I'm trying to set up a v-tail plane with a new APM2 board. Here's my history with the plane...
1. Configured the plane as RC only and flew it with V-tail mixing in the radio. Flew great.
2. Added APM2 board and discovered V-tail wasn't supported...gotta get a v-tail mixer.
3. Removed APM2 and added a FMA Direct MX-80 V-tail mixer. Flew fine.
4. Added APM2 board. Plugged elevator lead from mixer into Output 2 on APM2. Rudder into Output 4. The only tail control I get is UP elevator and RIGHT rudder. DOWN and LEFT give no response.
Any ideas on what to try would be appreciated.
Andy
Replies
I'm in more or less the same position. I am using ArduPlane in a V-tail glider. I disabled V-tail mixing on the radio and have been using a Turnigy V-tail mixer from the outputs of the APM. That worked for a while, despite the slow update rate of the Turnigy mixer. I ordered a "200 step" GWS V-tail mixer which doesn't work as a V-tail mixer. Strangely, it will mix any two channels together, except for elevator and rudder. I can mix Elevon, Flaperon, "Throttlevator", "Rudderleron" etc. etc. but when I mix the two channels that you would normally expect from a "V-tail Mixer" (as the package describes it) it barely moves the servos at all. I've tried it with two transmitters and 3 receivers, plus the APM, always with the same result!
Anyhow, I recently fried my tail servos and v-tail mixer in a wiring mishap (and hope I haven't fried the APM) so now I'm left wondering what to do. I've picked up some replacement servos, but don't want to go back to the V-tail mixer. It seems like it shouldn't be too hard to implement V-tail demixing/mixing in the APM. Is there a compelling reason not to do so? I suspect there would be few customers for such a feature, but here are two! I'm planning to give it a go.
Quick update on this...
Since I don't have a solution to using the v-tail with APM2, I decided to disconnect the v-tail mixer and run elevator only (both elevator servos to a Y-cable). I was able to fly the airplane yesterday afternoon without issue. We actually cut a rudder out of the bottom fin and installed a servo for independent rudder control. It wasn't very effective in the end. I would still like to have a working V-tail on this, so if anybody has any ideas, please share them.
Andy
Is that in manual mode? And do you also have ailerons (plugged into Output 1)?