Just Starting out

[Tazman]

Hello all, I am just starting out in drones, I have flown planes and Heli’s for around 14 years, and I have been away from the RC seen for a long time, I used to have a Hi-tech system with radio, and some planes and heli’s, stopped flying for a long time and now just purchased a great setup for drones and bought to indoor/outdoor tiny whoops to get into drones. I bought a Jumper T16 Pro Radio with CrossFire system, I got FatShark HDO with Fusion Module, I have a TinyHawk-S and a BetaFPV 85x. Now before I quit flying there was no open source and radios were limited, now it seems like multi protocol radios are sweeping the scene and the expensive ones no one is using as they simply do not do what these open source ones do. I am really in a bind and really need help understand the Jumper and the BestFlight for the drones. If anyone can help get me straight, we can Skype and chat if you have the time, I do not prefer posting it takes to long and to be honest I have too many questions, so only guys with time and skype would be really helpful. I appreciate anyone with experience to help me out as I have very little with this open source and have been out of the scene for a good while. If you got a good attitude and time please feel free to help.

 

[FDS]

Our chat not sort you out?

 

[Tazman]

Hey hey, for every answer I get more questions, the thing is unless you are really a guru on betaflight, I am not sure you wanna go to much further, I am looking at getting into understanding PIDS, and the stuff that gets more advanced, I need to know who to set multiple things on a single button now, I would like to know how I can set like 3 modes on one switch and then have a switch cancel that switch should I want those modes to be taken away in favour of the new switch selection. I want to understand now how to setup a drone from the ground up no CLI. I learn pretty quick and I am rarely happy till I understand something fully. But our conversation was wonderful and helped lots, you are really a cool to talk with, even if we are not talking about drone stuff. I want to start a regular meeting with guys from all over that meet up on Skype tp talk all things RC, so I am canvassing all the forums for guys of like minds that really want to dig deep and learn betaflight and the JUmper T16 in depth. I have been flying my betaFPV in the house, and need to know how to tame it down it seem a little to punchy for my currant taste and there are other modes I want to understand, like headfree, and headadj, I want my wife to be able to fly and she is not interested in being some acro pilot and stuff she would like to be able to fly it simple and easy, and headfree and headadj would be her thing, well I tried to get that going and have had no luck so perhaps I am not understanding something, not sure. But for sure our chat did help. Please do not feel you were not helpful, cause that is not true at all. I am extremely thankful for the time you spent with me.

 

[FDS]

PIDs are like voodoo. Plus no two people agree on what works best. Each individual quad performs slightly differently. You need to get the black box data to really tune in detail, most micro boards do not have black box logging on them.
Setting up from scratch is mostly done with the factory tune, that’s why you save it before changing anything. Once you flash the board with a new Betaflight it is then just a matter of setting up the rates, switches and modes. The best way to learn all that is to buy a mid price F4 flight controller and hook it up to BF. You don’t need to have the rest of the stuff connected to work on the set up, plus you can add things like receivers etc as you go. That’s how I learned.
You need to set up a custom throttle curve to tame brushless whoops, I did that on my sons Mobula, it’s unflyable on the stock setting!

Discord is a better platform for meeting etc, as it has chat, group audio, doesn’t need your email and works on anything including phones. Check it out. You just set up a server and then if people want to join you can send an invite or have an open one in something like a forum post that interested people can click to gain access. I set one up on the UK FT sub forum to see if more UK people wanted to connect and help each other.

 

[Tazman]

PIDs are like voodoo. Plus no two people agree on what works best. Each individual quad performs slightly differently. You need to get the black box data to really tune in detail, most micro boards do not have black box logging on them.
Setting up from scratch is mostly done with the factory tune, that’s why you save it before changing anything. Once you flash the board with a new Betaflight it is then just a matter of setting up the rates, switches and modes. The best way to learn all that is to buy a mid price F4 flight controller and hook it up to BF. You don’t need to have the rest of the stuff connected to work on the set up, plus you can add things like receivers etc as you go. That’s how I learned.
You need to set up a custom throttle curve to tame brushless whoops, I did that on my sons Mobula, it’s unflyable on the stock setting!

Discord is a better platform for meeting etc, as it has chat, group audio, doesn’t need your email and works on anything including phones. Check it out. You just set up a server and then if people want to join you can send an invite or have an open one in something like a forum post that interested people can click to gain access. I set one up on the UK FT sub forum to see if more UK people wanted to connect and help each other.

Well I have 2 micros all with black box, second I would never use black box anyway, if you are understanding enough in how to tune a quad it is not voodoo at all, I understand the basics of it, that is why I am compelled to learn how it goes, I disagree with tuning there really are not that many different tunes, its guys that do not understand how to tune and give out bad info. There are many engines and each engine is tuned with different specs, and there are many applications of tunes to those many engines, tuning For racing, or for acro, or tuning for just wonder around nice and easy, where the confusion you are having and the voodoo is, someone scared you on it and you embraced the stock tune. Stock tune is simply that, they tune it to work sloppy and work for a small variety of guys, stock will not work for a beginner like me, stock will not work for a pro racer. Stock will work for a seasoned flyer that has some flying quads under his belt, he is neither a racer or a rookie. I am new to flying quads, not to flying. I am having issues with the tune of the quad, the rates, etc. If you do not learn how to really use Betaflight then your just kind of missing all the goodness BetaFlight has to offer. If you buy a new car, yes it will work out of the box, you drive it for a while and find, hey I want a new stereo, or hey maybe I want it to go faster or save more gas, you find ways to tune it for that. Quads are no difference, yes I am flying my BetaFPV and TInyHawk-S, but not well, and instead of crashing over and over, trying to fly a wild potato, why not learn to tame the potato and save valuable time and perhaps some broken parts. It’s not rocket science tuning an engine and I am learning, but I am missing some valuable info that is critical to the tuning, info that can be the difference in smoking and engine or making it fly really well. I am in IT at the moment, but I am a qualified Auto/Diesel mechanic, now I am sure most guys can fumble through tuning a car engine, but me I breeze through it, not because its voodoo, but because I have learned a process in tuning that makes it easy, I can show you very easily and you would master it in a few hours. Simply the info on tuning is not that readily available and its hard to learn because of that. This is why I am opening the Skype Night to guys that are dedicated in learning and want to progress in the hobby and learn, to those that do not, great if you are happy with simply flying stock, cool, I wish you well and happy flying. I and others really want to learn, put a group of us in a skype chat we will learn and learn fast. Simple and safe. If you want to take part great, if not happy flying.

 

[Tazman]

PIDs are like voodoo. Plus no two people agree on what works best. Each individual quad performs slightly differently. You need to get the black box data to really tune in detail, most micro boards do not have black box logging on them.
Setting up from scratch is mostly done with the factory tune, that’s why you save it before changing anything. Once you flash the board with a new Betaflight it is then just a matter of setting up the rates, switches and modes. The best way to learn all that is to buy a mid price F4 flight controller and hook it up to BF. You don’t need to have the rest of the stuff connected to work on the set up, plus you can add things like receivers etc as you go. That’s how I learned.
You need to set up a custom throttle curve to tame brushless whoops, I did that on my sons Mobula, it’s unflyable on the stock setting!

Discord is a better platform for meeting etc, as it has chat, group audio, doesn’t need your email and works on anything including phones. Check it out. You just set up a server and then if people want to join you can send an invite or have an open one in something like a forum post that interested people can click to gain access. I set one up on the UK FT sub forum to see if more UK people wanted to connect and help each other.

Oh sorry about DIscord, at this moment I would not be into setting up a server, skype pretty much has the ability to creat groups, its free and no need for anything more than windows, do not need goggle chrome or other exotic possibly harmful extensions or add on’s. I understand you do use google and are happy with discord and perhaps in time you may sway me, do not kid yourself I can be brought to the dark side. Just with getting this network setup and finding guys that want to share time and experience its seems like a full time job all of a sudden. After we talked I have learned even more about setup that we never touched on, like setting sub trims that are very important and end points, if you are not doing that more than likely your quads are not flying as well as they could. I also learned about setting accelerometer trims on the fly, and they are important to getting yoyour quad hovering, I flew lots of helicopters, now quads are easier, but, if you have a runaway quad, like a heli, then it makes it 10 times harder to fly and learn. See this is why I am doing this as I am seeing that every persons I talk to over Skype shares more secrets than simply a blog like this, you simply cannot type enough or read enough to get what a person can share over chat. Heck I would not want to try and teach a guy like this. So again I open my skype to all that will come and learn, experienced flyers will learn as well if any one guy thinks he knows it all, or cannot learn from a rookie then this chat is not for him, I can promise one thing all will learn and learn lots if we have good people to share. If however guys are happy pulling out hair and scouring forum after forum trying to learn the hard way, I cannot help them, but I do know how to organize and how to make a consortium of information that will help many I hope.