How to do a flip?
« on: August 31, 2016, 03:08:41 am »
So I have a 250 quad that is reasonably stable...to the point its a tad boring to fly.

I decided that i want to be able to do a flip, but im not sure how. Currently when the stick is all the way to the left or right, it will bank hard and fly quickly to the left or right, but certainly wont flip.

A while ago i had set up two flight modes on a switch: one position for normal stabilized flight and the other for the non-self leveling mode (forget the exact name for it: acro perhaps?). The theory was that id fly in position 1, then when i was ready to do the flip I'd switch to position 2, push the stick to do the flip and quickly switch back to position 1 so the quad would level itself from whatever position it was it (upside down, sideways, etc).....aaaaaaand thats how i lost my first frame.

So, how do you successfuly do a flip with a quad?



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Sid

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Re: How to do a flip?
« Reply #1 on: August 31, 2016, 05:00:50 am »
Rattitude mode perhaps. Just go up high enough to recover if something goes wrong. You also need to increase your Max rate to
around 300 and higher as you feel comfortable to make your loops or rolls tighter/quicker.
Check this out.

Re: How to do a flip?
« Reply #2 on: September 02, 2016, 04:46:44 pm »
Success!

Thanks for the hint Sid! Helped me out a ton!

For the benefit of anyone who may find this later:

First I changed my flight mode to Rattitude for Roll and Pitch and then in Stabilization > Advanced I set the Rate mode response deg/s to 300.

The Rattitude mode was exactly what I wanted: stabilized when gently moving the sticks, but goes into a more 'manual' mode when the sticks are near 100%.  The only problem is that 300 degrees/second means it takes just over a second to complete a full rotation.  This became painfully obvious when it was inverted and the quad was propelling itself towards the ground.  It did complete the flip, but did not have enough time to recover without hitting the ground.

Try number two was the successful one: I adjusted up both the rate mode response deg/s and max rate limit to 720 (half second for one full rotation).  I also increased the Yaw rate to 720 just to see if it was possible for my quad to rotate faster on that axis. Pro tip: don't do that  ;)

Anyways, took to flight with those settings and rattitude did its job: kept the quad easy to fly and when I tried for a flip, success!  It rotated much faster this time.  The first few times I was still bouncing off the ground, but a little practice with throttle control and it worked fairly well for its first time flipping and I was only losing probably about 0 feet or so.

The only problem I have left is that it does wobble/oscillate when losing altitude/recovering from a flip, but there are plenty of threads on here about that so I'll spend some time reading up on that.


Re: How to do a flip?
« Reply #3 on: October 18, 2016, 07:50:12 pm »
Late reply, but the solution to all of this is:
- Rattitude mode for roll and pitch.  It acts like Attitude mode around center stick so it does self leveling, but at full stick it does flips.  (FMS page.)
- CruiseControl thrust mode automatically reduces throttle to 5% when inverted.  (FMS page.)
- Setting ManualRate and MaxRate (for roll and pitch) higher in the Stabilization->Advanced page.  I would suggest 400 (degrees per second) as a good compromise between the motion being slow enough to follow and the motion being fast enough to avoid being upside down for too long.

Default settings for Rattitude and CruiseControl are fine for this.

Beginners should probably do it in a large field, say a half a football field in size.

To do a flip just hover about 15m away, hit full throttle (and leave it there), when it gets to say 15m high, hit and hold full roll until it does a complete flip (maybe release a little early after you do it a few times).  Release the roll stick back to center and the quad will level itself out.  Reduce throttle.

The trick is to have some upward speed when you start the flip so you won't loose any altitude.  Once you understand it, you can easily do it at 3m to 4m high.

It is so easy you will do it many times that flight.  :)

Once you know how to do it, you should practice manually reducing the throttle during the flip so you don't get used to CruiseControl doing it for you.  There is danger here though.  If you reduce the throttle stick to zero the motors will stop and it may not flip fast enough.  One simple solution for the first few times you do it manually is to temporarily increase throttle trim until the motors run even at low throttle stick.