The idle thing sounds annoying, when / how do you check your controls?
Obviously I don't fly drones or helicopters.
Yeah, that function really inhibits checking control surface function. Turns out that this function was added to the SingleCopter firmware recently. Others building this type of rig noticed the change, so I'm going to load some older firmware and see if it works better. From the discussion it sounded as if the arming of the control surfaces while it was still on the ground would perpetuate a situation that more and more control was autonomously fed to the control surface because nothing was moving as it was on the ground. By waiting until it gets off the ground prevents that. If I were programming it, I probably would have made the controls all manual with no stabilization until the flight controller detected an upward movement, kind of like autonomous launch mode.
The balance point is about 1 cm above (towards the top) of the mid point on this testing prototype, so I'm going to build a bigger one and do more testing.
Spring loaded wire strut landing gear released via servo
Easy peasy!
How about four D size rocket motors, one in each corner. Whoosh.
I thought of extending wood dowels down at each corner about 10 cm. They wouldn't be too noticeable in flight, just have to land in taller grass. I'm going to see how the bigger one flies before trying to tackle the little issues. I have to overcome some more basic flight characteristics, like getting sustained flight, before I address landing. Wait, taking off is the easy part. Good thing it is foam. Tipping over isn't too damaging.
Retractable dowels, just rotate 90 to be inside, which is much bigger by the way.
