William, it will fly fine once properly tuned up. It has been awhile since I flew an APM in a heli. But please don’t hesitate to ask for help.
You can refer to my connection in the diagram.
I have pushed upload button to upload the diagram. If you don’t see it, send me your email and I will email it to you: frankie.wcfung@gmail.com
Hi Chris,
Hope you can help me too, I bought the APM a while ago, and now I finally have the time now for building the APM 2.8 on my helicopter, and now it’s not supported anymore… anyway I want to see it work anyhow…
I basically have the same setup, Futaba system, APM 2.8 and a Trex-450, and connected the receiver to the APM as described above on the first wiring picture and use Arducopter 3.2.1 and Mission planner.
All the controls work fine, except for the throttle and the collective, when I connect ch3 to ch8 on the APM the throttle works fine, but the collective doesn’t, and when I connect ch3 to ch3 on the APM the collective works fine, but now the throttle doesn’t???
It drives me crazy, and it looks like the mixing isn’t working or something, do you have a suggestion please?
Thanks a million in advance!
Likely the problem is that the flight controller is not armed. There is no throttle output until the unit is in armed state.
Hi Chris,
Thanks a lot for the reply, but even when the flight controller is armed there is throttle output but no collective output on channel 3, when channel 3 of the receiver is connected to channel 8 of the flight controller, or when I connect channel 3 of the receiver to channel 3 of the flight controller, the collective is giving output, but no throttle output.
I only have the following connections right now on the receiver to the flight controller :
Receiver Flight controller
1 -> 1
2 -> 2
3 -> 8
4 -> 4
5 -> 5
It looks like channel 3 of the flight controller is not evenly mixed with channel 8.
It took me many evenings already to figure it out and it drives me crazy now, I hope you can help!
Best regards,
It has been a while since I set up this configuration. I think your problem is that you need to make a connection between the receiver channel 6 and the apm input channel 3. APM input channels 1, 2, and 3 are roll, pitch, and collective. We use input channel 8 for throttle but this is usually the setpoint for the ESC. I believe when I set mine up, I used a heli profile in my transmitter and made the pitch curve a straight line from -100 to 100 and I set my throttle curve to just a flat line at the setpoint for my ESC. Be sure to turn off any collective to yaw mixing in your transmitter.
Hope this helps. Sorry that we don’t have more detailed information on this setup.
Regards,
Bill
If I’m not mistaken I think the crossover that needs to be made is receiver 3 → APM 8 and receiver 6 to APM 3. And use a H1 heli setup in your radio. That should get it working if the radio system is one of the Fubata “H” series systems.
And then do a throttle curve in your radio like Bill noted and use your throttle hold switch to turn it on and off. You may have to adjust the endpoint for the throttle hold because if I remember right, throttle hold is like 1080-1100 pwm and that won’t let your ESC initialize. So the throttle hold has to be set all the way down.
If your radio is NOT one of the Futaba “H” series and has an airplane mode in it, use that instead. In airplane mode you should be able to hook everything straight from the receiver to the APM, and set up a switch to turn Channel 8 on and off for throttle.
I think.
Ojoo
I am using a Flysky 9X radio and Flysky 9 channel reciever that has the Futaba channel order. I set up my 450 heli, APM 2.6, Ver 3.2.1 with the radio on Heli, H1, and the APM to reciever using the cross channel Futaba setup shown top picture of this post. Pitch and throttle curves are setup in radio, have been flying it like this for a year or so.
Thanks to Chris and many others on this forum on tuning and setup help.
Hope this helps
YESSSSS!!! I got it, thanks to all your help and tips and tricks, can’t thank you enough guys!
Now I have to mount everything nice on the 450, and it will be ready for the first test flight, I keep you updated anyway.
Have a great day, mine is already great 
Just had my first “flight”, not exactly what I expected, the thing is wobbling all over the place (see https://youtu.be/O10xARyip8Q )
Am I missing a parameter here? Please help once again…
Ojoo
I am certainly no expert but when my 450 does similar to that my rate Pitch and rate Roll P values are set tooo high, or maybe FF values tooo high.
Check out traditional helicopter tuning, lot of good information.
Keep trying you are getting there
Alright, started from scratch with the tuning using the “traditional helicopter tuning” manual, after weeks of bad weather. Now it’s impossible to fly, it’s pulling to the left like crazy. This is what the manual said "Lift off just one inch but be ready to put it down because you will have little or no control. It’s going to be bad, so be ready for it!"
Well that’s an understatement!
I tried several times the calibration again, checking all the values over and over again, but it’s no possible to fly without crashing it, can someone please give some advise or help? Thanks a lot!
ojoo,
Sounds like you are using the old tuning method. even though you are using an APM, you should be able to use the new tuning method even though the parameter names have changed. Please post a parameter file so we can look at your parameters.
Thanks,
Bill
arducopter3.2.1.param (5.4 KB)
Hi Bill,
Thanks for the reply, I posted my parameter file as requested.
Thanks a lot!
Ojoo
Ojoo,
taking a quick glance at your parameters, there are a few questions/comments I have.
Doesn’t look like you calibrated channel 5 of your RC transmitter. that channel sets the flight mode. Along with that you don’t have any other flight modes set other than stabilize (see your FLTMODE_X parameters)
Also did you set your collective range using H_COL_MIN and H_COL_MAX. hey appear to be the default values.
Review the current wiki for trad heli set up. We can help translate between 3.2.1 params and 3.5 params. But it would be good for you to review for basic setup procedures.
http://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/traditional-helicopter-configuration.html
Also we have adopted a method of tuning that starts with the RAT_RLL_FF =0.15 and RAT_PIT_FF = 0.15 which should provide a much safer first flight.
this is the link to our current tuning wiki.
http://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/traditional-helicopter-tuning.html
Sorry I don’t have more time to give more feedback. Make sure you get the collective range and transmitter set up properly if you haven’t done so already.
Regards,
Bill
I may still have a copy of my APM 2.5 parameters from my Trex 550E before I upgrade to a Pixhawk. I used asymmetrical Spinblades on it but it should be close and I don’t think I stretched it to a 600 until after upgrading to the Pixhawk. I’ll take a look.
This was just after I stretched it but I don’t recall having to make any adjustments. Ran Missions welldec 7 2015.param (7.5 KB)
1 Like
David,
nice how you could help out.
Also started with my Helis and APM2.5. But I have nothing backed up because I never wanted to go back since I used Pixhawks.
Ones I used your params for testing after I have seen an impressive mission of yours. I am sure it was you!
Thanks for all the help so far, really appreciate it, I wasn’t able to test the parameter file dec 7 2015.param jet, because I was working abroad for a couple of months, and I ordered some parts for the heli, because wit the last test flight, I got some damage on the tail. As soon as I have the parts, I will test this and keep you updated! Sorry for the late response… once again thanks for the great help.
Well the parameter file wasn’t a success, I think I call it the day on the Arducopter project, and start doing things that do actually work. The apm goes with the trash, but anyway thanks for the help. Cheers