Storm OSD Maiden and some questions

[helimadness]

Hi All.
Well got my OSD GPS plug fix, all installed setup and ready to go. Got out today but was a little windy maybe 15 knots which appears to be a bit of a challenge for the little bixler.
Did a test flight LOS only as was fairly bumpy, had my laptop screen recording I was looking at form time to time. Tested the PA mode which seems to work fairly well considering no setup and windy. RTH I set the height to 70m. I turned off the maintain height when it enters RTH mode. Didnt make sense to me. If you fly behind something or too high and lose signal it either flys back into the problem or circles around too high to see.
So obviously need to set a throttle position in RTH that can manage the max climb rate it will give if its below the set height. First time I switched to RTH I thought it had gone crazy and went into a death spiral (4:15 on the vid). Looking at the footage I obviously didn't have enough throttle set in RTH and it just stalled. Oh well thats what I need to work out. The throttle is going to need to be maybe 75% ish so hopefully if above the set height that is not going to over speed it too much on the way down.

So couple of questions. I had the RTH set up so when I turned the TX off on the ground it went to my set throttle and RTH came up on the screen. When I turned my TX off during the flight to test RTH didnt kick in. When I landed I tried again and still didnt kick in.
Will have to play some more just a bit tough as live on the 4th floor of an apartment block so need to go downstaris to the common area to get GPS signal to test. That creates all kinda of unwanted interest.

Also the plane in brackets that comes up when "posture value is not accurate" WTF is that. one time when I went to PA mode I seem to lose it so flicked out and took over. If it gets too much pitch or roll does the system just self destruct ??

Another observation was in PA mode the controls seem very docile. Needed a lot more stick movement to control the plane. Is that because it is limited by the max set travel in the PA mode?

Guess testing in 15 kntos of wind is far from ideal. It is interesting to know if strong winds are going to cause problem but.

I just want a simple system that will bring my plane back if I fly out of range or into trouble. I think this will do it and as long as I know its limitation all good.

storm1


Cheers

[_tj_]

Haven't watched the video as yet. (On phone)

Did you put the plane level on the ground and do a gyro reset?

Did you do a trimming out flight before testing the rth?
Is needs a trimming flight, then land.

In the osd menu go and click on Centre servos.

If you haven't done that, the rth may put in too much movement and that would cause the spiral.

The posture alarm means you have either too much vibration,
Or the pitch or roll angle of the plane is to much to enable rth / pa

Throttle setting for rth.

While your flying take note of the throttle position where your plane will fly straight and level.
This is pretty much where you want to set the failsafe.

Just add a bit more throttle this allows for you rth to overcome a headwind.

With your docile stock movements.
Adjust the gains in the osd setup.

Your fighting the stabilisation and need to turn the gain down a bit until you find a happy medium.

Hope this helps.

Ps will watch the vid when I'm comp.

[helimadness]

Haven't watched the video as yet. (On phone)

Did you put the plane level on the ground and do a gyro reset?

Did you do a trimming out flight before testing the rth?
Is needs a trimming flight, then land.

In the osd menu go and click on Centre servos.

If you haven't done that, the rth may put in too much movement and that would cause the spiral.

The posture alarm means you have either too much vibration,
Or the pitch or roll angle of the plane is to much to enable rth / pa

Throttle setting for rth.

While your flying take note of the throttle position where your plane will fly straight and level.
This is pretty much where you want to set the failsafe.

Just add a bit more throttle this allows for you rth to overcome a headwind.

With your docile stock movements.
Adjust the gains in the osd setup.

Your fighting the stabilisation and need to turn the gain down a bit until you find a happy medium.

Hope this helps.

Ps will watch the vid when I'm comp.

Hi,
I reset the gyros with it sitting on my bench and had my heli digital pitch gauge to get it as level as I could.
No I didn't do a trim flight. I only got one flight as very windy so far from perfect. The trim flight is once you have it trimmed you set the servos to zero in the OSD yeah? So happens if the next flight you have to trim slightly, do you have to land and reset to zero before using RTH? Just easy to get the lipo a few mm out when changing and it changes the COG.
The death spiral was a simple stall. When I switch the RTH the pitch increased to +7 as it was trying to increase altitude to my set RTH height then the ground speed dropped to 2 KPH and the wing dropped. With maybe 15 knots head wind obviously just a stall. My fault not enough throttle in RTH mode.
I guess I need enough throttle for it to climb to the RTH height. I just think its better to have a set RTH height than maintaining the current one when it enters RTH Would hate to fly behind a tree lose signal RTH kick in and fly it back into the tree. Maybe in reality that wont happen and shouldn't be that low far away. Will pick a nice calm day and play with both.
So lower gain more control? I thought lower gain would have made the gyros less sensitive to automatic adjustments. thats how it works on my heli fbl controllers.

I thought maybe just not having centered the servos after the trim flight might be limiting travel.

thanks for the help, big help

cheers

[CurryKitten]

It looks like you are using Frimware 1.1 which does a gyro setup when you power it up.  The way to tell if you need to trim in Storm it is put it in PA mode and if it thinks level is rolling slightly to one side then you do.

I'd make sure you were happy with PA before properly simulating a control loss by turning your power off.  It needed more gain on my Bixler 2, it would go into long slow rolls back and forth - although some of this handling depends on where the wind is coming from.  You should obviously be able to go hands off and expect it to hold height/heading though.

My first RTH I had it set to 100m and it came back at 200m.  Once again, the wind direction made a diff, into wind it was getting lift, and the default elevator limit of 10% wasn't enough to bring it down again.  upping this to 20% cured that for me.  I have to say that it would be very rare that I've ever need to climb to RTH height though, normally I'd be way up over 100m

Don't know why your rx is not getting you back into RTH though.  I take it that it flashes to say it's got no signal (or whatever yours does).  Worth making sure that you offsets for the channels if "in the middle" of the RTH range if that makes sense.  So the PPM value is not just at the edge of PA/RTH - where you might get small variances

[helimadness]

It looks like you are using Frimware 1.1 which does a gyro setup when you power it up.  The way to tell if you need to trim in Storm it is put it in PA mode and if it thinks level is rolling slightly to one side then you do.

I'd make sure you were happy with PA before properly simulating a control loss by turning your power off.  It needed more gain on my Bixler 2, it would go into long slow rolls back and forth - although some of this handling depends on where the wind is coming from.  You should obviously be able to go hands off and expect it to hold height/heading though.

My first RTH I had it set to 100m and it came back at 200m.  Once again, the wind direction made a diff, into wind it was getting lift, and the default elevator limit of 10% wasn't enough to bring it down again.  upping this to 20% cured that for me.  I have to say that it would be very rare that I've ever need to climb to RTH height though, normally I'd be way up over 100m

Don't know why your rx is not getting you back into RTH though.  I take it that it flashes to say it's got no signal (or whatever yours does).  Worth making sure that you offsets for the channels if "in the middle" of the RTH range if that makes sense.  So the PPM value is not just at the edge of PA/RTH - where you might get small variances

Hi,
Yes version 1.1. Only got it a couple of weeks ago. So when  power up each time I need to make sure the plane it level? It was sitting on the ground with one wing down so maybe 8-10 deg roll.
I discovered after when looking at it I managed to tune the RTH fail safe off. Must have clicked the clear button when I was looking through fail safe. I did have it working at home but when I went to set the throttle fail safe at the field I must have accidentally cleared the RTH position back to zero. Working again now... well at home anyway.
I reduced the RTH height to about 70 m. Thats well above anything that around where I fly. I guess normally will be above that when venturing out.

I think PA mode was working fairly well but drifting a lot with the wind. I guess it only holds the plane level and keeps course over ground the same based on the GPS. Cross wind will cause some drift to come in if this is the case. With RTH Its going to a set GPS point to will cancel out the cross wind effect.

Im sure with some playing on a calm day I will get it sorted. Unfortunately will be another week or so before I get a chance to test.

Cheers

[_tj_]

They say if you haven't used the plane in a while to do a gyro reset.
Our if you remove it from plane and reinstall it.

Not to sure with 1.1

Mine was from 1.3v until my mishap lol.
Mine never rth and vanished.
But that's another story although 99.9% sure it was my fault.

If it's not flying straight and level I always set the servos if its way out.
Conditions are never the same.

Just got myself another storm for a skyfun jet.
So hopefully it will work well in a delta

Was a pain to update.
3 flashes to get it working lol

[CurryKitten]

They say if you haven't used the plane in a while to do a gyro reset.
Our if you remove it from plane and reinstall it.

Not to sure with 1.1

One of the main differences I noticed with 1.1 is that when you turn it on you need to have your plane level, else the OSD won't startup.  I think it's basically doing to Gryo reset everytime.  I did have to trim storm before this, but I haven't since.

Good luck with your new one

[_tj_]

One of the main differences I noticed with 1.1 is that when you turn it on you need to have your plane level, else the OSD won't startup.  I think it's basically doing to Gryo reset everytime.  I did have to trim storm before this, but I haven't since.

Good luck with your new one

Ah Thanks for that.
Hadn't noticed lol.

After I flashed it,  I forgot to change the tv channel before switching it on.
So it must of done it by the time I changed channel lol