I built up a Soxos 600 over the last couple of months and have been waiting for the weather to cooperate and finally got out for the first tuning flight (first maiden was a week and a bit ago),
I forgot to copy over the final parameter file, will do so later when I get to the workshop.
One minor issue appears to be the minimum value that you can input in Mission Planner.
For the D-gain, I would get oscillations at even 0.001.
Using QGC instead, I was able to use lower values and ended up with a D-gain of just 0.00045.
P-gain was also relatively low, around 0.035.
Did not get around to play with the I-gain before running out of daylight (and low on battery).
Looks like it could be tighter, but it felt pretty good at the end.
Vibrations, while already decent, should get lower once the gears wears in a bit (according to the manufacturer). Using a Pixhack V3 Pro just mounted on foampads.
Log file
The pitch rates look pretty good. But roll is falling short of the target. Could maybe try turning up the roll VFF to maybe 0.16 or 0.17
Running P-gains of .035 is not a problem. If you have decent fast servos that’s where it’s going end up. That’s what my 766’s are at for P-gain.
I don’t know what we’re going to do about MP not allowing settings for heli’s. It seems to be problematic for many users and I think the recommendation is going to be use QGC instead. MP is sort of more oriented to the multicopters, which is not a huge issue when there’s more than one ground station folks can use. QGC also runs on anything - Windows, Mac, Android and iOS - and the interface is the same whether on on your desktop PC or an Android tablet in the field. So I think it’s ease of use, and the safety of only allowing the setting of one param at a time, will probably make it the recommended application for heli’s.
Servos are Savox 1258TGs, so reasonably snappy. I’ll crank up the VFF on roll a bit.
Really impressed with the Soxos kit. Will grab some pictures later.
QGC vs MP: Yeah. It sucks, as I’m very comfortable in MP…and would still need it for geotagging, etc. I guess I need to start spending a lot more time in QGC.
Hmm. Not sure what version I’m running on my field station, but it’s usually kept up-to-date. However, running a SITL in MP 1.3.55 on my desktop PC this morning, I clearly get all the decimals I need. I wonder if a clean install on the field station is needed.
Got out again today. One thing I did note, that also happened with the last heli, is that I think you are better off tuning each set of parameters on a fresh set of batteries. Governor or not, my P-values were too high for the fresh pack and had to be de-tuned a bit.
I haven’t looked at the logs yet, as I have to run off to work, but quickly uploaded this to show what I thought was a pretty impressive loiter: