Discussions

I have made now 4 flights with my APM-equipped airplane.

The plane is a simple trainer 150cm wingspan (58") with ailerons, elevator and rudder. Electric 4s 3000mAh, had Turnigy esc inside but now changed to Jeti Spin 55. Robbe Roxxy 3548-12 outrunner and Futaba FS617 receiver with Hitec HS55 servos.

The plane flies in manual as it has always. Very nice.

The place where I've been doing my tests is a sports airfield nearby with elevation of 112 metres.

Stabilization - works very well. Little slow but very nice. I can land the plane and take off almost automatically, all I have to do is give some throttle during take off. Landing is even easier, turn off the throttle completely and watch it glide down perfectly with all wheels touching the strip simultaneously. 

I have increased the aileron and pitch gains to 0.8 and yaw 0.6.

FlyByWireA - no good. If I'm in level flight the plane when switching to FWA the plane banks to one side then to the other and shuts the motor gives it a few spurs and then tries to loose altitude. If on ground APM thinks and then applies intermittently throttle, from little spurs to heavier gas. And worst the throttle stick seems disabled...

RTL - similar behavior as FWA. Motor shuts down and the plane tries to drop altitude and starts turning and seems that it has absolutely no idea where the "launch" was.

The GPS (UBLOX) certainly is working since the Ardupilot Groundstation (using legacy gcs protocol) finds the plane very quickly and it even finds it when in my garage.

Should I start by increasing roll and pitch gains by 50% or so. Can the gains be more than 1? Can roll gain be for instance 5.2 or even in tens? What's the range of these gains?

Any ideas?

Patrik