— The Field Code —
There are
five rules.
If you fly at the KOLLANE field, these are the rules. Click any of them to read more.
If you fly at the KOLLANE field, these are the rules. Click any of them to read more.
There is no pilot at this field who knows everything. Help each other out.
This hobby is complicated enough.
There's no pilot at this field who knows everything. There's probably no pilot anywhere who knows everything — possibly Bardwell, on a good day, on a tailwind, with the right coffee. The rest of us are figuring it out as we go: a stripped motor mount, a bind that won't take, a video feed that won't lock, a tune that turned into porridge somewhere between Wednesday and Saturday.
Help each other. Lend a tool. Walk over and look at someone's OSD. Share the wisdom you have, ask for the wisdom you don't. Nobody got into FPV by themselves and nobody stays in it by themselves either.
If a new pilot shows up at the field looking lost, go talk to them. If someone's struggling with a setting, sit down with them. If you're the one struggling, ask. Ego doesn't fly any drones. Help does.
We're friends here. Act like it.
A no-nonsense guide to why FPV video channels matter — and why showing up without knowing yours is the fastest way to ruin everyone's day.
There's one rule at our field for video channels. Simple, non-negotiable, zero exceptions:
That's it. Know it. Confirm it. Own it. Because the moment that battery clicks in, your video transmitter is live and radiating — and if you're on the wrong frequency, you're not just messing up your own flight. You're potentially crashing someone else's drone out of the sky.
Your FPV goggles and your drone's video transmitter (VTX) are having a continuous conversation — a live broadcast over the 5.8 GHz band. A "channel" is simply the specific frequency they're talking on.
Think of it like radio stations. Eight pilots can be in the air at once — but only if every single one is on a different station. If two pilots share a frequency, neither gets a clear picture. Worse — the stronger signal simply steamrolls the weaker one. The pilot with less power doesn't lose their feed gradually. They lose it instantly, mid-course, at full speed.
Twenty-five milliwatts doesn't sound like much. But at racing distances, it's more than enough to wipe out your neighbour's feed if you're sitting on their channel.
Most new pilots don't understand: interference doesn't announce itself. No warning buzzer, no OSD message saying "someone just jumped on your frequency." Your video just... degrades. Goes static. Goes black. And by then, you're already in trouble.
A pilot lands, doesn't power down, walks off to check their footage. VTX is still transmitting. The next pilot in queue picks the same channel — by accident, or because they didn't bother checking. The first pilot goes for a second run and suddenly can't see anything. Not because their quad is broken. Because someone else is broadcasting on their frequency.
That's exactly why the KOLLANE Channel Map exists. This isn't bureaucracy. It's coordination. Every pilot gets assigned a slot from the 8-channel low-IMD race set before they plug in — and that assignment is the contract.
You might look at a 5.8 GHz frequency chart and think: there are 40+ channels here, why can we only use 8? Because radio waves are physics, not manners.
When two frequencies are active in the same space, they create intermodulation distortion (IMD) — phantom signals at mathematically predictable frequencies. Certain channel combinations generate IMD products that land exactly on other active channels, causing interference even when no two pilots share a frequency.
If you have a drone that transmits on FPV channels, three things are your responsibility — and only yours:
Doesn't matter if you fly analog, DJI, HDZero, Walksnail, or anything else. Doesn't matter if your gear boots on the public channel, on F4, or on whatever the manufacturer felt like that quarter. The moment you connect the battery, you are broadcasting on whatever channel that VTX comes up on. There is no "before arming" grace period. Live is live.
DJI is the most common example of why this matters. Air units boot on the public broadcast channel (5860 MHz) every single time — that's the pink zone on the channel map, and it's why we never assign it. The goggles are bidirectional radios that transmit too, which is why DJI pilots sit 5 m clear of everyone, not just each other. Those are facts about the gear. They are not excuses for getting it wrong on the field.
If you fly DJI, you need to know exactly how your air unit and goggles behave on power-up, and you need to have already handled it before you arrive. Same goes for every other system. The field is not the place you figure out your own gear.
Here's the trap nobody warns new pilots about: the obvious way to "check your channel" is to power on the drone and read it from the OSD. But the moment that battery is connected, your VTX is broadcasting at full power on whatever channel it happens to be set to — and you can't see the OSD until after that's already happening. The check itself is the violation.
What about PIT mode? People will tell you to use it for this. Don't. PIT mode drops your transmitter to roughly 0.1 mW with a range of about 1 m — which is fine when your crashed drone is on the ground 50 m from pilots still flying. It is not fine when your goggles, a fellow pilot's goggles, and the marshal's receiver are all sitting on a table within reach of each other. At pit-area distances, PIT mode will still wipe out your neighbour's feed. PIT mode protects pilots in the air from your downed drone. It does not protect pilots in the pit from your bench check.
That's the actual rule. There is no clever workaround. If you're uncertain, you wait.
When you genuinely need to change channels at the field, the correct procedure is:
This costs everyone maybe 60 seconds. The alternative — plugging in on the wrong channel mid-flight — costs someone an entire drone.
If you're flying a modern link with VTX control wired up — VTX Administrator on ExpressLRS, TBS Agent / Agent Lite on Crossfire and Tracer — you can set band, channel, and power directly from the radio while the drone is disarmed. The radio link pushes the settings to the VTX through your receiver and SmartAudio/Tramp/MSP.
For race-day channel changes between heats this is dramatically faster than navigating Betaflight OSD — seconds instead of half a minute. Same field-courtesy rules still apply: announce, get acknowledgement, then change.
Your transmitter doesn't know you're "just hovering." It doesn't know it's quiet time. It doesn't know there are five other pilots in the air. It broadcasts at full power on whatever channel it's on — and it will stomp on anyone near your frequency.
The rules apply at practice. They apply at training. A quick hover with an unchecked channel is how we lose drones — and losing drones is how we lose pilots — and losing pilots is how we lose the field.
We want you at the field. We want you flying. But the field only works if every pilot treats their channel assignment as seriously as their battery charge.
A drone in the grass, a battery in the long weeds, a transmitter strap that gave way. You walk the line with them.
A drone goes down out of sight. A battery falls out of a bag on the walk back. Somebody's transmitter strap snaps and the radio takes a tumble.
If you see it happen, go help look. Even if you didn't see it happen — if there's someone walking the edge of the field with their head down — join them.
The selfish-prick version of this argument is straightforward: the faster we find what's missing, the faster everyone gets back to flying. Five pairs of eyes is faster than one. Always.
But the real reason is simpler. Losing a drone is a shitty feeling. Hours of building, days of tuning, sometimes months of saving up for the parts — and now it's somewhere in a field full of grass, or it isn't. Standing there alone trying to find it, with the light getting low and your hope getting lower, makes everything worse.
Five people walking the line with you makes it bearable. Eight people makes it almost a thing you joke about later.
We're brothers and sisters at this field.
Show up for each other.
Leave the field cleaner than you found it. That's the whole rule.
Leave the field cleaner than you found it.
Zip ties. Prop bits. Dead batteries. Snapped antennas. The wrappers from your snack. The empty water bottle. The ripped-up foam from your last crash. The tape from your strap. The screw you can't find. All of it goes home with you.
Bring a small bag if you need one. Most of us already do.
The field doesn't have a janitor and shouldn't need one. Every piece of trash you leave is a thing that's still going to be there next week, and the week after, until it's blown into a stream or stuck in a mower or mistaken for food by something that didn't deserve any of this.
If you see other garbage on the ground that isn't yours — pick that up too. See rules 01 and 05.
Cleaner than you found it.
Every time.
Call out rule-breaking when you see it. Don't fly impaired. Be kind to each other.
Be kind. Help. Don't be a dick.
Be kind. Help people. Show up. Pick up after yourself. Pick up after others if it isn't a hassle. Don't be a dick when you don't get your way. Apologize when you mess up. Lend the tool. Walk the line.
And — call it out when you see it. If a pilot has broken a rule, tell them. Quietly, kindly, but tell them. Letting someone keep doing the wrong thing because confrontation is awkward isn't being nice. It's being an asshole to everyone else at the field.
One specific case worth naming out loud: alcohol. If you're hungover from last night and feeling rough, fine — you know your own body and your own limits. If you're actually drunk or even tipsy at the field, not fine. Doesn't matter how you fly sober. Drones at racing speed have spinning props and the field has people in it. If you're impaired, you don't belong near them.
Don't be an asshole.