Baron’s Hobbies – Online Hobby Magazine

Pushing the Limits Of FPV Helis

Posted on April 18, 2011 by aaronredbaron

The 450 sized Mini Titan SE has proven to be an excellent FPV platform

FPV helis offer the most capable platform for your remote piloting experience, but they are the hardest to fly. When flying an RC heli from a video link its difficult to determine differences between altitude changes and forward or backward movements. I’ve been flying FPV helis for a few years now, but only in the last few months have I really felt comfortable flying my heli around from takeoff to landing with the goggles on. Once I felt I had reached a certain level of mastery, it was time to start pushing the aerobatic envelope.

The heli I’m flying is a Thunder Tiger Mini Titan SE. With a simple wireless video setup, it’s proving to have more than enough power, stability, and agility for FPV heli aerobatics. My camera is a very basic 420 line of resolution CCD camera (click here to see a review I wrote on the camera), there is a simple mic onboard, a 100mw 1.28gHz video transmitter, and all of the video components are powered by a dedicated 800 mAh LiPo. On the ground I’ve got two basic “digital display” video receivers running on a Eagle Tree Systems Eagle Eyes for diversity, I record with a Aiptek DV5800 and I fly with pair of hacked Trimersion goggles. My radio control system is a Futaba 12FG running 2.4gHz FASST.

Here are a few videos showing my progression into FPV heli aerobatics

This video is when I really started to feel like I was ready to start pushing the limits

After lots of practice on the simulator, I finally worked up enough courage to roll and flip my Mini Titan during this flight.

It didn’t take me long to feel really comfortable with FPV heli aerobatics, and I’m having more fun than ever!