Great news for pilots who yearn to expand their flying skills and knowledge because the FPV bible FPV Flight Dynamics: Mastering Acro Mode on High-Performance Drones is now available from Rotor Riot, and at a lower price than Amazon (at time of writing).
If you don’t know about the book yet, it’s written by Christian M. Mollica (aka “Vespula”) – an FAA licenced UAV pilot who has been designing, building and flying high-performance FPV multirotor drones for more than five years.
Christian goes into great detail explaining the tricks, techniques and manoeuvres to master racing, freestyle and cinematic FPV flying. Not only does he provide superb strategies for developing your abilities, but also an actionable plan so you can work on the essential moves or skills first.
All this is guided by remarkably helpful illustrations, 3D diagrams, photos and infographics that help you visualise and understand the necessary steps and provide the knowledge required.
Let’s face it, even though it’s been around for a fair few years now, FPV flying – in all its forms – is still quite a young hobby/profession/sport. The terms, manouveres and concepts are not yet clearly defined. Even advanced pilots have trouble defining, explaining and even naming some of the stuff they are doing with FPV – but Christian defines and explains the terms, ideas and knowledge clearly and in great detail.
I believe the FPV community needed something like this. It’s important to have a shared knowledge base, not only for advancing skills but for the ability to communicate and share ideas.
Here are some of the book’s highlights as given on the sales page:
31 FUNDAMENTAL MANEUVERS
Static Climbs and Drops, medial and lateral Dynamic Climbs, ascending Half-Loops, Convex Climbs, Pullbacks, Parachutes, Diving Helixes, Two-Dimensional Sweeping Turns (2D Sweeps), S-Turns, 180° Hairpin Turns, 3D Sweeps, Coils, Rippled Turns, Elliptical Orbits, Textbook Power Loops, Parachuting Power Loops, Aerial Corkscrews, Barrel Rolls, Stunted Barrel Rolls, Aileron Rolls, the Textbook Split-S, Vaulting Split-S, and Sliding Split-S, Level Orbits, Knife-Edge Orbits, Immelmann Turns, Half Cuban Eights, High Jumps, and Hammer Throws
19 FREESTYLE TRICKS
Frontflips, Backflips, Level Yaw Spins, Snap Rolls, Wallkicks, Kamikazes, Juicy Flicks, Vanny Rolls, Proxy Knockbacks and Slingshots, Rewinds, Wall Rides, Stall-Slide Corkscrews, Rubik’s Cubes, Inverted Yaw Spins, Mattyflips, Trebuchets, Inverted Orbits (aka Cyclones/Trippy Spins), Keeling Turns, and Windmills
Learn how to:
- Manipulate your quadcopter’s speed and momentum with techniques like Sprints, Coasts, Stalls, Short-Rooks and Full-Rooks, Rook-n-Rolls, and Blips
- Negotiate advanced racing complexes like Chicanes/Slaloms, Gated Corkscrews, and coiled obstacles like Ladders
- Manage your LiPo batteries, including charging, discharging, and storage strategies
- Dissect your quadcopter, and understand each of its components, their technical specifications, and how they’re all related and interact with one another
- Chase mobile subjects like drift cars and downhill skiers with advanced cinematic shot-framing techniques, like Sidewinding Sweeps via the quadcopter’s secondary flight stance, the Outside Stance
- Prioritize visual references in your field of view, so you always know what to be looking at and when
FPV Flight Dynamics: Mastering Acro Mode on High-Performance Drones is available now from Rotor Riot and Amazon in paperback.
You can follow/subscribe to Christian here on Instagram & YouTube.