Hey Gang, The Cinestar X8 build from late last month wanders a bit on flight. I'll explain: on take-off, I'll get the copter a few meters in the air but won't touch the sticks once it's a decent height. The copter wanders a bit - yaw and nick. It's slight, but does indeed wander. Is that to be expected? I would think that once I get a hover height, it would pretty much stay in place? Or is the locked hover just a GPS-hold function? TIA, Derek
In a perfect world it would stay in place, but unfortunately there are too many outside forces at work without the GPS compensating. Yaw typically is solid unless the props are not level. Jeff
Care to share any of your actual configuration? Hard to hazard a guess as to whether that's to be expected given whatever it is you're flying.
GPS-hold solved the wandering. Steve - what configuration details would you want? Cinestar X8, Tiger MN 4012, Tiger 16x5.4 Props, MK Double Quadro V3 Cool, MK Flight Control V2.5, MK Navi V2, MK GPS V2.1.
I just did a shoot in which we flew our Cinestar HL with the MK setup about two dozen flights over the course of a couple days. Fully loaded with our Movi and Dragon. It performed well, but had considerable yaw drift. When flying out about 500ft in a straight line and back it would be turned between 30-90 degrees from it's original orientation with no yaw input from me. I tried trimming the yaw while hovering until it was perfect(usually one or two clicks, not in a consistent direction) and it would still be quite off by the time I flew a few hundred feet out and back. I was flying with altitude control on, but without GPS.
Philip, I believe one of the things that the magnetic compass is used for is yaw stabilization. What were your MK Tool settings for the compass effect, and had you calibrated the compass before you flew? Andy.
Hi Andy, Thanks for the info! I did not do a calibration before the flights, how often would you recommend doing a compass calibration? I'm not sure on my settings for the compass effect, I'll get my MK machine up this afternoon and check into that.
Certainly recalibrate if you move to a new location -- depending on the surroundings (metal, buildings), then can be as little as 100 meters away or less. It does no harm to do a compass calibration when you don't need to...but the converse can cause some yaw instability, I recall. Andy.
Good to know! I'll make sure to recalibrate way more often. I've heard you should calibrate with anything that may disrupt the compass on the copter, such as a battery. I know some people that insist on having the copter on and the motors at 50% (no props though) while doing the calibration so the electromagnetic field would be the same as when it's flying. Are these precautions un-nesseary with the MK setup? We were flying in the absolute middle of no where, so there definitely wasn't any interference from buildings or anything. Here's a shot from around sunset...
I would set Compass Effect to 0 unless you are using Care Free or Waypoints with kopter direction. Jeff
Ok, thanks Jeff. I'll set it there and give it a go. I have care free disabled and don't see myself using waypoints.
When I had my Cinestar X8 with the 4014 motors I had 0 yaw drift and it parked very tight in Position hold. I really saw no difference between my flat 8 and my X8 as far as holding, if anything the X8 was a little tighter. My definition of tight hold is (+) (-) 3-4 feet. Your not going to get any better with consumer grade GPS.