I notice that the popular choice for the LED color order for the Alta is green for the front and red for the rear, for what ever reason I always have use the opposite, red front, green or blue rear, the center Flight control LED on the Alta will flash red in case of alarms, wouldn't the red LED be more notisable if its between 2 green booms than 2 red booms ?
It all comes down to what you prefer, really. I prefer to have red lights on the back of my machines just because all cars have it like that, and you see that thousands of times a day that red lights on the back feel more natural, at least for me. You just have to setup it in such a way so that you don't have to 'think' about which lights are where. This way you won't have to ever focus on this and your brain will do the calculations on the fly, without wasting the 'processing power' on determining where's the front of the machine. Especially useful in uncontrolled situations, where just a fraction of the second makes a difference between landing safely or killing someone/your machine.
On the other hand, coming from Cinestars, the convention used by the folks at Quadrocopter, was to mark the front booms red. Personally, I change the ALTA to have green at the "tail" and red at the front -- which also matches the Cinestar/Inspire 1 Pro/Phantom 3 Pro that I also fly. My logic is that if I can see green (which is also higher visibility to the human eye, incidentally), then I'm "safe" and nose-out...other the other hand if I see red, beware, because I'm nose-in and control reversal applies. I can't help wondering whether the FAA will ever insist that we observe normal navigation colors (red for left, green for right, white at nose and tail). Andy.
Andy, the standard navigation colors used in aviation doesn't work for multicopters because they can fly (and often do) in whatever direction they want. For example, for shorter range shot I'm usually flying away from myself nose out but then I'll do a banked turn and get back to the home point nose in. For long range shots (200+ meters) without FPV setup I always go back nose out and try not to do yaw turns just because you can't really see how you are turned when 600 meters away. I have been flying without any lights/boom coloring for a long time.
I though about that analogy with car tail lights it does make sense but I think I will stick with green for the front for the following reasons: 1 Is what I am use to from flying Cinestar, Inspire 2 if a red alarm comes on between two green booms I think I will be able to detect it faster and react to it 3 I agree with the green having higher visibility to the human eye thats why back in the day steadicam monitors where green before LED's its so cool that Alta lets you change colors with a swipe on the app
I think the FAA might disagree with you -- manned helicopters are required to carry position lights and they can also fly in whatever direction they want. See Sec. 23.1385 of the Federal Air Regulations. http://www.risingup.com/fars/info/part23-1385-FAR.shtml I don't see any exemption for manned helicopters. Andy
I know Andy, but still, it's hard to see backwards when in a heli, so while it is possible you won't see many pilots casually flying backwards. Flying left/right is also used mostly for precise positioning. Once you are in the air you usually fly forward, at least that happens more often in a full size heli than in a multirotor. I don't have a lot of experience with helis, but I've seen them mostly flying left/right when tracking something on the ground or to start faster (the heli takes off, starts flying right, rotates right and continues flying straight). That's mostly because the field of view is limited in full size helis, which cannot be said about a multirotor operator standing on the ground.
All valid points, Mateusz.....however I think you're more courageous than me in wanting to "reason" with the FAA. Andy.