smoke" would be released, frying expensive electrical components. This is why it is highly beneficial and provides good piece of mind to use a smoke stopper while powering on a new build. A smoke stopper is essentially a resettable digital fuse (usually with XT60 and XT30 connections) that will break the circuit if there is too much current; caused by a short circuit. They can be purchased for around $10 and are totally worth it. Note that you cannot arm the motors or fly your drone with a smoke stopper attached as it causes too much current.
2. Conformal Coating
Drones. Otherwise known as "water magnets". It is too common that our precious FPV quadcopters end up crashing in puddles of water or wet grass. Often, this will cause no damage, but if you are unlucky, the water could get on the circuitry and cause a short circuit, which will again result in fried components. Luckily, there is a simple and cheap solution to this problem. Conformal coating is a silicon protective layer that many pilots use to water proof their gear. It is to be applied with one or two layers on your flight controller and ESCs. A good coating will not allow drops of water to create short circuits, protecting your electronics from water damage and other types of erosion. I recommend conformal coating after you've soldered everything up as this is much easier and effective. After reworking soldering, you will need to reapply the conformal coating to the pads with fresh solder on them. The conformal coating I use is called MG Chemicals modified silicon conformal coating and costs about $35.
3. Control link and RSSI
When flying behind obstacles or at long distances from yourself, failsafes can result in annoyance, long walks and even possible lost drones! This is why I think it is very important to invest in a decent control link for your purpose of flying. A general rule is that your video link should out run your control link. If you are flying whoops indoors, an Frsky d8 spi receiver should be more than adequate. Outdoors, general proximity and freestyle - and XM+ or R-xsr should work perfectly if you are flying within a few hundred metres of yourself. However, if you want to fly much more than 500 metres away, you could do this with Frsky gear - but I think it is much better to be well within your control link's range than right at the edge of it (such as with Frsky). This is why I recommend Crossfire for any range further than 500 metres. It will provide you with ultimate confidence as flights over 40 KM are possible with TBS Crossfire gear. If you are thinking of getting Crossfire, I would recommend the Micro TX V2 bundle as it costs around $200 and includes 3 receivers, 6 antennae and the TX itself, along with other extras such as heatshrink and wires. It is great value for money. No matter what type of control link you are using, however, it is essential to setup telemetry on your radio or RSSI in your on screen display. These features allow you to monitor your signal strength, warning you when it's time to turn around in order to avoid signal loss. If you are using crossfire, make sure you are using the right frequency for your region and LQ instead of RSSI.
4. Use a beeper
When you plug in your battery to your drone, you should here 5 beeps, generated by the motors. Well these motor beepers can be activated by a switch on your radio controller, if set up in your flight controller software. This will allow you to make your drone beep if it goes down far away, making it easier to locate. I also recommend setting it up to beep when the battery has been plugged in for two minutes with no action, as this will alert you to unplug the battery before it gets drained. It is also beneficial to set it up to beep if the RX signal is lost, making it easier to find after a failsafe. Some people prefer using an external beeper that is not powered by the main battery in case the battery is ejected in a crash. A great external beeper is the vifly finder 2.
5. Learn to crash
This tip is applicable to beginners who are still learning their controller. Essentially, a large part of learning how to crash is knowing when to disarm, or even if you need to disarm in a crash. If you crash your drone and disarm late, you could risk burning out an esc or motor from the motors trying to spin when stuck. Naturally acquired skills over time involved with learning to crash are also bailing out of tricks, for example cancelling an off target dive, or completing a short powerloop early.
6. When to land battery
If you are used to flying 1s Tinywhoops, you may consider 3.3v or even 3.2v a good battery voltage to land at. However, with larger aircraft, it is highly recommended to land at 3.5v - 3.7v per cell at a hover, as this puts less strain on the lipo. This will help to preserve the life span of your batteries, so they do not degrade so quickly.
7. GPS
If you are planning on flying out further than 400 metres or over an undesirable ground to crash on, it is wise to install a GPS in your drone. This is fairly easy to do. The benefits of having a GPS on board are: speed, altitude, distance from home, direction to home, coordinates position, return to home. I would not really recommend setting GPS rescue as the failsafe, as if you are flying behind a tree and failsafe, your quadcopter would attempt to power up through the tree, causing damage. It is useful to use if you lost video reception; you can activate it to come back to you and into range. If your drone goes down, you can enter the GPS coordinates on Google maps and this will make it much easier to find. The GPS home arrow is useful for you to know which direction to fly to get back to yourself.
8. Turtle mode
Turtle mode is a very interesting feature. It often results in saved quads while also sometimes damaging them. What is it? It is a feature that reverses the motors in order to flip the quad over, which is useful if you crashed it upside down. While I do recommend setting it up on a switch, I would not recommend using it every time your drone crashes upside down. In fact, I recommend you rarely ever use turtle mode, especially on micro quads. This is because if a motor is obstructed by an object, the amps drawn will greatly increase as the motor tries to spin but can't, possibly resulting in a smoked ESC or motor. This is why I think turtle mode should only be used if it is not easy to recover your drone (e.g. if stuck at the top of a tall tree or building).
9. Check gear before flight
Propellers, motors, screws. All of these things can come loose over time due to vibrations and hard crashes. This is why I think it is crucial to check that everything is in good condition before flight, or else it could result in an unreliable aircraft.
10. Don't try to take off if the motors are stuck
If one of the motors is clearly stuck against something when you arm the quad, don't keep trying to take off. This could result in burning out a motor or esc. It is also important to not keep flying if one of the motors has a lot of dirt or sand in it. If there is a lot of dirt or sand in the motor and it is spinning, this can start to ruin the motor, putting strain on it and creating scratches inside of it. Instead, it is recommended to take it apart and clean it well with blu tack. After putting it back together, it should work perfectly like normal.
11. Turn around doing long range
If you are new to long range and using a quad with maybe not the best antenna mounting, you may assume the video and control reception on the way going out will equal the reception flying back. Often, the VTX and / or RX antenna become obscured by components such as the battery, meaning that when you turn the craft around, the reception becomes poor. To make sure you don't lose video or control coming back, simply turn around often and check the video quality and receiver signal strength before continuing.
12. Check your soldering
It is important that all your solder joints on your craft are well spaced and strong. They do not have to look very pretty, but the main things that are important are that the wire is making good contact, the joints are far enough away from each other that there are no bridges created and there is not a lot of wire exposed that is not soldered. This last tip about the wire being exposed beyond the solder joint is crucial, as if you have too much exposed wire, it will make it much easier for a short circuit to occur.
13. Use a DVR
If you are not using a beeper or GPS, then it is essential that at least you use a DVR. If your drone goes down during flight, you can review the DVR footage to try to locate its last position in the air, helping you to find it. Adding to this is an extra tip - make sure your SD card has got plenty of storage before you go flying - it gets filled up quickly and you do not want it to stop recording due to low space remaining.
14. FPV Simulator
If you are a beginner to FPV drones or even an intermediate, I would strongly advise spending time practicing your skills in an FPV simulator. This will help you to gain confidence and refine new tricks before trying them in real life. I recommend DRL, Liftoff or Velocidrone. These will need a fairly high spec computer to run smoothly. If you have a mobile phone to use it on or a low spec PC, then FPV Freerider is a great low graphic intensity option which is also a lot cheaper.
15. Water bottle
If you plan on flying over water, it could be highly beneficial to strap a sealed empty large water bottle to your quadcopter. This would help the drone to float in the event of a crash into water, which would reduce the chances of losing the aircraft.
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