Flying The Quadcopter

The Quadcopter is flying well.

Yesterday I had some successful flights (see video above) but one crash landing that required some repairs - nothing major - a couple of new propellers and reattaching the GPS mount with glue.

Today I had some great flights in a park by the river with fabulous panoramic views under clear blue skies with little wind, but the camera stopped working so there is no footage.  I also tried the althold and loiter functions and they worked like a charm.

I am getting about 10 minutes of flying time with a 2200mah battery pack and I have ordered a 3000mah pack as a spare.  They take a while to recharge (a few hours).

Building and Free-Flying Quadcopter Part 13

Time to see if the quadcopter really flies.  You can see the successful test flight in the basement above, but the lighting is not great and Youtube has further degraded the quality to potato-camera level.  The quad flies well but is a bit sensitive to throttle and needed some work on securing the battery.  The not so smooth flying technique is the pilot's fault as I was trying to keep it away from the ceiling.  The hovering is pretty good and the next step will be some test flights outside when there is no wind.

Building and Flying Quadcopter Part 12

Well I went back and tried to fix the problems in the last test flight, which were:

1. ESC's not properly calibrated - I was able to get them to calibrate once, but there is something weird about how these speed controls interface with the controller.
2. Poor throttle control - It turns out that you should land and take off in "stabilize mode" and I was in "Althold" mode.  It took a lot of google searching to stumble across this.
3. The receiver refused to work for a while and I don't know why.  After plugging and unplugging wires, disassembling the receiver, testing and testing, it started to work again for some unknown reason.

After fixing these issues, I tried the quadcopter with no props and it seemed better.  I then lengthened the tethers and ran another test flight shown above, which seems much better.

Building and Flying Quadcopter Part 11

Quadcopter Drone ready for tethered test flight

Making progress, I found the link to set up the motors, speed controls, etc and got the wiring for the ESCs and motors set up properly.  Then I mounted the propellers and spent a while trying to figure out how to arm the drone, which I found at this link on the wiki.

I also needed a way to test-fly the drone, given my propensity to crash quadcopters.  I came up with a system using an old piece of plywood, with holes to allow rope to be attached to the drone landing gear.  The rope is wrapped around some tall screws on the plywood to allow adjustment.  This is shown in the photo above and actually worked out well.

Then our first test flight shown above.  The drone worked, although the controls need adjustments, particularly the throttle.  You can see me testing throttles, forward motion, yaws left and right, and left and right movement - all the basic movements.  So now it is back to the wiki and Mission Planner to find out how to tune the controls.

Learning to Fly A Quadcopter

The old adage was that you had to get an instructor to learn how to fly a radio controlled airplane - don't do it yourself, you will crash, it is hard, you need an official flying field, etc etc.  This was clearly true when I tried to fly RC planes in the early 1970's.  The planes took a long time to build, were powered by glow engines, flew very quickly, were expensive, and hard to repair.  You could easily crash and it was very costly.  My first attempt at flying wrecked my Goldberg Falcon 56, damaged my OS Max .30, and damaged my RC servos.  The cost in 1970 was about $200, in today's money that is about $750.

The good news is that you don't need a lot of money, an instructor, and a flying field to learn to fly a quadcopter drone.  You can do it at home for about $35.

Buy a good toy quadcopter with rotor guards like the Hero RC Sky Matrix H1306 for about $35 US.  You will get a decent indoor quadcopter that will withstand multiple collisions and crashes, along with extra props, battery, charger, transmitter.  You just add some AA batteries for the transmitter.  You can bash this into the wall, ceiling, floor, and it will likely be undamaged.  My unit is fine after probably 20 or 30 crashes, I have not even used the extra props.

To teach yourself to fly:

1. Follow the instructions to set up the unit on its stand that is part of the display box.
2. Make sure the LEDs are solid red.
3. Point the nose of the unit with the red LEDs away from you.  Pick a room that is pretty open and not cluttered with chairs, tables, etc. so you have some room.
4. Slowly advance the throttle until it lifts off.
5. Try to get it to hover at about 3 to 6 feet in front of you.  Manipulate the throttle to get it to hover.  Don't touch the other controls or just give small inputs.
6. Don't worry if it crashes, pick it up, put it back on the stand, go back to step 3.  Try again.
7. Once you can get it to hover for about 10 or 20 seconds, try to use the controls on the right stick to keep it hovering in one place.  Left and right stick makes it move left and right, forward stick moves it forward, and back stick moves it back.
8. Try this for a while until you can get it to hover in one place for about 30 seconds.
9. Next try making the unit turn around using the left stick.  Make the nose point towards you and try to hover in one place for 30 seconds.  This "nose in" position is tricky because all the controls are reversed except the throttle.  Right stick right makes the copter go left, stick left makes it go right, etc.  This is one of the trickier things to learn.
10. Once you have mastered all this, which will take a little while, try flying around the room in a circle and then landing.

A few things you will discover:

• It is a little harder than you think if you are uncoordinated like me
• The battery will last about 5 mins
• As the battery is expended, you will need more throttle to stay aloft
• There is only a small range of throttle where you can keep it hovering - a little less and you hit the floor, a little more and you hit the ceiling.  It is good training for your thumbs!

Check out me learning to fly in this Youtube video.