How to Fix Instant FlipYour First Takeoff and
Learning MoreTo fix instant flip, all of these must be done correctly:- Use the default Flight Mode Switch of Stabilized 1 which is Attitude mode
- Stabilization->ZeroTheIntegral must be enabled.
- Motor direction MUST be CW CCW CW CCW for NW, NE, SE, SW (or other settings must be made). See Vehicle page.
- Must plug ESCs into FC in correct order. See Vehicle page.
- Must put correct prop type on each motor. See Vehicle page.
- Two wrongs do not make a right, you cannot correct for incorrect motor direction by using the other prop type.
- The FC must be mounted right side up with the arrow pointing forward (or see this
https://librepilot.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LPDOC/pages/2818092/CC+Attitude+Configuration or this
https://librepilot.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LPDOC/pages/5669054/Revo+Attitude+Configuration to allow for rotated mounting). For Revo/CC3D/Sparky2 that is also with the ESC (servo) connectors on the top right side.
Your First Takeoff:- Don't fly in the wind. Perfect calm is the best.
- Do not "help it stay level" during takeoff. Use just the throttle to "jump" up to knee high. Do not move any other stick.
- Do not take off from the side of a slope.
- The longest grass you can find that isn't so long as to get stuck in props on takeoff is the best place to take off.
- First tests: Blip the throttle up and back down just a little bit (don't move any other control till much later); then blip up a little more and back down, more and more till it lifts and gets off ground for a second. If it always flips you still did something wrong; go back and fix it. It should come off ground and stay level. Now you know how much throttle it takes to lift off.
- Flight rule to keep in mind: Always fly with the tail pointing toward you (nose away from you), so both you and the quad are facing the same way, like you are both in line (queue) waiting for checkout at the store. For now this is as simple as "Never touch the yaw control."
- Take off quickly, as soon as you start the motors. Do not slowly increase motor speed. Jump up to knee high. Practice aLtitude control with the throttle stick. Don't touch the other controls.
- Cut the power off before it drifts away.
- Adjust trims after each "landing"
to help it avoid drifting. If there is any wind, be aware that your trims are compensating for the wind too and if you hovered pointing in the other direction, it would drift twice as bad.
- If it is drifting a lot it is hard to fly. Always make sure it is trimmed out as good as possible to make flying easier.
Learning More:- Learn to control aLtitude first. Don't touch the other controls.
- After several trim adjustments it will stay in one place better and give you more time to practice holding your aLtitude reasonably.
- When you can control aLtitude fairly well, use roll (left-right banking) and pitch (forward-backward banking) to keep it right in front of you and avoid drifting away. Don't use yaw yet.
- Learn yaw (rudder, the control that makes it spin like a top spins) last. Until then, don't mess with yaw. This will mess you up. When the nose points towards you, both roll and pitch will be backwards.
- Practice moving around with throttle, roll, and pitch. Don't use yaw yet. Do this a lot. Practice, practice.
- By now, you should be good at hovering in one place. While hovering in front of you, get comfortable with moving the yaw, but limit it to within 45 degrees left to 45 right.
- Make sure you are well trimmed so that the hover drifts as little as possible.
- Get the idea of what this step is asking before starting. Bumping a little bit of forward pitch will make it drift forward. Start in a hover that is pointing almost straight away, but a little left too (say 15 degrees) and bump forward a little to make it drift a few meters (yards). Then move the yaw right to make it point 90 right and bump a little forward pitch. Now you are drifting left to right. Don't let it get very far the first time, just a few meters. Move the yaw stick left (rotate 180 left to change your 90 right to point 90 left) and then bump forward pitch and it will stop. Bump forward more and you are drifing right to left. Use right yaw to point 90 right (like the first time), and bump forward again. Repeat. You are learning to fly left right left right back and forth. Notice that the nose never points straight at you if you do it this way. That is important. You can also use backward pitch for braking if you want. At this point, you are kind of driving it around like a car.
-<-<-<-<-+
+->->->->-+
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you are
here- Extend the left right left right you just learned into horizontal figure 8's with the nose always in the direction of flight and turns pointing away from you on both sides of the 8. This pattern never has the quad pointing straight toward you and stretches your concept of heading without ever doing the difficult "nose in" orientation.
(V i e w F r o m A b o v e )
> > > < < <
/ v v \
^ \ / ^
^ X ^
^ / \ ^
\ v v /
< < < > > >
you are
*here*- When flying your figure 8's and you get flying above a slow drift speed, you will notice that you must keep the nose more toward the center of the circle than straight in the direction of flight. This is very much like driving a hovercraft that slips in the turns.
- Now comes learning banked turns. Instead of skidding through the turns, nose toward the center, with forward pitch to hold you in the circle, the right way is to keep the yaw pointing straight in the direction of flight and use some roll to hold you in the circle. This is the coordinated, banked turn, and is the standard turn for all aircraft.
- What I will call a standard FPV turn is actually close to what you were doing before. Generally, it's hard to see the tree you are using for the center of your turn, that is straight out the left side of the aircraft, so to make a left turn around a tree it is common to fly past on the right side and yaw to point the nose at the tree so you can see it. Generally you use yaw to keep the nose pointed toward the tree and use forward pitch (instead of left roll) to hold it in the circle around the tree.
- All helicopter type aircraft need more thrust in a turn. This is needed to avoid loosing altitude. For shallow banks, the amount is almost unnoticeable. For a 30 degree bank you need 15% more power. For a 60 degree bank you need 100% more power. For a 90 degree bank you theoretically need infinite power.
- A quad flies as well in any direction (forward, backward, left, right or anywhere in between), so you are only keeping yaw pointing forward for other reasons, like later flying FPV or full sized aircraft. In fact you can do these figure 8's with yaw always pointing in a single compass heading and using roll and pitch, but that isn't optimal when you are "inside" the aircraft and always looking out the front of it.
- Fly the figure 8's with the yaw always straight in the direction of flight and get used to how much roll banking you need for various speeds in the turns. Putting just one or two clicks of forward pitch trim (Still flying Attitude mode) may help you maintain a medium speed. Otherwise you will need to keep it moving with a little forward pitch. Reducing your yaw stick sensitivity (rotation rate) may make the yaw easier to control in the turns.
- Practice horizontal figure 8's with the nose always in the direction of flight and the left side turn generated by flying away from you and leftward, then turning hard
left to wind up point rightward before it gets back to you. The right side turn is generated by flying away from you and rightward, then turning hard
right to wind up point leftward before it gets back to you. This pattern has the quad pointing straight toward you twice, and requires you to mentally switch from tail-in through a short period of nose-in and back to tail-in orientations.
( V i e w F r o m A b o v e )
< < < > > >
/ ^ ^ \
v \ / v
v X v
v / \ v
\ ^ ^ /
> > > ^ ^ < < <
you are
*here*- Everyone should learn to hover "nose in" (nose pointed toward you). You may use the wrong control once in a while, but you should be able to recover from it. You should be able to rotate with yaw, in either direction, to any heading, and hover at that heading. It may not be pretty, but you should be able to do it.
- At this point, you can fly. You just need practice and self direction on what to try.
For completeness:- Transmitter trims, sub trims, etc. should really stay centered (where you had them during the transmitter setup wizard). You should set trims back to neutral and instead you should adjust Attitude->RotateVirtual to compensate permanently. If it is drifting forward you subtract from pitch. If it is drifting left you subtract from roll. At least you must do this before trying Rate mode flight, which will be messed up by the trims.
- Understanding and setting up failsafe is the difference between loosing an aircraft to a fly-away and getting it back, maybe with zero damage. Beepers and LEDs help retrieval too. Understanding the telemetry RSSI meter built into modern transmitters can help you find a downed aircraft.
- Understand and try some flight modes and thrust modes. For learning stunts Rattitude with CruiseControl is good. For just zooming around FPV or LOS, you may like ATtitude with ALtitudeVario. If you have a Revo class FC with GPS fully configured, you can do RTB on signal loss or switch position and VelocityRoam is an excellent flight mode to set up.
- Rate mode and similar modes (Acro+, RateTrainer) do not have automatic leveling when you center the sticks, and are considered by many to be superior, especially for stunts and FPV. For instance, long straight fast flight requires you to hold forward pitch in Attitude mode, but in Rate mode only requires you to touch the pitch when you need to change it from it's current angle.
- In general, but particularly for FPV, you should always have an ATtitude mode on your switch. It is the only thing that works (besides GPS modes) when your video suddenly gets really bad. In Rate mode, the video gets flaky, you bump the roll stick how much you think you need, 5 seconds later the video comes back for a split second and you see you are upside down. You crash. In Rate mode, you loose orientation a hundred meterss away, without ATtitude you crash.
- One common cause of oscillation (wobbles) in flight is that the default PIDs are tuned for fast ESCs and you can't use PWM@50Hz on even a single ESC without retuning. To fix this, use at least PWM@490 or PWMSync for ESC protocol / speed (Output page). See
https://librepilot.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LPDOC/pages/12058743/ESC+Calibration