Ben may have more to do with the tuning of your WKM system gains. Hopefully some of the folks flying WKM can share their gain setups.
Holy cow that is heavy for a 5D platform! Anyways yes the stable hover is a good sign. Its probably on 90% throttle on forward flight which cannot be good for shakes. But when you do the manual test you will know more how much it has to work to lift. Your props should make a small difference with away.
Well thats just what we've been testing. Needed a platform we could put any camera on. Hoping to use the c300 and epic a fair amount. Gary - I've been told WKM gains could be the issue too. Any advice and ideas welcome!
Just so you know I use pretty similar gains to yours... 200 200 150 150 70 70 on my flat 8 config. I also put the first two on pots and adjust them as needed. Even with your new props you might get a little better or less shakes with 180 180 for the roll and tilt. I rarely use atti or GPS for record flights. On my X 8 setup which use mostly I run slightly lower gains because they are more vibration issues with the coax.
Ok great i'll try those out. Do you see a really big reduction in shake flying in Manual mode as opposed to Atti or GPS then?
Um very little ... but I am much less on the limits like you are... or I think you are by the numbers. I have had wrong props on and it was working a lot harder and there was some minor shaking during accents and forward flight. http://forum.freeflysystems.com/ind...-lift-cs8-build-thread.390/page-14#post-11351 Josh talks about the differences he felt going from 5s to 6s. Maybe you can solve a lot of your issues with new props and gain settings but I know there is a huge gain in the battery department to be had if needed.
Hmm. Very interesting. Definitely seems to have made a huge difference to him. The only thing is that ecalc keeps saying with the 6s the max current is over the limit of the motors. I know thats at max output and it's only over by 3 amps. Do you think thats still in an acceptable safe range?
You need a few more numbers in the battery section... select one as close to your in C rating and size and then change it to custom and change the total mah to be correct. I don't see any critical temperature with that and 6s. Also is the Prop Const. for xoar the number you put in or a guess? Either way the 15x5's look good with 6s.
Yeah it does look alright with the right batt info. In the Volts per cell box do you leave it at the 3.7 its set at or put it at 4.2 as if it were a fully charged batt?
leave it there is a dialogue box on the left for that full normal etc Have you had a chance to do a manual flight and see where your throttle is sitting on hover etc ?
No Not yet. Im away tomorrow till monday so Tuesdays gonna be the first chance I get. I'll let you know when i've done it. Cheers for all the help again.
Hi Brad. Finally got out today. Using my new 15x5 props for the first time. In manual the hover was at around 63%. The flight didn't seem particularly smoother though. I was wondering if perhaps a lot of it was down to using a non stabilised lens on a 5d. On the one shoot when I borrowed a stabilised lens the raw footage was actually pretty good. There is obviously some vibrations and shake in the heli but the 5d is terrible at making any shake look even worse. Is some vibration in the heli unavoidable? Wondering what set up you had camera wise? Gonna do some more testing with different cameras I think. Do you think I do have some sort of underlying heli problem that does need sorting? Also if I did go for the 6s batts would I have to get smaller props in order to get the motors spinning faster?
Hey Ben... That's not too bad... 63% is reasonable for sure. It didn't seem smooth? In what way? The way it handled or the end result in the footage you shot? No there shouldn't be too much if any shake from the heli and if you do a flight with the Radians turned off, it should be pretty smooth but obviously uneven horizon etc. Now the Radians can add shake or amplify what is there if not tuned correctly, so are you sure the shake is from the heli or the gimbal? IS lens will help but you should be able to get useable footage without IS. With the 5D3 I use a lot of lenses... I would say the best results as far as smooth footage goes was with the Canon 24mm 2.8 IS. Yes while your testing grab some footage with and without the Radians on the same camera and lens so you can identify the cause of the shakes. I read a lot of forum threads about smaller size, faster prop speed and success with DJI and I have found the opposite is true. I think the smaller rigs which most folks talk about ( below 7 kg) are possibly functioning better with higher speeds and smaller disk loading. I am at 6s, 400kv and 16.5s now on my main X8 config and might try 17's because as I went up in size the better and smoother it has flown. So for me bigger has been better and it might not be for you but I think 15x5 should be fine if in the end you decide to go 6s.
Hi Brad. Yeah the footage we got has still got a fair amount of vibrations. It always seems to fly smooth looking at the heli from the ground. I think there is definitely a little shake in the heli but maybe it is being exaggerated by the gimbal. I started off with the AV200 gimbal originally then switched to the Cinestar and we have seen the same sort of vibrations throughout so I assume it is something to do with the heli. At the moment im using a skyjib to cinestar adapter plate which I don't think is much good. It hangs a long way under the heli. My new 'Echo' adapter plate from allied drones is on its way now so hopefully that will make some difference. The video below shows the sort of shake again. It is definitely worse when it gets hit by small gusts. It was probably about 6-8mph here. Maybe some slightly higher gusts. Im going to check the CG on the wookong as this was set up by the guy who built the heli with a different camera to the one I use and want to check its right. Not sure how much difference that could make though? It basically looks like its hitting bumps of turbulance like on plane but nothing i've done so far seems to help. As with Colin on here we seem to have exactly the same kind of problem with exactly the same build so it must be a common component or setting that needs changing rather than a fault. Any thought?!!
Ya that too me looks like Gimbal shakes which are being set of by wind or transitional changes or small bumps of turbulence . That was a bit better than the last footage you showed though, I think. Is that from today? Manual or atti? Was there wind? Yup your guys adapter plates are probably part of the issue as they should absorb some of the shock and allow larger gain settings on the Radians without oscillation. I have my COG close but I can switch from an Epic to 5D3 without issues and there must be a COG change between them and it didn't seem to affect the heli much. One thing I have noticed which makes sense is the bigger the weight ( camera ) the better the outcome as far as footage smoothness. Also the longer the lens the more the tilt is bound to twitch. I think its why I had such good luck with the 24 2.8 IS. Still it would be valuable to see non Radian footage to verify they are either making things worse or better.
Yeah that was today. A little wind but not much. Maybe 6-8mph with a few higher gusts. Was flying in Atti mostly. Yeah i'm sure the new adapter plate will help. Doing some more filming tomorrow so i'll shoot a little with radian off for comparison.
Ben notice that while trying to hover vs your forward flight there is a lot of difference. That is pretty normal since you are sitting in 'disturbed' air. As Brad said there is one one great test that you could do. Fly the same flight pattern as closely as possible, one with the gimbal/Radians turned on and another with no power to the gimbal/Radians. Then compare the results. If you see vibration with the Radians turned off it is the frame causing the issue. If it is worse with the Radians turned on then it is probably a Radian tuning issue. It just takes a lot of testing, doesn't it?
Ben, you get the same result as us. No difference and we're using the C300 Ive just got the 15x6's today and have spent most of this evening balancing them. The vibrations must be coming from the gimbal Ive checked everything else. However do look at downloading Mercalli. Its a plug in for After effects, certainly has helped us out this week.