How do you?

[pheasant_plucker]

Fly these in a banked circuit like a fixed wing?
i have just been hovering and moving around using the bank and yaw but how do you actually do a banked circuit? In fixed wing you bank and pull back on the elevator to hold the nose up. How do you do it on these, pulling back will move it backwards.

Gerry

[Rappy Freak]

When I was out this morning fly my Y6 I banked it by putting in some yaw and bringing the tail round, think I also put in a little back elevator aswell and its forward movement was enough to keep it heading the right way.  Came out of the turn put in more forward elevator and off I went

[teslahed]

There is an important difference in flying a quadcopter slowly and flying one quickly; Momentum. If you are flying slowly you wont build up much speed or momentum so you wont have much to overcome when changing direction. This means you will end up turning just by yawing and you wont actually need to bank much or at all.

When you are traveling quickly you can turn to change direction and your momentum will mean that you keep moving the same way as before. By banking into the turn you use thrust to overcome this momentum as you turn so it feels less like driving a car on an icerink and more like you are getting some kind of 'grip' on the air as you change direction.

Practice turning at slowly increasing speeds and start banking into the turn as you feel the quadcopter slipping sideways - you'll get a feel for it. Think of it like one of those old racetracks where they had banked turns - you want that kind of feel as you go around.

Obviously you'll be using the elevator quite differently to a fixed wing aircraft which takes some getting used to - you'll want to keep the quadcopter pitched forward through the turn to keep it moving forwards as well as banked sideways into the turn to keep it from sliding out of the turn. As always (with a quadcopter) you are balancing the thrust to keep it from hitting the ground, and varying your speed around the turn by varying pitch and bank angle as you go along with the thrust.

It's one of those things like flying a fixed wing aircraft towards you without panicking about reversed controls that seems really tricky until you've got the hang of it.

[Gaza07]

You can pretty much fly these like a plane when they are up to a decent speed, its the same with helicopters when you pull back on the stick it will fly backwards, but when there is enough forward momentum you can use the elevator like on a plane, think about a helicopter doing loops you pull back on the elevator and the heli goes up and over through the loop, and doest switch to flying backwards, I have flown my heli and multi rotors in low circuits and pulled lots of elevator in to pull it round a banked turn the same as a plane, but once you come out of the bank you just nudge the nose down again to keep moving forwards, you just get a feel for it on how much to apply 

[teslahed]

When you've got enough momentum built up you can pull back on the stick as you turn or loop and you'll keep moving forwards for a while. The faster you are moving and the heavier your quadcopter the more you'll feel this effect.

It's definitely true that when moving faster quadcopters seem to fly more like planes. Just don't make the mistake i almost made when first starting out and try gliding it or cutting the throttle to slow down.

[Gaza07]

No multi rotors dont glide at all but a CP helicopter will manage an auto rotation which basically means you use the left over power from the main rotor to glide / drop to the ground in a controlled manor by making the blades go to a nagative pitch and once close to the ground you pull it back to a posative pitch which adds a little power to the blades and allows you to feather out and land not that easy to do though 

[teslahed]

I have heard that real helicopters have something called the 'zone of death'. If the engine fails on take off and you are low enough you'll be fine. If the engine fails in flight and you are high enough you can use auto-rotation to get down safely. In between there is a zone where you can do neither and just crash and burn.

[MadMax]

Do real helicopters have negative pitch, I know the rc ones do so they can fly inverted 

[teslahed]

i don't know - if they do i would imagine it would be to help a sea going helicopter keep itself pinned to the deck of a rolling aircraft carrier before the engine span down and people got ropes around the thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorotation_%28helicopter%29

I just read the wikipedia article and it seems that when they reduce the collective pitch on full sized helis the inner area of the blades ends up with negative pitch which is needed to spin the rotor up as the helicopter travel downwards the same as the rc ones. I don't think this means they have the same kind of full on negative pitch capability as stunt rc helicopters though and i doubt any full sized helicopter can hover upside down.

Autorotation is permitted mechanically because of both a freewheeling unit, which allows the main rotor to continue turning even if the engine is not running, as well as curved main rotor blades such that when the collective pitch is fully down the inner part of the blade has negative pitch relative to the horizontal plane and can be spun up by the relative wind.

[MadMax]

Interesting stuff but having just looked through this thread we may have gone of topic a little and hijacked pheasant_plucker's thread ooops sorry mr plucker   

[teslahed]

Interesting stuff but having just looked through this thread we may have gone of topic a little and hijacked pheasant_plucker's thread ooops sorry mr plucker   

There is that, but he did get a couple of direct responses before the topic wandered, and he's not come back to the thread yet either.

You could always describe your banked turns if you want to put us back on track though Mine and Gazas descriptions where not identical so yours could be interesting to read too.

[MadMax]

I would if I could but I dont have the flying ability yet Im only at hovering tail in and either side at the moment flyer  :embarrassed

[teslahed]

I would if I could but I dont have the flying ability yet Im only at hovering tail in and either side at the moment flyer  :embarrassed

Are you flying with auto-level on or off? When i was starting to fly i had the KK board with gyros only and then later a MultiWii board with poorly tuned accelerometers so i was on manual the whole time.

With hindsight i might have lost fewer props and motors and spent less on repairs if I'd had a decent auto-level mode enabled until I'd got the basics of orientation down. I suspect this goes some way towards explaining the popularity of the rabbit flight controller which i think has 2 different auto-level modes with varying degrees of stability.

Have any of you others learned with auto-level on or off and what would you recommend other people use who are starting out?

[MadMax]

I started with a kk board and then got a multi wii se board with auto level, it is quite stable in auto level not as good as some ive seen but good enough, I can hover with it on or off but prefer it to be on Im a bit wobbly with it off, Im not struggling to fly Im just learning and I can actually fly around a bit and not just hover, but not yet at higher speeds and fast banked turns maybe that will come soon 
The KK board had no auto level like the new ones have but it was a good start and I think its better to learn with and with out and not always rely on auto level   

[pheasant_plucker]

There is that, but he did get a couple of direct responses before the topic wandered, and he's not come back to the thread yet either.

Sorry for the delay, thanks to those that answered my initial question. Off topic is fine by me now that the question has been answered!

Gerry

[Gaza07]

It sounds to me like your doing it the right way the same as I did when I learnt to fly heli's learn to hover tail in first then each side, once you have mastered these then you can start to have a fly around, at some point it is useful to learn to hover nose in just take your time and work your way around to it  ;D

[Gaza07]

Hi Gerry how are you getting on with your multi rotor did you take it to the flyin

Sorry for the delay, thanks to those that answered my initial question. Off topic is fine by me now that the question has been answered!

Gerry

[pheasant_plucker]

Yes it's flying and I did take it but I have stripped it down a bit now to add a proper battery tray and undercarriage. Fortunately I  start my 3 weeks holidays tomorrow  ;D, unfortunately I am putting a new roof on the house  :embarrassed so it will have to take a back burner for a short while.

Gerry

[Gaza07]

Sounds like hard work to me carrying all those tiles up the ladder  We have some sunshine coming so I suppose its the right time for it 

[pheasant_plucker]

Ladder! Electric lift matey 

Gerry

[teslahed]

It would be interesting to see some pictures of your quadcopter and progress so far if you have any handy.

It sounds to me like your doing it the right way the same as I did when I learnt to fly heli's learn to hover tail in first then each side, once you have mastered these then you can start to have a fly around, at some point it is useful to learn to hover nose in just take your time and work your way around to it  ;D

That's how i did it - started off just going forwards and backwards and leaning left and right and left rotation alone.

Later i forced myself to practice flying in circles around myself - forward circles, nose in circles and nose out circles (circle strafing for the FPS veterans) and backward circles. In theory you can fly a quadcopter in any orientation if you are good enough but in practice my backward circles are still a lot slower and wobblier than my forward ones.

[Gaza07]

Your doing well I cant fly backward circuits I just get mixed up, its the same with my heli's I can loop roll and do stall turns but not backwards quickly  must be an age thing 

[MadMax]

Thanks for the tips