This sport/hobby become more and more popular every day so I've decided to write quick little faq for those who are interested in this but have no clue how this whole flying even work.

Drones category

First we have to distinguish between categories. We have now 2 main category for a drones. There are:

Photography drones - slow and mostly expensive if you care about the video quality but they do not require many skills to pilot. That drones have GPS, and sensors that will help you to not crash so quickly and if something goes wrong they will come back to you as easy as a push of a button. If you are interested in making beautiful vacation videos for you and your family that's cool, you can go with a ready made solution like DJI Phantom, Mavic or Spark or even with a bit of knowledge build it on your own and carry high quality camera worth $3000.

Racing drones - this is where the fun begins. Racing drones are very fast (even 150 mph or more) but they are also hardest to pilot in the beginning. They are not cheap but most pilots build them by themselves. So if it broke and it brakes a lot they are able to fix them quickly. Now there are many, many ready made racing drones models available in the Chinese websites but buying them as a beginner will not teach you how this flying machine is built and how to repair it when you crash. So building your firs racing drone will help you a lot to solve every mystery of this hobby.

What do you need

All necessary parts/things that you need are:

Racing drone - how this thing is built I will explain a bit later.
Transmitter - called sometimes just a radio.
FPV Googles - (First Person View) this is not necessary at the begging, you can fly without but sooner or later you will need them anyway.
Batteries - drones using only lipo batteries as they have high discharge rate.
Other stuff - like soldering iron, double sided tape, screwdrivers, wrenches and so on.

Completing this list with a high end stuff will cost you a lot probably about $1500-2000 or even more but in the begging you don't have to put so much money in this hobby. You can always try and see if this bring you fun but believe me it will :)

Bulding a racing drone

When you know a bit about electronics or how the drones fly, then you realize that they are not complicated machines. Back in the old days (few years before) there were different components separated. Now we have most things that are all in one so there is not much soldering and firmware gets a lot better so your new drone will fly almost excellent out of the box.

Let's start from scratch.

You need a frame. All frames are made from carbon fiber, they come in many, many different sizes, prices. 5 inch frames become standard for racing drones but now this hobby is focused on mini and micro build also. So you can buy 4, 3 or small 2 inch frame that will work excellent if you use proper components.

No matter what frame you choose you need a motors. We use brush-less ones. They also come in many different colors, sizes and power. For 5 inch build you will need 4 motors that size is for example 2205, 2206, 2305, 2306 etc. They have also something that is called KV witch is just a number of rotation per volt so in short just power.

Next thing we will need something that controls the rotation speed of the motors which is called ESC (Electronic Speed Controller). You can buy separate 4 ESC's, place them on the every arm and connect them to the motors or you can buy something that is called 4-in1 that is just a board with all ESC's together.

New we need the brain which is flight controller. The board that holds the firmware, sends all data to the ESC's, show you OSD (On Screen Display) information in your view, and do a lot of other things. FC's have different processors F1 very old, F3 still used, F4 that is currently the most popular and F7 which is still very new. Your FC will have a lot of soldering pads or wholes that you have to connect to the other things in your quad.

Camera for the first person view is also a necessary component. You have to connect it to your FC and also need something that is called VTX (video transmitter) that sends the video to your googles.

And you are actually done with the build. Connecting all the stuff is not always so easy but the build of the drone these days is not so complicated. Today you can even buy 1 board that includes FC, ESC's and VTX so all you have to do is connect few wires and you are done. Al,in one boards are mostly very expensive and if you crash and destroy ESC you will have to replace the whole board which is not the greatest option for your wallet.

I can write a lot about this stuff but I'm not completely sure if people here want to read this, so let me know if you want some more details about other things like transmitters, receivers, cameras, firmware etc.