Stick Drills
Deliberate practice beats mileage. Each drill below has a pass bar — a concrete, testable criterion — because "I can sort of do it" is how gaps hide until a real quad finds them. Run drills in the simulator first; repeat the early ones outdoors once you're on real packs.
The order matters: every drill assumes the ones above it.
Tier 1 — control (🟢 before your first real pack)
| Drill | What you do | Pass bar |
|---|---|---|
| Box hover | Hold position at eye height, nose away from you | 60 s inside a ~2 m box |
| Climb & descend | Vertical up 10 m, controlled descent back | No wobble on the way down, 3× in a row |
| Slow rectangle | Fly a rectangle at walking pace, yawing through each corner | Nose always points where you're going |
| Figure-8 | Two joined circles, coordinated roll+yaw turns | Both directions, constant height, 5 laps |
| Spot landing | Approach, flare, touch down softly | Within a body length of the target, 5× |
The descent drill is the sleeper: throttle management on the way down is what separates controlled flying from falling with style — and it previews propwash, which Module 9 treats properly.
Tier 2 — confidence (🟡 first weeks on real packs)
| Drill | What you do | Pass bar |
|---|---|---|
| Orbit | Circle a tree/pole, nose-in toward it | Full circle both directions, steady radius |
| Low pass | Straight line 1 m off the ground, full commitment | No altitude flinch mid-pass |
| Punch-out & recover | Full throttle climb, chop throttle, recover level | Level flight regained without a stab of panic throttle |
| Split-S | Half-roll inverted, pull through to reversed heading | Exit at or above entry height... eventually — start high |
| The walk-back | Fly out 50 m, return and land, eyes on OSD voltage | You watched voltage, not the clock (Battery) |
Tier 3 — freestyle vocabulary (🟡→🔴)
Rolls, flips, the power loop, rubik's-cube combinations of all three: from here the sim is your sketchbook and the Build Log crowd's freestyle edits are the textbook. Two rules survive the transition to style:
- Altitude is the budget for every new trick. Learn everything three mistakes high.
- Consistency is the trick. One clean split-S at fixed height, ten times in a row, is worth more than one lucky power loop.
Progress in motor skills is stair-stepped. When a drill stalls for days, drop back one tier for a session, or invert something (orbit the other direction — it will feel like starting over; that's the point). The skill was consolidating, not stuck.
Where this connects
- Simulator Guide — the session structure these slot into
- First flights — which drills to re-run outdoors, and when
- Module 9 — Tuning — propwash and why descents wobble
- Module 0 — Foundations — why acro rewards rate-control thinking