Ritewing Zephyr II plus APM1
OK I need some advice from some experience zephyr II builders. I've studied the various blogs here and youtube builds but I want to see the best way to position all the equipment and I guess every build is a bit unique so here are my details. I will paint it yellow and then laminate it.
Here's what I need to put in but the question is where is the best placement?
APM1 with mag and gps and airspeed sensor.
Ritewing Zephyr II came with 150gr 1300 kv motor 60A esc
came with plastic gopro mount. I would prefer the wood case I saw at blacksheep but this will do for now.
I will use the gopro with this RMRC-600XV 600TVL WDR CCD (NTSC)
ImmersionRC 600mW 5.8GHz A/V Transmitter with 5.8 GHz Bluebeam Whip Antenna Set (RHCP)
EZUHF 8 Channel Diversity Receiver
XBee-PRO 900 extended range module w/ wire antenna
2 of Turnigy nano-tech 3300mah 4S 35~70C Lipo Pack
Remzibi OSD with it's own GPS
Turnigy Voltage Protector 550000uf (1.4sec) (for BEC 5v line)
So my questions are:
Where to best position for the equipment?? If I embed anything in the wing, I want to be able to see the equipment from the top of the wing for status lights and maybe use a clear hinged cover for protection or just use the laminate and cut if off when necessary. Also will have to consider cooling for the components that get hot like the OSD, ESC, BEC.
I think it's impossible to use the battery bay in the center because I will need that space for the APM or can I put the APM embedded in the wing with a clear cover? Does it need to be over the COG or can it be to the side. Is the Zephyr more stable with the batteries in the front like I have in the picture?
I think I prefer the idea of mounting the batteries on the front. This gives me the center battery bay for APM, BEC and maybe Remzibi OSD. I will gorilla glue down a piece of 3mm plywood to help reinforce the center or can I use similar thickness balsa to save weight? I hear this is the weak point in the zephyr II according to blacksheep and I don't have their battery box.
Do I need to have a cooling channel for these two center compartments? The ESC will go by itself in the back compartment.
Or can I put the APM to the side of the battery compartment and use the original battery compartment for the batteries. Does the APM need to be near the center?
Do I need to mount the ezUHF receiver out near the wing tip. I'm going to be dealing with 900MHz xBee, 400Mhz UHF, 2 x GPS, 5.8GHz video. I think what is going to have the most bulky cable is the ezUHF depending on how many channels I will use. If I can just use the signal wires and one power connection from the APM to the ezUHF then it wouldn't be so bad but I dread digging too many long distance cable channels in this sleek airfoil :) If I can put the ezUHF with the APM in the standard battery bay then that would make for less cable clutter but I don't want to create any interference problems.
The vTx should be on the wing tip?
What about shielding? Do I need to shield any of the wires or will twisting them and / or use ferrite rings deal with any noise? I know xBees can cause interference.
I've laid out all the equipment and also laid a roll of laminate to get an idea of the weight and it came in at 2.1 kilos which seems lighter than my similarly equipped soon to retire skywalker. It still should be hair raising to launch, especially considering it's my first wing.
I'm not seeing a parameter file for the zephyr. Anyone have some good PIDs for it?
Found some parameters here from İlhan Başçuhadar. Maybe I will start with those.
Where should the center of gravity be so I can make sure the placement doesn't unbalance it.
I'm going to have an experienced pilot do the initial trimming in manual mode but what is the best way to launch them using the APM? Stabilize mode (that is what I use on the skywalker) or FBW A or FBW B or Alt Hold? I launch into a valley so the ground isn't a problem right away :)
Tags: apm, fpv, ritewing, zephyr
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zepherii.jpg, 1.9 MB
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by steve F11music.com on -
I think you can't print on the lam but you could do it just on clear label on an inkjet printer.
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Permalink Reply by steve F11music.com on
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Final pictures of the build and ready for flight tomorrow.
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Permalink Reply by steve F11music.com on
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Well the maiden will be delayed two weeks while a wait for a new ESC. Last night I was testing the modes on the bench and when I went into RTL it sputtered the motor even though I had zero throttle. Not sure if that is suppose to happen so I switched out of RTL back to stable or manual and then back into RTL and it did the same time but then smoke came from the ESC. I couldn't unplug the batteries in time to save the ESC. I've seen this happen before on arducopter and probably I should have pulled the ESC signal wire from the apm but I wouldn't expect it to do that. Also the ESC should never do that if it receives garbage signal.
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Permalink Reply by Brad Smith on -
that seems kinda strange ,i know the esc bumps the motor you could replace with a servo to see what the outputs doing , only thing i can think of is that if you wired the batts in series instead of parallel and your esc couldn't handle 6s?
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Permalink Reply by steve F11music.com on
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Definitely not that. They are in parallel and I had been testing the motor all week doing a few second runs. This was because RTL was wanting to do something with the throttle but not in a clean way. Like what happens to arducopters if you cause a reboot by plugging in the USB. I know it happened to me some times last year in the beginning and not sure if they changed some code about it but I remember the result was that the APM was sending (well not really sending) but the signal lines were outputting some garbage invalid signal data and the ESCs were choking on it and trying to run the motor based off that data. Then that would cause some back EMF which would fry the ESC. In the arducopter I was able to pull the power quick enough so it didn't fry the ESC but in this case couldn't disconnect two batteries in time.
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Permalink Reply by Brad Smith on
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I always start my APM in manual mode to keep my servos and esc from jitterbugging ! i noticed another question you had on take off ,you can only take off in manual, stabilize or auto takeoff ! once you get it trimmed you need to land and run through your tx set up again so your APM recognizes the new centers of the servos(it will think there pilot inputs and bank or dive when you switch to auto modes )
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Permalink Reply by steve F11music.com on
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So I can only take off in FBW once I've trimmed it, landed and go through radio setup again?
In my skywalker I always took off in stable mode which helped a lot. It shouldn't be much different to start in stable mode with the wing I suppose. I was just hearing that FBW was even easier as you could give it ¾ throttle and pull back on the stick and it would do the rest. I've only flown in FBW on the skywalker, never tried it on takeoff.
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Permalink Reply by Eric Tweet on -
It may be totally unrelated, but you've done the ESC throttle calibration already, yes?
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Permalink Reply by steve F11music.com on
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Yes I did that in the beginning. I really think it was random signal going to ESC and the ESC responding erratically to it. I'm ordering another one but 80amp opto and second motor also so I can have as backup.
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Permalink Reply by steve F11music.com on
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I think i will replace it with this one:
http://www.amazon.com/Castle-Creations-Ice-75A-Brushless/dp/B002LN7NU4
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Permalink Reply by Brad Smith on
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Ive tried twice to take off in FBW and once it turned right in to the trees and the other time it stalled out before the motor came on and Chris has said you cant take off or land in auto modes except auto takeoff or auto land you might can get it to take off in FBW if you set minimum alt too 0
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Permalink Reply by Andreas on -
I always take off in FBW mode, it never failed me (manual success rate is only 80-90%). Maybe the issue is that your launch was with power off? My take off procedure:
-Set FBW
-Hold wing on leading edge mid way
-Apply full elevator up
-Increase throttle to 100% (or a bit less if the wing has a monster power setup)
-Wing will now carry its own weight
-Gently guide the wing on an upward trajectory
-Climb out to safe altitude and reduce throttle to cruise speed (35% in my case)
This launch was manual mode with 800W of roaring power. But it illustrates the technique very well:
This launch is in FBW mode. View From the plane's camera:
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