This balancing act launching is EXACTLY why autolaunch on a flight controller is such a great thing!
Help! Did I just waste $50 on an Aura?
- Thread starter Oldbrass
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- aura radio set up setup setup help
TheFlyingBrit
Legendary member
I have an FT F22 prop n slot. I too was very wary to begin with, I found the best way to launch it was holding the wing and launching a bit like a frisbee. Fetch the plane from behind you and release as you get it level at your side, that gives it just enough momentum. Having your transmitter on a lanyard around your neck helps, then your left hands free for throttle control 
once airborne you can use both hands.
once airborne you can use both hands.
TheFlyingBrit
Legendary member
Same principle as launching wings to be honest it works fine, except the F22 weighs more so its harder to keep the plane level while just holding the wing. The swinging motion helps to get it to a level orientation, just before the release. Its a lot safer than overhand or underhand launching.
Or just use a kevlar gauntlet, like one of the pussies in my old flying club use to use for pusher prop planes
Or just use a kevlar gauntlet, like one of the pussies in my old flying club use to use for pusher prop planes
Oldbrass
Member
Got to agree try and avoid flight stailisers, particularly when learning they give you a false sense of security and you dont get the feel of how a model really behaves in the air.
If you have a large warbird and want to eliminate weather effects while your getting use to flying something like that, I can understand. Or if you want to learn to fly 3d, you can get settings to help you knife edge if thats your thing.
Personaly Id say set up your plane without flight stabilisation initially. Join a recognised club and get a qualified trainer to buddy box with you and fly that way first. When you have learnt the basics of LH and RH circuits without losing altitude, landings and take offs. Then by all means fit your stabilisation, to help give you confidence when flying solo.
KISS - Keep it simple stupid, in other words dont over complicate things, like fitting flight stabilisers (they are okay for heli pilots and drone flyers), you dont need one.
Build a Tiny trainer fly it crash it and have fun
I don't doubt that you are offering good advice. It's just that some of it is not a possibility for me. I actually live on a island that is a good boat ride to the mainland. Going to town to go find a field with knowledgeable members is simply not in on my particular cards. I love where I live, but the limiting factors are real. My field is quite small and surrounded by tall trees and the winds off the ocean are anything but subtle. I have very specific flying windows here which are almost exclusively about 30 minutes after sunrise and then good for an hour or two if I'm lucky. Every once in a great while, there's slack wind in the evening, but that's very rare. I'm hoping that the Aura Lite will open up my workable range of time and help my son and daughter get into it as well.
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TheFlyingBrit
Legendary member
I guess under those circmstances I can understand why your choosing to use flight stabilisation. I also live on an island its called England, Its probably a bit bigger than yours, but never the less it is still an island.
As I dont live too far from the NW coast either, we too suffer from wind coming in from the Atlantic and Irish sea. In fact living in the UK if you cant fly in windy weather, you wont fly many times in a year.
I was fortunate that very good friend of mine tought me to fly and he made me fly in very windy conditions, just so I could learn to deal with that type of weather. I am now able to go out flying while other model flyers are sat at home, looking out the window at trees swaying.
My favourite place to fly is on a wide open beach with nobody around, I get a nice firm surface to take off from instead of grass. However, with sand and sea comes wind, even on nice days.
I appreciate the difficulty when your trying to learn and can see the benefits in your situation of using flight stabilisation, particularly for kids. Just dont become to reliant on them, as it will spoil the experience of being able to fly model planes as there suppose to be flown.
Flight stabilisation, gyros and flight simulators are useful tools, but they will give you a false sense of security.
My last trainer told me, a good model pilot can anticipate what a plane will do and how it will behave and act accordingly. Where as a learner just reacts to situations as they happen and not always in the correct way.
If you dont learn to deal with wind variations and wind directional changes, your missing a fundimental part of flying a plane and will tend to react to situations in the future, rather than acting in advance having learnt from experience.
Good luck
As I dont live too far from the NW coast either, we too suffer from wind coming in from the Atlantic and Irish sea. In fact living in the UK if you cant fly in windy weather, you wont fly many times in a year.
I was fortunate that very good friend of mine tought me to fly and he made me fly in very windy conditions, just so I could learn to deal with that type of weather. I am now able to go out flying while other model flyers are sat at home, looking out the window at trees swaying
.My favourite place to fly is on a wide open beach with nobody around, I get a nice firm surface to take off from instead of grass. However, with sand and sea comes wind, even on nice days.
I appreciate the difficulty when your trying to learn and can see the benefits in your situation of using flight stabilisation, particularly for kids. Just dont become to reliant on them, as it will spoil the experience of being able to fly model planes as there suppose to be flown.
Flight stabilisation, gyros and flight simulators are useful tools, but they will give you a false sense of security.
My last trainer told me, a good model pilot can anticipate what a plane will do and how it will behave and act accordingly. Where as a learner just reacts to situations as they happen and not always in the correct way.
If you dont learn to deal with wind variations and wind directional changes, your missing a fundimental part of flying a plane and will tend to react to situations in the future, rather than acting in advance having learnt from experience.
Good luck
dap35
Elite member
I recently returned to the hobby after a 40 year hiatus and am a big fan of the Aura. I will say that my biggest challenge at lately is not checking the flight mode (off/6-axis/3-axis) BEFORE launching. If I am not expecting the plan to be in 3-axis mode when I launch, bad things happen. So after crushing my GrunJet today, I have decided to start launching in 3-axis mode.
TheFlyingBrit
Legendary member
Get a Radiomaster TX16s it has nice voice active promts which you can program in to tell you your switch status, the lady has a very nice voice too. That way when you select your model it will tell you "flight controller - off or 3 axis or 6 axis. Which ever one you have selected at the time, so no need for mistakes
This might be a dead thread, but I just wanted to put this up for anyone else that uses a flysky fs-i6 (not the X model though, those have s-bus/ppm built in).
The fs-i6 transmitter won't work with the aura board right out of the box, you will need to flash the firmware to the modded version (google: fs-i6 10 channel firmware upgrade.) Then, you will only have access to 5 input channels (T,R,E,A, and gyro mode.) So if you are wanting to use the flaps on your power-glider, you're out of luck, at least with the 6-channel RX it comes with. I have a 14 channel i-bus serial RX for use on my quad, but haven't pulled it out to plug into the aura yet, hoping to try that tomorrow.
The fs-i6 transmitter won't work with the aura board right out of the box, you will need to flash the firmware to the modded version (google: fs-i6 10 channel firmware upgrade.) Then, you will only have access to 5 input channels (T,R,E,A, and gyro mode.) So if you are wanting to use the flaps on your power-glider, you're out of luck, at least with the 6-channel RX it comes with. I have a 14 channel i-bus serial RX for use on my quad, but haven't pulled it out to plug into the aura yet, hoping to try that tomorrow.
dap35
Elite member
Does your RX have an S.Bus port? If so, you can try to go through the Aura config and select s.bus as the connection option. The Aura will still only control 5 ports, but you could have additional ports connected to your RX.
S-bus port? No, the RX only has i-bus, at least according to the sticker. I set the controller/aura config for s-bus mode (ppm and pwm) and there was no change in control available (passed to the aura or on the RX's pins,) as seen in the configurator of by plugging servos into the RX. I think it is a hardware limitation of the RX.
dap35
Elite member
Too bad. I know most RX brands have some kind of serial bus connection and at least for Futaba it works pretty well. I connect the servos for Aileron, Rudder, and Elevator to the Aura 5 and anything else to the RX.
Hey there, thanks for linking that video, its a great quick reference for people with that specific radio. I saw it when I first started toying with my set up. He has the fs-i6X which has built in s-bus off-the-shelf.
However, I was posting about the standard fs-i6 that needs an open-source firmware patch to access the s-bus protocols and channels 7-10. Furthermore, I was talking about being unable to run servos on any of the channels on the RX while using the i-bus/s-bus protocols to talk to the aura board.
Reading that back it sounds a little harsh, that's not my intent, I promise. It just gets the information across.
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