Before you buy

There are quite a lot of things that are important to know before even looking at actual products. In this article, I will at least try to list all of the important info you need to know when starting out

Do your research

As is with buying a car, a PC, a phone, or any other electronic device, you should know what you’re buying, and what the basic names and terms mean.

Watch build guides (ideally not ones that are over 2 years old if you’re looking for parts recommendations as well), setup tutorials, and reviews to get an idea of what you need/want to buy.

I go into more detail about this a little further down, but you should also get at least 10h of sim time to see what kind of flight style you may prefer, to practice before flying in real life, and to see if FPV is even something you’d enjoy

If you’re unsure about your findings, don’t know what something means, or just want opinions, it’s fine to ask. That leads us to…

Asking for help

A good rule of thumb is that if it can’t be found on Google in less than a minute, it’s probably something worth asking others. There are many places where you can get help, be it forums, Reddit communities (r/fpv, r/multicopter), or Discord servers (Mr Steele, Drone Community). Before you ask, there are a few things that you should know:

1. Ask in the appropriate way and/or place - most forums/discord servers have dedicated places for specific questions. Putting your questions in the appropriate place will go a long way for the people that help out others

2. There are no stupid questions - it’s perfectly okay to not know something. Don’t be afraid to ask, or worry that you’re annoying others. It’s better to just ask what you want rather than just going in blind and spending a lot of money on bad equipment

3. There are good and bad ways to ask - First of all: https://dontasktoask.com/ is a great page to show how not to approach things. This basically means that you shouldn’t ask:

   hey guys can anyone help me with something?

   Instead, when asking, you should go straight to the point. Explain what you want to know, what you’ve done/found out so far, and any other ideas that you may have

4. On chat platforms like discord, don’t mention (multiple) people unless it’s specifically allowed. Don’t send direct messages out to people who offer help, keep it in one place, and be patient if someone doesn’t immediately respond. Someone will eventually see your questions, it’s rude to be impatient at volunteer helpers, people have their own lives

5. Please pick a time when you’re available. It’s rude to start an entire help conversation and then just not reply back for hours on end, or when you don’t even have access to the equipment you’re trying to troubleshoot

Choosing what to buy

Before you go invest your time, effort, and money into the hobby, making educated decisions goes a long way to prevent overspending/buying bad gear, and keeping your sanity

Stuff to stay away from

Sadly there are many manufacturers that make less-than-desirable, or even outright dangerous products. This is often hard to spot as a beginner. I will list some manufacturers/products below that shouldn’t be considered unless specifically said otherwise:

• Eachine - with the exception of the EV800D goggles and some products that they only re-brand, most of their products are low in quality at best. Namely the EV100 goggles, and the Wizzard/Tyro series drones, which are unfortunately still the among the highest on banggood. The EV100 tend to overheat and go out of RF calibration, sometimes even melting the plastics and starting to burn. The Wizard/Tyro quads are often unreliable at best, the electronics are known to just stop working or even catch fire out of nowhere

• Racerstar - their electronics may be cheap, but they’re extremely unreliable, often failing in highly destructive ways. The motors are outdated, not durable at all, and tend to be inefficient

• ZOP LiPo’s - Mostly a brand sold on Banggood, their batteries have pretty much no quality control. Don’t cheap out on stuff that can burn your house down, and don’t buy from a brand that has a reputation for selling dangerous products

• IMAX B6 chargers (and their various clones) - The original B6 charger is already known to be more or less a fire hazard. The clones are even worse in this aspect. If you see a charger that looks something like this, it’s not worth it

• BetaFPV LiteRadio 2 - BetaFPV has a decent reputation for their micro quads and inexpensive beginner equipment. The LR2 might seem like a good budget option (and the LiteRadio 3 is actually acceptable), but the LiteRadio 2 has very bad gimbals that tend to fail within about a month of use - you’ll start to see the stick signal start to jitter, or even just drop out completely

Those are just a few extremes off the top of my head, if you’re unsure about something, it’s always better to ask

Stuff to look for

I wouldn’t want to tell you what not to get and then just stop there. FPV is not all just caution about products, there are manufacturers that have a very clean track record

• Radiomaster - Their TX16S radio is arguably the best radio on the market, and their products are generally very good. They also have a very good reputation for customer support

• Rush - Great VTXs and stacks, can’t really go wrong with them

• Happymodel - Known for micro quads, and likely the original widely-used ELRS hardware which they still continue to improve

• Diatone - A whole ton of great products, from frames, stacks to motors. Wide range of price points all with good quality

• IFlight - Great frames, motors, ESCs, and flight controllers. Their electronics are good, but they’re a bit more expensive than other options

• TMotor - Great motors, and their ESCs are also very good. They’re a bit more expensive than other options, but they’re mostly all worth it

• Foxeer - Mostly known for their wide variety of cameras, but they have recently branched out to video transmitters and FCs/ESCs, which are also very good

There are many more manufacturers that make good products, but these are the ones that I’ve had the most experience with. If you have any suggestions, feel free to let me know or make a pull request on the GitHub repo

What to actually buy

Now that you know what to avoid and what to get, it’s time to actually buy stuff. I will try to list the most important things that you need to get started, and then go into more detail about the different parts. Most of this info is also in the FAQ, but I will try to explain it in a short and concise way here, while also giving some specific product recommendations

1. A radio - The first thing you should buy when starting FPV is a good radio. It will allow you to put in some sim time while waiting for the rest of your gear, and most modern ones do not require any additional things to run, except batteries. I would absolutely go with ELRS if possible (ELRS is a low-cost long-range, high-performance, open-source RC link protocol. This means that radio signal goes very far, very fast, and for very cheap). All of the radios listed below have ELRS versions

   Sim Time

   At least 10 hours of sim time is recommended. This can vary from person to person, so if you feel like you’re not making much progress, you can always do more. The more you practice, the better you’ll get. If you want to know what sim to use, you can find a couple of recommendations here

2. The quad itself - Depending on if it is a pre-built or not, it may take you a week or more to get all the parts, build it and set it up. This mostly applies for self-built quads, but even pre-builts will take some setup time

3. Tools, spare parts, and other accessories - You will need tools to build, maintain, and fix up your quad, and some spare parts and other odd bits to replace broken ones if needed

4. Batteries and a charger - You can’t fly without batteries, and you can’t charge them without a charger. They’re not esential to the setup, but you will need them to actually fly and set up the ESC

5. Goggles - You can fly without goggles, but it’s usually a lot harder. You can build and set up the quad while waiting for your goggles to arrive, leaving you with a lot fewer steps of setup to do when you get them

You can find some recommendations for different price points below. They may intersect with each other a bit, but some things just fit into multiple price ranges. Feel free to mix and match items from the different price ranges, to a certain extent. For example, you can get a cheap radio and a more expensive set of goggles, or a cheap set of goggles and a more expensive radio

After buying

Assuming that you have bought everything, it’s time to actually set it up. This is a very important step, and you should take your time to do it right. If you rush it, you may end up with a quad that is not safe to fly, or just won’t fly at all. I’ll try to go through the steps in a logical order, but you may need to go back and forth between them a few times if you’re stuck on something. If you’re having trouble, feel free to ask for help in the discord servers like Mr Steele or Drone Community

Verify that everything works

• Charge up the radio and make sure that it will connect to your computer and that the sticks work. You can do that in a simulator, and get straight to practicing

• Plug the flight controller into your computer, and make sure that it will connect to Betaflight and that the gyro works before soldering stuff

• Charge your goggles and make sure that they turn on and that the screen works/isn’t broken (if you have DJI, you can also update (and activate them) if needed)

• Plug the batteries into your charger and make sure that they came charged to storage voltage (around 3.7-3.85v/cell) if the charger supports voltage readout. If not, you can use a multimeter to check the voltage. Once you know they’re safe to use, you can charge them to full if you know you’ll be needing them soon

Assemble it

Most important for self-built quads (duh, lol), but at times even a pre-built quad will require some assembly, like soldering on your own receiver or other hardware. You should also always make sure that every screw on the quad is tight

Setup it up

This is where you will set up the quad to fly. You will need to set up your radio, flight controller, VTX, ESC, receiver, and goggles to have them all communicate properly

• Radio - You will need to bind your radio to your receiver, and set up the mixers to include the switches and sliders that you want to use

• Flight controller - You will need to set up the FC to have the right settings for your quad. This usually involves setting up the receiver settings so that Betaflight can read the signals, setting up the motors and ESC so that the FC can talk to it and spin the motors in the right direction, and setting up the VTX so that the FC can control its settings like output power and frequency. With the necessary settings out of the way, you can go make the more personal changes such as OSD layout, modes, and PID tuning (if you understand what you’re doing)

• ESC - If you have a BlHeli_S ESC, you should flash it with BlueJay firmware to get the most out of it (like bidirectional DShot and higher motor PWM frequencies). If it’s a BlHeli_32 ESC, those features should already be in the stock firmware (unless it’s really old)

• Goggles - If you’re on analog, the process is pretty simple. You just need to set them to the same band and channel as the VTX, as analog doesn’t need any kind of binding. If you’re on DJI, you will need to pair the goggles to the VTX

Fly it

So now you hopefully have it working, and you can finally go fly it! Yay! But not so fast, you should still do a few checks before you go out and fly

• Put the props on the right way, that they’re not hitting anything, and that they’re on tight enough to not spin/fly off

• Make sure that the battery is charged up fully (4.2v/cell for flight)

• Absolutely make sure that you’re in a safe area to fly, and that you’re not going to fly over people or anything like that if something goes wrong (wrong gyro orientation, bad PID tuning or bad motor/prop direction causing a flip on take off or even a flyaway, etc)

• If all of that is good, you can go fly! Have fun, and try to not immediately crash it

• If all of that is not good, continue reading further

It doesn’t fly, what to do?

There are a few things that can cause your quad to not fly, and you should go through them one by one to figure out what’s wrong. I’ll list a few common problems and how to fix them

• Motors won’t spin at all - Likely from the FC not being set up with the correct ESC protocol. It should be DShot300 or DShot600 for most setups

• Motors won’t slow down after applying throttle - This is likely because you don’t have the props on, answered here

• Motors spin up, but the quad doesn’t move as expected (flips/spins) - Often because the motors are spinning in the wrong direction, the gyro being misaligned, or the props being on the wrong way. You can change the motors in the motors tab in Betaflight. While you’re there, the FC also expects the motors to spin in a certain direction and order, make sure that’s correct and if needed, change it. Don’t forget to remove the props when messing about with motor settings. As for the gyro, you can change the offset in the Configuration tab