Is there an easy way to raise or lower the swashplate after it has been levelized and maintain its levelness in Mission Planner?

ArduCopter Traditional Helicopter
1

I am a newbie in traditional heli.

After I levelized the swashplate by adjusting the servos’ trims with the help of a swashplate leveling tool, and then re-attached the rotor head and main blades with pitch gauge, I found out that in the zero thrust position (or Tx mid-throttle stick), the pitch is not zero, and need to raise or lower the swashplate.

I am wondering if there is an easy way to raise or lower the swashplate collectively in Mission Planner after the swashplate has been levelized and maintain its levelness without having to adjust the servos’s trims individually again?

Thanks.

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@steveross1234 have you been following the Tradheli wiki. There is a parameter called H_SV_MAN that lets you see the swashplate position without adding any of the PIDs. This feature is only used to level the swashplate. Hopefully that’s helpful. I assume you have the zero thrust set for mid stick in acro mode.

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Hi and welcome here. If you are new to the tradheli then a much simpler advice may be of help. Why not just change your pitch curve a little (in the transmitter) so the pitch angle will be zero at 50% throttle?
The important thing is that the swash plate is level all the way from lowest to highest pitch angle.
In my humble opinion.

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Thanks for the answers. I think in my previous post, I did not make my question very clear.

I did set H_SV_MAN to 3 and tried to levelize the swashplate by adjusting the servos’ trims with the leveling tool at that zero thrust position. However, at this zero thrust position, I did not notice the servos’ arm are not really in 90 degrees to their cases. After I re-attached the rotor head and main blades, I used pitch gauge and found out that in the zero thrust position, the main blades is not in 0 pitch. I could take down the main blades and rotor head and re-adjust the servos’ trims individually to levelize the swashplate and make the servos’ arms closer to 90 degrees to their cases. and then re-attached the rotor head and main blades to check the pitch in the zero thrust position. But this will involve more hassle.

I remembered in Vstabi software for mini-V Bar FBL controller, the Vstabi software’s GUI has buttons to raise or lower the swashplate after it has been levelized and maintain its levelness to make sure the 0 pitch in the mid-throttle stick position without having to take down the rotor head and main blades to use the leveling tool by re-adjusting the servos’ trims. The software will change the servos’ trims automatically when you raise or lower the swashplate collectively.

Thanks.

5

Hi Karl, You need to be very careful doing what you describe. I don’t recommend using a heli profile in your transmitter because arducopter does not need the pitch and throttle curves. That is all done by the software. A plane profile in your transmitter works fine which is what I use and recommend for most users, especially new users. There are too many mixing options and ways the transmitter profile can affect the inputs to arducopter.

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@steveross1234 I had created some videos to help users with the setup. Here is a link to my google drive that has the videos on swashplate leveling and collective curve setup. hopefully this will help. Sorry I don’ have more time to give a more thorough answer. I don’t think it is a huge deal if you are off by a degree or two as you set your min and max collective in ardupilot. Having it centered with zero blade pitch at 1500 PWM just helps keep things more linear.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1fNPRdNuvSaJQGEBA5j3mnc4NpRWkN9QY?usp=sharing

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Hi Bill,

Thanks for your videos, they are very helpful.

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