Ever since I started flying RC planes (early 1980s) I
always wanted to place a video camera in a plane to get a look from above. I
have always been working with videos since I was a high school student . I was
lucky and got to spend part of the day working with the local school news
channel going around getting the necessary footage and then helping with the
editing. This made me wonder about putting a video camera in my RC plane but the
gear at the time was big and bulky so I dropped the idea and I went in and out
of the hobby ever since. In the the early 1990's I began a Off-Road racing
career and have also been successful with a business in the same industry.
I've been blessed with 2 kids in recent years and put racing on the side lines
allowing me more time with family and hobbies. Then in 2002 I began producing
videos of off-road desert races but due to the high expense and no profit
I abandon the idea of continuing it. At the time I was producing the race videos
I was reintroduced to the idea of wireless video when a camera crew showed up
with two .90 size R/C helicopters complete with Pan & Tilt mounted cameras at
one of the racing events.
Flying by a wireless video feed is not all that new
and the military has been flying drones since the 1940s, maybe even sooner then
that. But making use of it in the RC world has been popular since the late
1990s. My first FPV flight was with my ShoGun heli that lasted about 5
minutes when a tree jump out. I then put the gear on my N-Scale train layout then a friend and I started
running the trains from the engineers view using the wireless cameras. The
train layout was a large one taking up a 2 rooms the size of a 2 car garage and
had lots of view blocking mountains. This made operation even more exciting as
we would watch monitors in the dispatch room as we would operate our trains and
now we didn't need to walk around the layout following the train either. So I
came across my RC planes one day while cleaning the garage and immediately began
thinking of putting the wireless equipment in one of them. My first attempts did
not go so well since the wireless gear was limited on range and I bought those
eBay cheapy wireless
systems. My first few flights ended in crashes when I would lose
the video signal. I would look up from the monitor I'd find
myself searching the skies for the plane (not a good feeling).
So The Search Began. I turned to
the internet and started reading forums locating some others
doing the same type of thing but only better and with nicer
equipment. At the time there was only a handful of people
posting and there was a lot of interested people asking
questions (like me). Forums are a good place to get answers but
one of the problems with researching through the internet forums
is sometimes a lack of response when a new person would start
posting questions, or they might be given short answers
still leaving questions only to be discouraged. After helping a
few people get involved with FPV I notice that they had
some of the same questions so I decided I would build a web-site
that could help others get started by sharing what others shared
with me. This web-site is here to help educate the newbie and
the expert that may be returning to the hobby after being away
from it for awhile. Enjoy and be safe.
