In this paper, we model the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)-based three-hop radio frequency (RF)/free space optics (FSO) wireless communication system with UAV as decode-and-forward (DF) relay. The first link from source to UAV relay R1 is the RF link and modeled using \(\alpha\) - \(\kappa\) - \(\mu\) , second link from UAV relay R1 to UAV relay R2 is FSO link and modeled using gamma–gamma fading model, and the third link from UAV relay R2 to destination with multiple mobile users is again the RF link and is modeled using Rayleigh fading model. The direct communication from source to destination is not possible due to natural and man-made obstacles. Closed-form analytical expression of outage probability (OP) is analyzed based on the system parameters. Outage probability at higher SNR regimes is also investigated to study in deep the proposed system parameters. Based on this, coding gain and diversity order is also calculated to study the system behavior. Also, location optimization is carried out by minimizing the asymptotic outage to improve the system quality.