These drones were originally designed to be toys for rich people. Before they were press-ganged into service as tools of war, they were used either in aerobatic displays or in races where a group of operators would compete in flying through an obstacle course. In either case, the drones were not meant to be easy to fly. They were meant to be highly maneuverable, but also unstable. First-person view drones cannot really hover, fly slowly, or linger above a target. The assumption among hobbyists is that enthusiasts will invest the time and money to become proficient at flying. As a result, training a highly proficient operator can take months. A standard, base-level course for Ukrainian drone pilots takes about five weeks. The quality of operators it prepares is questionable, and graduates of the course need extra on-the-job experience to become truly proficient. Most drone pilots I encountered did not go through this course. Instead, they learned to fly drones on the job. Even experienced operators routinely miss their targets and crash into trees, power lines, or other obstacles.
This surprised me also. FPVs can’t hover (it ain’t EZ but I thought I can)? 5 weeks for training? I believe I’ve learned to fly “acro” (on a computer) inside a month - and I am going to work… I don’t know what they mean by “highly profficient” though. There may be complexities I don’t appreciate, that aren’t mentioned…
AFAIK betaflight (IMO the most coommon fc fw) will only start supporting
POSHOLD/ALTHOLDfrom yet unreleased version 4.6. I’ve recently seen a video about it from Joshua Bardwell - its far from perfect and relies on GPS module that Ukrainians don’t use (according to the article above) to keep the cost as low as possible.I agree that there is a difference between learning to fly and learning to fly well.