3D Robotics Comment by Alan Sanchez on May 1, 2012 at 3:08pm

Mike have you given FBW mode a try. It seems like you were flying in stabilize. When I started all this I made the mistake of assuming stabilize was the most beginner friendly mode and went through a couple of planes. Stabilize will stabilize the plane when you let go of the sticks but other than that youre pretty much flying it manually. FBW will hold a desired angle so its a lot harder to crash. Keeping your ailerons stick full right will make the plane circle at the bank angle you set, I think default is somethng like 30 degrees. This prevents the plane from loosing altitude while youre turning (you need to fine tune your airplane so no altitude is lost, but with the stock settings you should be near perfect).

Watching the video it seems like you might have lost the plane in the sun and just kept banking until you got upside down :S. Good luck with your future builds and sorry about the crash man, it really sucks, has happened to me a few times.

Admin Comment by John C. on May 1, 2012 at 3:47pm

Can you fly it in manual mode?

Or are you trying to use stabilize / fly-by-wire to learn to fly RC?

Comment by Mike Thorlin on May 1, 2012 at 6:23pm

John/Alan,
All flights have been in manual mode. I have been running HIL sim with XPlane vor a few months now, but just not confident enough in the AP to throw it into FBW,Stab or AP without knowing that the airframe is flying right. Of course, the brutal fact is that I am, perhaps, the weakest variable in the equation... one thing that discouraged me from throwing the plane right into FBW is that while the servos respond sensibly in FBW/Stab modes, there seems to be very little elevator authority. The Elev moves perhaps 5 degrees with full stick. I fear I wont be able to pull up fast enough on launch. Maybe with the next model (should arrive in a few days) I should just start with FBW.

Comment by Mike Thorlin on May 1, 2012 at 6:28pm

John, I just noticed you are in Tucson. I attended UofA from 87-92 (Sys Eng), worked for the University and for Allied Signal in Oro Valley (ATD). Almost took a job at Raytheon in 2000... I love Tucson.

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