2026-09-27, Sunday

The low-pitch BlackBird BB39 props are pretty quiet and handle strong wind well. Especially if there is decent wind and traffic noise around, the drone noise becomes a non-issue if you are at least 10-20 metres away. This excludes throttle punches, of course.

2026-09-26, Saturday

Today was the first time I flew with another FPV drone nearby, with the operator a few hundred metres away and outside verbal range. However, I avoided flying simultaneously to avoid interference, as you never know what control and video systems the other person uses. ELRS 2.4 GHz supports hundreds of drones in the air simultaneously, so I was not too worried about this. Things might be more complicated with the DJI digital video system and its 5.8 GHz channel allocation, which is limited.

I tested very low-pitch props, namely the AxisFlying BlackBird BB39 4926 (4.9x2.6x3). In fact, these are the lowest-pitch props I currently own. They have pretty decent flight performance and propwash handling. Perhaps there is a slight lack of thrust (could also be too high throttle expo). The top speed is reduced, as expected. They are noticeably quieter than the HQProp R38 Racing Props I flew before, which is nice. I get around 7-10 min flight time on 1600 mAh. This might be a bit lower than the 12 minutes I got with slightly steeper props before, but it depends on the flying style.

Not using a drone landing pad draws less attention and makes it less obvious that a drone is in the air.

Landing becomes very easy when you realise that you simply disarm the drone when you are low enough over your target area.

2026-09-05, Saturday

I upgraded my ExpressLRS control link firmware to version 4.1.0. The Dynamic Power functionality now lowers the emitted power reliably and quickly. It works very well in practice and feels very responsive. The lowering was too slow in the previous version (4.0.x).

The HQProp R38 5138 Racing Props (5.1x3.8x3) fly well and offer more top-end speed than my lower-pitch freestyle props.

Sometimes Betaflight does not seem to remember that I switched rate profiles (freestyle -> cinematic). It might be worth adding a rate indicator to the OSD.