I build small drones and fly them from the inside. Freestyle in the bando, cinewhoop work indoors, and a 25-gram whoop for everywhere I probably shouldn't.
FPV means the camera is the only eye either of us has.
A 5.8 GHz video link sends the camera feed to a pair of goggles that cut out everything else. Put them on and the ground stops being where you are — it becomes something you pass over, duck under, and occasionally hit. Line of sight flying is watching a model; this is being in one.
Every part of it is built by hand. Carbon frame, four motors, a flight controller tuned over a dozen packs until the quad stops arguing and starts going where it’s pointed. When something breaks I solder it back together on the tailgate and send the next pack.
5″ freestyle
Gaps, power loops, and anything with a roof on it. The one that gets broken.
3″ cinewhoop
Ducted, so it can fly close to people without anyone flinching. Slow, heavy, steady.
75 mm tinywhoop
Lives in a jacket pocket. Hits you in the face at about the speed of a thrown sock.
Everything is recorded in the goggles, so the bad packs survive too. These are the ones worth keeping.
Four floors, one line, no cuts. Landed at 3.4 V a cell with my hands shaking.
In through the stairwell and out of a first-floor window, for a café that said yes before they’d seen the drone.
One lap of the flat while the kettle boiled. Two picture frames survived.
Chasing a friend’s line down a treeline until the link gave up and the screen went to snow.
Crashing isn’t the thing that goes wrong, it’s the thing you pay to learn. Nothing on this list cost more than an evening with a soldering iron.
If you fly, come and fly. If you need something filmed somewhere tight, tell me what the shot is.
I fly registered, below 120 m, away from crowds and well outside controlled airspace. Indoor shoots get a ducted quad and a walkthrough with whoever owns the room, first. If a site says no, it’s a no.