How to Transition from Angle Mode to Acro Mode

I have been spending some time flying my tiny whoop in the house. After some tweaking, I found settings that makes it fly really nice in Angle mode.

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Further Reading: What’s a brushed tiny whoop?

Looking for a Tiny Whoop? See my “Best Tiny Whoop” buyer’s guide.

Why Angle Mode?

When flying in Angle mode, your drone will always try to self-level when you let go of the radio sticks. This means if you push the stick all the way, the drone will tilt to the maximum angle you’ve set in the settings but won’t flip over or do anything crazy. If you panic, simply let go of the sticks, and the drone will return to a perfectly level position. This makes Angle mode ideal for beginners learning to fly their drone.

Further Reading: What’s Angle mode?

Transition from Angle Mode to Acro Mode

While I often recommend learning Acro mode early on, as it offers more control and freedom, Angle mode is still a great starting point for beginners, especially in small spaces. You can gradually reduce your dependence on Angle mode by lowering the Angle Strength and increasing the Angle Limit. This gives you more control over the drone’s attitude as your stick input will have a greater effect.

When you’re comfortable in Angle mode, you can start experimenting with Acro mode. Remember, in Acro mode, the drone won’t self-level when you release the sticks—you’ll need to maintain control manually! Start by practicing how to keep the drone hovering in place with your stick inputs, and once you’re confident, begin flying forward and making turns.

To ease the transition, set up a switch to quickly revert to Angle mode in emergencies. It’s best to practice these maneuvers in a simulator first to avoid crashing your real drone.

Betaflight Settings For Tiny Whoops in Angle Mode

Turn on Accelerometer in order to enable Angle Mode

You can enable Angle mode in the Modes tab in Betaflight, and assign Angle mode to a switch on your radio.

Set Roll/Pitch Rate, Super Rate and Expo to 0

Set Yaw Rate to 2, Super Rate and Expo to 0

Actually, your drone doesn’t use Pitch and Roll Rates in Angle mode (but it uses Yaw Rates), so it doesn’t matter what you set them to. I am setting them to 0 anyway just to make the table “look cleaner”. I prefer high Yaw Rate because I want the least movement on my throttle stick possible, you can lower it if you want higher yaw precision.

Further Reading: Have you tried holding your sticks differently?

Set Angle Strength to 70

Default is 50. Angle Strength is like an invisible rubber band pulling the quad, the higher the number, the stiffer the rubber band is.

There is also Horizon Strength, it’s the same as Angle Strength, but for Horizon mode. Horizon Transition is the degree from horizon that the quad will perform a flip.

Set Angle Limit to 55

This is the maximum angle you are allowed to tilt the drone in pitch and roll. It has an impact on how fast you can fly your quad since speed is relative to your forward tilting angle.

Enable VBAT Compensation

It increases your PID values as battery voltage goes down, so your tiny whoop’s handling remains relatively similar from start to finish and it won’t feel as powerless towards the end of the flight.

Set "Camera Angle" in the Configuration tab

Largely a personal preference, I usually set it to half of my actual camera angle, e.g. for 20 degree camera angle, I’d set it to 10.

This mixes pitch and roll into the yaw movement, it makes yaw control more natural and requires less stick input.

Some people prefer to turn this off for Acro mode, you can do so by enabling “FPV Angle Fix” in the modes tab, assign the same switch you use for Angle mode.

Set Arming Angle Limit to 180

So you can arm your quad when it’s on uneven surface, even when it’s upside down :)

How to Calibrate Accelerometer

It’s important to calibrate accelerometer (ACC) so that it stays where it is when you are not controlling it. The goal is to eliminate as much drifting as possible in Angle mode.

Firstly, perform a hover test in Angle mode, see if the drone is drifting in any direction. If it does, you can “trim” the accelerator to reduce drifting.

Land the drone, disarm, and enter accelerometer calibration with your sticks (throttle up, yaw left, pitch down).

Then trim the ACC according to the commands in the above image.

Some Betaflight Settings Do Not Work in Angle mode

As mentioned earlier, Pitch and Roll rates don’t work in Angle mode, but yaw rate does work. If you want to adjust pitch and roll rate, you can adjust Angle Strength and Angle Limit (lower = slower rate).

The following values also have no effects in Angle mode:

• Feedforward
• Feedforward Transition
• Absolute Control
• Integrated Yaw
• I-Term Limit

Create Different Rate Profiles

You can create different rate profiles for Acro mode and Angle mode.

Enable Expert Mode in Betaflight.

In the Adjustment tab, add function to the switch you use for selecting Angle mode, then apply “Rate Profile Selection”.