Yep. That’s what I’d do. I just don’t see an issue with it. Assuming there is some sort of silicone rubber dampers or pegs or something on the IMU’s they should work in all axis’ and mounting orientation shouldn’t make any difference.
On the sticks, Tim, if you had that big of a difference then you were over-tuned. That type of “training gear” has been used for student pilots since like, forever. Usually with tennis balls on the ends so they don’t dig into the grass. I recently cut a 4 foot 1/2" diameter stick in two and put it on my Trex 500 with tie wraps and tennis balls on the ends so my wife could learn to hover it. I flew it with the sticks and couldn’t really tell much difference except maybe just a tad more sluggish with them on there.
She skidded it around on the ground and hovered a bit and used them for maybe the first 20 minutes and then we took them off. But they should not affect a properly tuned helicopter that much. So if anything, taking them off told you you were way over-tuned, as that long of stick were acting like dampers.
Here is the rate settings from my Trex 500DFC, which I currently have de-tuned a bit for my wife. I’m running some custom code so I took out the extra params in the custom code to eliminate confusion. And this helicopter flies beautifully on auto flights. When I detuned it I backed off the P gain a bit so it’s not quite so touchy and increased the VFF like I do for the flybars, which bypasses that rate PID loop and gives the desired control response without the oscillation problems. And basically tuned the P gain so it has enough to do it’s job, but leaned heavier on the feedforward to make it snappy but rock stable no matter how fast I want to fly it.
This has become my preferred method to tune the ArduPilot rate controller. Very happy with the way it handles and my wife as a student pilot can fly it easily. As she gets more used to it, to “sharpen” it I’ll turn up the VFF instead of the P.
ATC_RAT_PIT_D , 0.001000
ATC_RAT_PIT_FILT , 10.000000
ATC_RAT_PIT_I , 0.350000
ATC_RAT_PIT_ILMI , 0.000000
ATC_RAT_PIT_IMAX , 0.440000
ATC_RAT_PIT_P , 0.070000
ATC_RAT_PIT_VFF , 0.120000
ATC_RAT_RLL_D , 0.001000
ATC_RAT_RLL_FILT , 12.000000
ATC_RAT_RLL_I , 0.380000
ATC_RAT_RLL_ILMI , 0.000000
ATC_RAT_RLL_IMAX , 0.440000
ATC_RAT_RLL_P , 0.060000
ATC_RAT_RLL_VFF , 0.110000
ATC_RAT_YAW_D , 0.003000
ATC_RAT_YAW_FILT , 4.000000
ATC_RAT_YAW_I , 0.170000
ATC_RAT_YAW_ILMI , 0.000000
ATC_RAT_YAW_IMAX , 0.250000
ATC_RAT_YAW_P , 0.380000
ATC_RAT_YAW_VFF , 0.000000
ATC_SLEW_YAW , 6000.000000
Here’s how it flew with those settings after I tuned it for my wife to learn to fly with it. I was moving the cyclic in a circle at full stick about twice per second to see it if snapped out of a death shake and it straightens right out without even a wobble. I thought it was a bit soft with gentle cyclic just rocking and rolling it in hover but my wife loves it that way. As she gets more used to it I’ll turn up the VFF without telling her until it gets to where I like it.