Thank you I will have a look now
Seems he knows his stuff. Going through the parameters like he does that every day of his life.
LOL. He is an Ardupilot DeveloperâŚ
Donât take it personally but reddit is probably the worst place to look for ArduPilot support, it is full of urban legends and snake oil recipes⌠stick with the wiki and read and read again 
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Taskman, here are some facts:
Ardupilot is open source, we are lucky to have code to even play with.
Ardupilot is not easy for a beginner (drones, electronics, programming).
Ardupilot is free, documentation is a gift from devs and users, not a due.
Often newcomers have a big opinion on how stuff should be done based on their short experience. Usually, they slowly understand why things are the way they are if they have the motivation to keep on learning.
Parents tell their kids âyou will understand when you grow upâ. I hate this sentence because itâs true and there is no alternative.
When you ask for help then propose modifications, just remember you are the kid in the story. Donât get me wrong, kids ask the best questions, but lack the maturity and experience to decide what is best for them.
This should resonate with you since you seem very curious.
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I donât think people asking or suggesting different words to be used in certain instances to make clear what is being instructed is unreasonable.
Me personally, my language is English. In this open source space , if Iâm not mistaken some of the instructions are retranslated into English from some other language that to an English speaking person makes no sense. There are quite a few people from different countries working on code and different aspects of this firmware, so itâs natural that words used in German or French to describe one thing, when translated to English donât register to an English speaking person. For example, the word WEIGHT is not used to describe movement in controls. ATV or DR was the norm used in JR, Futaba, Airtronics , Hitec , Kraft and other manufacturers.
I understand if you understand the coding language all this stuff makes perfect sense to you or if you just got in the hobby because of drones itâs baffling why some folks donât get it . Itâs because for the most part the instructions for this stuff sucks for an English speaking person. Quite often the words donât make sense especially if you have been in the hobby long before drones.
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Dont feel bad, drones are insanely complex things.
Last year I built my first drone, went through every page of ardupilot many times, watched all the youtube tutorials etc.
No matter what i did, the drone would fly fine for a while, then just out of the blue take off on its own. I posted on the forums a bunch of times, had people analyse the flight data, they suggested all sorts of things, but no one ever really could work out the random flyaway problem. (and sometimes it would work perfectly fine).
Eventually i just had to retire the drone, the only thing i can think that was faulty was the flight management unit hardware, because every other aspect had been explored.
But really, we all know it was the drone poltergeist. Tbh that explains it so much better than any other theory any one had.
You see I knew it 
It is either that or there are massive hidden magnets in trees that we canât see that are placed here by the aliens.
One of those must be the reason. Canât be because I suck
HAHHAHAHA yeapppppp. The secret magnetic poltergeist comes out to mess with us daily!
Have to agree with the smaller drone size to begin with.
Been building & flying drones for 10 years now and despite all that with almost every new version (Arducopter) I have to learn more to get the most out of it.
Also have been playing around last year with a 3D printed frame and managed to build a large quad. âŚbad experience. Barely got it to fly at all and soon after ditched that little project in favour of a drone frame kit.
The simple fact is smaller size drones are easier in regards to achieving strength of materials used, stiffness in order to reduce vibration or indeed intended limited flexibility in order to absorb vibrations. On top of that there are lots of cheap motors and ESCâs to play around with. Also the batteries are easy to come by.
Once you get into larger drones like I have been involved with everything changes. So a good understanding of the basics is crucial for safety, financial reasons and of course a satisfying outcome and a long lasting drone-build.
What do you consider as large? Anything that uses larger than 10ââ props? I guess Props isnât the only factor, it would be the cross section. Is 2kg considered large?
If I want to carry a gimbal and gopro, what would the weight be of the drone if you had to design and build it? Would that be seen as a large drone?
I guess that in itself could start some arguments. Some may consider a 60cm drone as large whilst others would see something over 1m as large.
As far as I am concerned everything less than 50cm is on the small side and once below 15cm I consider as tiny and really look at it then as an indoor thing. ( I can hear all those using small racing drones already screaming at the screenâŚ)
But hey, that is how I see it.
âŚand then of course there is the law: Would appear you are like me in Australia. So here the law becomes much more âinterestingâ once you pass the 2kg limit.
So this also a reason why I would recommend a smaller drone to start with as all the legal requirements would cost you a significant amount of money for a full commercial licence.
Camera work is in fact what I started with just as an initial goal. I did use an octocopter with automatically adjusted camera gimbal. The idea was to have additional safety by having more motors than actually required and also having very steady smooth movements which at that time was a challenge with quads.
But these days both the controllers and the software has improved so much that you can use in fact a quad for camera work. Which is sufficient what you want to achieve at this stage. Once you move into larger and more expensive cameras than you may want to consider something like a hexacopter in order to have more redundancy available. By that time Iâm sure you would have also gained a lot of experience and a better idea what exactly is most suitable to your needs.
So in direct reply to your question I would get a small frame kit, perhaps even with motor and escâs. In that way hopefully the basics been calculated by the engineers of the manufacturer. Fly the thing a number of times (after initial tuning) and then play around with some of the settings. _ But donât go overboard with it.
It wonât take long and you know what you like and dislike and make a better decision from there. With a bit of luck you get a frame which can have a gimbal added to it at a later stage.
Off topic
I know nothing so this might be stupid to say but the law seems to make drones more dangerous. Limiting to 2kg means I am limited on sensors, parachute, redundancy.
I would think something heavier could be less dangerous with all the sensors and redundancy and more stable in winds, especially since all our big cities are next to the ocean
No.
The smaller the drone the less weight it usually has the less damage it causes if it drops out of the sky.
Many of us who have / had smaller drones managed to patch up drone easily after a crash without to much damage done. Not the same with larger / heavier ones. Thatâs why you would want to consider a parachute for both saving the drone and any damage it would cause on impact.
I guess thatâs also one of the reasons why CASA has introduced the weight / licence related requirements. Back ten years ago they didnât even consider multi-rotors. The legal side was mainly aimed at large, commercial or military style drones. Since then multiple changes have been made.
Donât be fooled by the power some smaller drones can produce. Yes, certainly wouldnât want to be flying a small $40.- ready made childrenâs drone outdoors in windy conditions, but look at the speed some small racing drones get up to. If they can achieve such speeds than a 20km/h wind is not causing much of a problem. Would I want to do camera work with that ? - No, certainly not. One thing standing your âgroundâ against some wind, but a different story doing that in âelegant fashionâ without creating jerky sudden movements.
My reason for the drone is wedding videography. Some weddings are close to the ocean so I need something that can handle wind. I lost a few thousand $ contracts because I didnât have a drone. Almost had a $1500 marriage proposal but he went with someone with a drone. So I need something for video and something that can fly at Gold Coast during the day.
My UAV app usually shows winds of 15 to 20 km/h and gusts of 30 to 40km/h. So I have to be able to work on that.
That is why I went with 16ââ Props. From what I understand it is supposed to be more efficient so I can record longer, more power, more stable
Understand all that. But as you would be aware there are now many drones used by Surf Life Saving Australia. Those do have cameras and often carry life saving equipment yet are not very big in size.
And they are certainly operated along the coast with regular windy conditions.
16" props are fairly useless unless you have the appropriate motor & esc combination for it. Which brings me back to my earlier remark about the engineered drone kits.
Besides everything there is to know about the controller side of it (i.e. Arducopter and your specific FC) here is a little glimpse of what I mean in regards to engineering:
https://www.ecalc.ch/xcoptercalc.php
âŚjust play around with some of the free sample combinations and youâll get a good idea what is involved in designing, planning and building a good drone.