Dictionnaire du droniste

I)Drone types

Drone to start
The ideal way to start with a UAV is to equip yourself with a flight simulator as well as a micro UAV. This will allow you to take your first steps at a lower cost. With the simulator, there is no risk of breakage and it's an investment for the future! The micro-UAV will allow the acquisition of the first piloting reflexes. The camera is superfluous in this approach.

A more advanced UAV will then allow to continue its progress...

Such as the Hubsan H107P X4 Plus below :

II )The UAV Dictionary

a) Components

What's Lipo ?
Lipo for Lithium Polymer is a battery technology. It refers to the chemical element that is the basis of battery operation, Lithium, and to the nature of the electrolyte used, which is a so-called polymer electrolyte. This type of battery has the enormous advantage of concentrating a lot of energy and therefore of having high-performance and lightweight batteries!

What is an ESC?
An ESC is an electronic system that allows the piloting of a brushless motor. It converts a direct current coming from a Lipo battery on our drones, to transform it into a variable signal injected in the coils of the brushless motors.

What is a motor?
A motor is used to set a drone in motion (obviously!). But the choice of a motorization is not so simple: you have to control all the parameters of the motor: size/format, consumption, KV, etc...

The KV, for example, indicates the number of revolutions made by a motor per unit of voltage (the Volt!).

The choice of a motor goes hand in hand with the choice of propellers. There is always a compromise between motor/helice/ESC/battery to be found!

A brushless motor called "rotating bell" consists of a stator (which contains copper coils) and a rotor -or bell- (which contains powerful magnets). The magnets react to variations in the current injected into the coils, setting the motor in motion. The motor shaft is supported by bearings (ball bearings in most cases). These are sensitive to the correct balancing of the motor. It is therefore a bad idea to run a drone with damaged propellers, since the unbalance is harmful to the motor, in addition to the risk of propeller blades tearing off.

What is an OSD?
The term OSD, which stands for On Screen Display, indicates that a system is designed to send information to the user by inserting this written information directly onto an image. For example, an FPV camera with a built-in OSD will allow you to indicate its parameters by writing them on the image. This is a kind of "augmented" reality.

What is a flight card? What is a flight controller?

These 2 terms designate the same system. A flight card is the "brain of the drone". It is composed and/or connected to different systems and sensors allowing it to control the UAV in flight. It is the "harware" part. In addition, there is the "software" part, which allows the board to be programmed, for example with the "Betaflight" software, which is very well known in FPV racing. The board has a USB connection (often micro USB) which allows you to connect it to a computer to make all the settings. These settings require a certain "habit". We therefore recommend getting closer to regular users via social networks, clubs, etc...

What is a radio control?

The radio control allows the pilot's orders to be sent to a receiver, itself connected to the flight controller (or flight chart). This transmission takes place via radio waves (hence the term). The term remote control, which literally means "remote control", is also used.

What is a gondola?

A gondola, often called a "video gondola", is the support that allows the payload to be carried on a UAV. There is also a lot of Anglicism in the UAV world, and the term Gimbal is also used by the most Anglophiles!

b) The vocabulary of a UAV operator

What's a drone?
A drone is an unmanned aircraft. But beware of misuse of language...The word drone and what it stands for has received a lot of media attention and has quickly become a catch-all term.

An unmanned aircraft, if used for recreational purposes, is called an aeromodel. It is called a model aircraft.

That same unmanned aircraft, if it is used for business purposes, is called a drone.

Thus the notion of camera, plane, helicopter or multirotor for example, does not intervene in the qualification of the aircraft ...

What does "RTF" mean?
An RTF product is a "ready to fly" product, it means a package that includes everything to be able to go flying right out of the box.

What does "BNF" mean?
A BNF product is a "Bind and fly" product, it means a package that includes everything to be able to fly out of the box.