Lets get started

I've been in the RC game for a little over 2 years.  As soon as I saw FPV on flitetest I immediately fell in love with the idea.  I needed to try it!  I followed some instructions online, purchased all my parts, and started the build.  I wish I had started this sooner but figured now is better than never.  Here is a rough idea on how I started out.  I wanted to fly automated and at long distances.

First I needed a quad.  The one pictured below is actually v2.  V1 (fiberglass frame) met a very quick demise.  I had quite a steep learning curve.  It took flashing all sorts of firmware on the multiwii board to finally get the compass calibrated correctly.  Flight controllers have certainly come a long way.

I also needed some FPV gear.  I'm always on a very tight budget so I went the route of making my own Quanum like goggles.  Sadly the monitor I purchased blue screened so it made flying a little difficult.

Antennas!  I figured I would make my own 900mhz antennas.  That proved to be more difficult than I thought.  This antenna setup never worked past 30 feet.  The linear antenna was much better than my antennas but because of my blue screen monitor I still had issues.

By the time I got to this point I was pretty much over attempting to fly quads and FPV.  My setup was far from acceptable.  I had my quad in the air doing mostly simple line of sight flying and a little automated pathing but it was under powered.  After I flipped return to home and the quad fell out of the sky I decided it was time to get into fixed wings.  I sold most of my equipment and started building foam planes.  Don't worry, I get back into quads and hit it hard!