Everything here assumes you already fly acro and that Air Mode is on, which it is by default in current Betaflight. Air Mode keeps full stabilisation at zero throttle, and two of these tricks need you at or near zero throttle while upside down. If you are not sure how that works, see our article on Betaflight flight modes first.
Where to practise
Start in a simulator. Matt Fleischer (MattyFleischFPV), who has flown FPV since 2015, calls the power loop a timing trick and points out that timing is exactly what a sim teaches well: you can throw yourself at the same gap fifty times in ten minutes without breaking a prop. The power-technology.pl 20-hour simulator plan says the same about the split-S and the power loop in particular: practise both high, with a big safety margin.
On real packs, pick an empty field with plenty of height available and nobody underneath you. Every trick below loses altitude if you get it wrong, and the first attempts will be wrong.
The roll
The roll is the simplest trick and the base for most others. The Pilot Institute course on drone.courses describes it as full roll on the right stick while you keep the throttle where it is. The drone turns 360 degrees around its roll axis and carries on.
The two common mistakes, according to the same course:
- Cutting throttle during the roll. The drone falls.
- Adding yaw. The roll turns into a corkscrew.
Do your first rolls with plenty of height. As they get cleaner, bring them lower and add forward speed so the roll happens while you travel.
The flip
A flip is the same idea on the pitch axis: full forward or full back pitch while you hold the throttle, and the drone rotates 360 degrees. The course notes that flips feel scarier than rolls because the ground fills the screen for part of the rotation. Same plan as before: start high and work down.
The Mepsking freestyle tutorial suggests a progression that keeps these in front of everything else: acro basics, then rolls, flips and yaw spins, and only then the split-S and the power loop.
The split-S
Oscar Liang calls the split-S the fundamental move behind a lot of tricks. It is a 180-degree roll followed by a half flip, and he adds that it looks better when you blend in some yaw. Rotor Riot describes the result: you fly forward, roll over and end up going back the way you came. You also lose height, which is the point. It is a quick way to turn around and drop at the same time.
The Mepsking tutorial breaks it down like this:
- Enter with a lot of height.
- Lower the throttle.
- Roll exactly 180 degrees, then centre the roll stick.
- Pull back on pitch into a descending half-loop. Keep the throttle low while the motors point at the ground.
- Add throttle progressively as the drone comes level near the exit, and fly out in the opposite direction.
Two failure modes are worth knowing before you try it. If you start too low, no stick work will save you, because the half-loop needs that height. And if the half-roll is not a clean 180 degrees, the pull turns into a diagonal dive instead of a straight reversal.
The acroFPV practice drills put the whole move into one line: climb, roll inverted, pull through and recover early. "Recover early" is the part to take seriously. Level out with height to spare and shrink the margin later.
Mepsking also suggests a benchmark before taking it outside: 16 clean attempts out of 20 in the simulator.
The power loop
A power loop is a vertical loop around an object. You fly under or through it, loop up and over the top, and come back down through the same gap. Matt Fleischer explains that the name comes from the throttle punch: you are not flying a lazy loop at constant power. You pass through with little room to spare and then hit the throttle as soon as you are clear, so the drone climbs and rotates over the object instead of into it.
His step-by-step version:
- Pick a good object. It needs a clear gap and a top edge you can see and track, with nothing above it. His examples are playground equipment, a covered walkway, a bridge underpass, a doorway in an abandoned building and a goalpost. Avoid anything with wires, branches or an overhang you cannot see from the entry. If you cannot picture the whole arc before you fly it, pick something else.
- Enter steadily. You do not need to be fast. Too much entry speed carries you past the moment to punch, and the loop stalls at the top.
- Track the top edge as you pass through. Keep a mental note of where the top of the object sits relative to the drone.
- Punch and pull together. Once you are past the point where you would hit it, add throttle and hold back pitch at the same time. Throttle alone sends you straight up. Pitch without power makes the drone flop over and fall.
- Keep the object in view over the top. If it leaves the frame, you have lost your reference and you are guessing.
- Go to near-zero throttle while inverted. At the top, gravity does the work. If you keep the throttle in, the drone shoots away from the object instead of arcing back around it. He calls this the stick habit that catches most beginners.
- Catch it and fly out. The loop is not done when you are level again. It is done when you leave on a line you chose.
How hard you punch decides the shape. A gentle punch gives a round loop, and a hard one gives a taller, oblong loop that clears tall objects with less run-up. If you want round loops and keep getting oblong ones, Fleischer says to fix your right hand, not your tune: ease into the throttle and spread the back pitch over the whole arc.
When the power loop goes wrong
| Symptom | Likely cause | What to change |
|---|---|---|
| Hitting the object on the way up | Throttle came in while part of the object was still above you | Wait until you are clear before you punch |
| Stalling at the top | Punch came too late or was too weak, often after a fast entry | Slow the entry, punch a little earlier than feels natural |
| Clipping the back side | Lost sight of the object at the top | Keep it in frame through the whole loop |
| Object drifts to one side | Entry not square, or roll or yaw crept into the loop | Line up straight and keep the pull on pitch only |
| Loop goes too far | Too much entry speed or throttle too early | Slow down and punch later |
| Clipping the bottom | Not enough height for the catch | Start higher or catch earlier |
The first three rows come from Fleischer, the last three from the Mepsking tutorial.
He also has an order for progressing: a big, forgiving object with plenty of clearance, then the same object with less clearance, then a smaller object, then tight gaps. A mini power loop is the same move scaled down - a smaller punch, a tighter arc and much less room for error.
Putting tricks together
The goal is not a list of tricks but lines where one leads into the next. The Mepsking tutorial sums up the rule as one setup, one trick, one clean exit. Oscar Liang's advice for flow is to use as little stick input as you need, feel the momentum and predict how the drone will slide. The Pilot Institute course suggests short focused sessions - 20-30 minutes on one skill beats two hours of aimless flying - and recording your flights so you can see what went wrong.
Expect plenty of misses. In his power loop guide, even after more than ten years of flying, Fleischer still says "that's not a good one, let's try again" on camera more than once.