Maidened the Bat Bone Tri-Copter Today

[earthsciteach]

I've had my first flights with a mulit-rotor today! I will call them successful as the Bat is still in one piece and all of my landings were "safe enough." I certainly would not call the flights graceful, though.

I'm flying with the KK2 board which seems to be doing very well, but I have found an issue that I'm not sure is mechanical or "board" in nature. It seems that a landing with a bit of sideways motion results in either the yaw motor shifting (mechanical) or the board's little brain gets confused. On subsequent flights, the Bat spins in circles, but the self-leveling is still doing its thing. I've recalibrated the sensors and that seemed to take care of it until I landed in the same manner. Then, it was back to spinning in circles.

Has anyone else experienced this?

 

[xuzme720]

IS the yaw motor shifting? Re-arming on an angle would set it up thinking the angle was level, but wouldn't account for the yaw going bonkers...it would just drift off to the side.

 

[FlyingMonkey]

Someone stripped a servo!

I know, I did the same exact thing.

 

[earthsciteach]

Thanks, man! MG servos for me!

 

[xuzme720]

I'm glad FM said it! I didn't want to be the messenger that got shot!

 

[Tritium]

I use metal gear servo's. I made my last yaw assembly push / pull with 2 control rods. A hard landing snapped the servo arm so back to the drawing board on my new yaw assembly (the control arm portion anyway). Anyone have a source for metal servo arms to fit cheap servo's?

Thurmond

 

[xuzme720]

Are you sure you want to go all metal? might be better to leave a cheap point of failure that's easy to fix...sort of like a fuse.

 

[Tritium]

Are you sure you want to go all metal? might be better to leave a cheap point of failure that's easy to fix...sort of like a fuse.

Thinking metal arm and since it is two ended use string (braided kite line) of a known breaking strength for a pull pull arrangement.

Thurmond

 

[xuzme720]

Unfortunately, I've never seen metal servo arms for this size servos. But, if I were looking for one, I would probably start looking at some of the heli stores. They always seem to have the coolest CNC parts...

 

[FlyingMonkey]

It turned out to be much more benign than a stripped servo.

His push/pull rods were slipping.

 

[xuzme720]

Yeah, knew it had to be something moving back there. Slipping in the stoppers, I guess?

 

[FlyingMonkey]

Yup, but then he went and stripped it proper.

 

[earthsciteach]

Yes, I did. The autolevel went all goofy and it dropped one arm. Crunch!

 

[colorex]

Yes, I did. The autolevel went all goofy and it dropped one arm. Crunch!

By chance did you set your ESC's to NiCad?

 

[earthsciteach]

The battery was fully charged. This was about 15 seconds into the flight.

 

[FlyingMonkey]

Did you balance your props? Check the motors for vibrations. Look to make sure you're not shorting any bullet connectors as well.

 

[earthsciteach]

Yes, yes yes.

 

[FlyingMonkey]

Hmmmm....

Have you messed with any of the settings, or did you do as I told you, and try it with the stock settings first?

 

[earthsciteach]

I have P gain at 40 and I gain at 20. It worked great last night and was doing fine until it dropped the one arm.