My tilt rotor VTOL has been taking excessive time to transition into forward flight, sometime up to 5 seconds at which time the plane is almost out of sight.
If I understand correctly, once AIRSPEED_MIN is reached transition should complete? My CTUN.As shows close to 20m/s at the time of transition, but my AIRSPEED_MIN is set to 9m/s. Is there something else that’s delaying the transition?
The flight logs is available here:
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!
Stephen
Your VTOL accelerates very well. Pobably you can set Q_TRANSITION_MS (the overlap time between reaching AIRSPEED_MIN and the end of the transition) down to the hardcoded minimum (500 ms).
Rolf
Thanks for the response Rolf. I had it set to 3000ms, will give 500ms a try.
Thanks again!
Unfortunately setting Q_TRANSITION_MS to 500ms made no difference.
I did notice shorter transition when I used a newer battery, although the aircraft didn’t seem to fly any faster during transition. Could this be related to voltage sag of the older battery?
@steph280 Do you have a log file of the new flight you made?
Rolf
Hi Rolf,
Here’s the log for the flight with fast transition.
Thanks again!
Stephen
From looking at the log you are getting the expected behavior for airspeed sensor less transition or fairly close to it.
If you want transition to complete upon reaching correct airspeed you need to have an airspeed sensor.
I thought the airspeed was CTUN.AS estimated with GPS? I could certainly add an airspeed sensor, but none of my other VTOLs have one and they transition fine. Plus this particular one does complete the transition quickly if I use a fresh battery, which makes me wonder if the voltage sag is causing issue.
Yes, CTUN.As is estimated using GPS but airspeed estimation doesn’t really work in VTOL modes. You can get more consistent transition timing with forward battery compensation.
