Mission Planner has moved forward in leaps and bounds but the manuals have not kept pace. I battled to set up my traditional heli so here is a presentation I put together to help anyone else trying to do the same. It’s a guide only - there is much more there and I may have misinterpreted something so be careful. But it should give you a real head start. Good luck.
Setting up a traditional heli (Pixhawk, Logo 450 with Futaba T18MZ, FW3.3.3) in Misson Planner.pdf (538.2 KB)
Hi,
IMHO you should NOT set Landing Collective(H_LAND_COL_MIN) = 0, because it will go full negative collective on LAND. Usually Landing Collective should be around 300 to give you -3° to -4° collective (0 = full negative, 1000 = max positive).
Edit read: NOVAerial Robotics AC3.4-Heli Review and Issues List
I set Cyclic Travel (H_CYC_MAX) similar to a standard FBL, where you set 6° to 8° cyclic. Another rule of thumb is to get 75% of the 6° to 8° (=4.5° to 6°) using only the Pitch/Roll_FF (Pitch/Roll_P/I/D = 0 during _FF adjustment).
Exactly, this is very important that H_LAND_COL_MIN is not =0!!
I have that value 400 with both my Trad Helis for the perfect auto land.
A friend had a autoland a couple of weeks ago with value 0. He had a problem with one of the RTL autoland. The land detector disarmed the Heli for unexplained reason at about 1 foot ( 30cm) above ground. If he had set that particular param. H-LAND_COL_MIN to around 400 he would have saved his landing skids.
Btw. he was flying AC 3.3.3.
Thanks for pointing that out guys. I’m sure that’s not the only problem with my set up.
This may be a stupid question but is a pitch range of -10 to +10 necessary my usual setup is -2 to +10 and hover at about +5. I don’t want to do aerobatics with the machine hopefully it might be a camera rig.
The FC needs the range to cope with gusts etc. You can set +/-12° for the FC and -2° to +10° for you and ‘everybody’ is happy.
As Markus points out - in windy conditions the heli will tend to “float” on the wind even with pitch at -2deg so the FC will need to “drive” the heli down. Its dangerous not to have plenty of negative pitch for the FC to use otherwise you might well land up with an unexplained fly-away.
everyone thanks. I think I have been reading too many posts and the Wiki which might be slightly out of date. What is the correct setup for the speed controller. I read something about having governour mode setup I am only using a t-rex 450 with standard speed controller.