Comment by Bertrand Duchiron on June 19, 2012 at 7:29pm

I also have almost the same X8, except it's a white one, so far the only mods I have done :

- replace the aileron with balsa one with nylon hinge.

- New motor plates (missing from the factory) , I made some using Kydex.

I love the X8, so spacious that if look like empty even filled with all my stuff.

Comment by Alexander LeBrun on June 19, 2012 at 8:13pm

Thanks all!

@R Lefebvre The 319DPS reciever does have a failsafe function. Nice catch on the screws will replace as you suggested. Thanks for the heads up on the batteries, but I have a few of them still in boxes for my multirotors, I'll try em out and see how they go. 

@Jason 3020 1110Kv on a 3s setup.

@John Moore Large ABS equipment shipping case. The wings are held on by tape so they break down for shipping.

@James sowell I have a flat rubber washer that I mounted between my motor and wodden plate. I also used bolts to hold the motor not the supplied screws and added a second motor plate that bolts through on the inside of the plane, so that I am pinching the foam tightly and it makes a solid base. I learned on my copters that nothing helps the vibration more than just tightening everything down nice and tight.

@Toby Mills No sir not yet what you see there is where I am as of last night. I saw you ask your question on Hooks's blog post about the X8 and have been checking daily to see if anyone has answered you. Are you using default PIDs? Whats been your approach?   I imagine PID tuning is a little harder than a copter which you can pretty much hold in your hand and tune to get you close and then can fly it around and make the finer tweeks. Please keep me updated if you find something that works and I will do the same.

@kevin kitchin Hand launch it!

Comment by Christiaan van Vollenstee on June 20, 2012 at 7:07am

Awesome, wish I can get one but the shipping alone for this, is around $1200 to south africa so its a bit crazy. Can you please post a video soon of this plane of yours souring in the sky.

 

Regards

Christiaan

Comment by james sowell on June 21, 2012 at 12:48am

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1555543  christiaan look here

Comment by Toby Mills on June 21, 2012 at 3:23am

Still not a lot of luck with pids.
I have 7 flights on mine now. Am making slow progress with pids, fix one performance issue and break another.
I started at both default and skyfun pids but this airframe is just so big and different.
I will keep tweaking.
It flies fine on defaults but does snake a fair bit.
I am looking for perfection which takes a lot of patience and trial and error.

Comment by Christiaan van Vollenstee on June 21, 2012 at 3:56am

Once you have the perfect PID's you must submit them to the forum for download I can imagine this body will take full flex popularity in the near future.

Comment by Brandon Galles on June 21, 2012 at 1:00pm

Yes, please submit the PID's. I would like to "barrow" them.

Comment by Toby Mills on June 21, 2012 at 2:23pm

I had a good calm day this morning so flight number 8 allowed me to really focus on improving the PID settings.

Still no crashes, so I am stoked with how easy this plane is to use. Its just landing that is the challenge.

The pids are still not perfect, the NAV pids are very close but the pitch pid still needs a bit of work as I have a 0.5Hz pulse that needs ironing out. If you have pitch pids that work, I would leave them where they are until I have this sorted.

The big problem with this plane is its size relative to a lot of the models people are using, it takes quite a long time for servo movements to result in a change in direction. As a result, I've had to dial in quite a lot more nav differential than I am used to using so that it doesn't over correct and snake all over the place. Also the cross track gain is way down.

It needs quite a lot of servo gain, but quite a low nav gain. This causes turns to be fairly tight, but doesn't result in minor course corrections causing major snaking.

Give these pids a try and please update this thread with any improvements / corrections. Once we have a file that works well on multiple planes, then we can submit a proper param file for the X8.

Comment by Alexander LeBrun on June 21, 2012 at 9:45pm

@ Toby Your the man! Thanks for a starting point. I plan to test it out this weekend. I have her all hooked up and programmed with your starting PIDs. She seems to react as expected with the exception that if I put it level and flip to a stabilized mode the it kicks up the right aileron a bit. The movements seem right other wise, I pull up it tries to push down, just that aileron seems off a bit, it looks level in the Mission planner. I have also abandoned the old XBees they have always been a pain in the arse, will swap out with new 3DR radios when they come back in stock. Any insight on the right aileron? I guess I should upload a video to show what I am seeing.

Comment by Toby Mills on June 22, 2012 at 3:53am

Something doesn't sound right with your physical setup. Maybe recalinrate it or check you don't have any manual trim on your transmitter. Also check the APM mounting.
I have some updated pids I will post tomorrow which resulted in an almost perfect flight this afternoon.

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