Need some Advise with my versacopter

[Bottanker]

I want to start out saying hi and how excited I am to finally add content to the site.
My name is Shawn and I am active duty military stationed here at Fort Bliss, TX.
I have been on and off the hobby for the past 20 years. I started racing 1/12 scale road cars.
For the past two years ive been playing around with Blade planes, quads, and Helo's.

I have seen almost every single ft YouTube videos and even FTLIVE, miss that channel.

I week ago I came across the Versa copter V2 on EBay. I was so excited because finally it was in my budget (Thank Dear).
It came with the following(1) Flight Test VersaCopter 280-V2 Quad Frame
(4) Motors - Emax 2204 2300kv
(4) ESCs – Emax BL Heli 12 amp
(4) M5 Locknuts (CW Threaded)
(4) Emax 6x4.5 Props (spares)
(1) Naze32 (rev 6) flight controller board
(1) Custom Flite Test Lipo Bag
(1) Runcam Skyplus FPV camera
(1) Eachine VYX ET200 200mw 5.8Ghz video transmitter
(1) AOMWAY 4-L-RPSMA RHCP 5.8Ghz video antenna
(1) OrangeRX 2.4Ghz DMSX/DSM2 compatible receiver
(1) RunCam HD camera

I opened the box and took it over to my desk and opened it up and who put it together did a fine job.
Download Cleanflight and connected the copter to the PC. Watching FT and following there directions on setting it up for me.
Yesterday I took it out to test fly it and it didn't go so well. Before I broke anything brought it back inside to check my settings. Ran into some issues working with cleanflight and watching youtube videos to set up my PID's and the FT Videos were not really matching up with the values that cleanflight is using now.
Today I put new props on well did this twice because I didn't put them on right the first time. Went to take my maden and seamed little sluggish on the ground just spinning the motors up. Went to get it off the ground to hoover and it started to rodeo. OH GOD. The quad shot straight up and tagged the light pole. Really touchy, and the came crashing to the ground. broke props and the runcam DVR holder lucky I didn't put it on yet so it is safe.

Here are a few issues I ran into looking at clean flight. First off clean flight doesn't see a magnetometer like the flight test video I was watching. I do have a green light for Gyro, accel, baro.
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And I just used some quess work for PID's just because the videos I was watching didn't match up.
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So low and behold I now have a dinged up copter and kinda left in the dark and ready to go at it again later and to make sure I have don't need new parts.

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I am very new at flying quads and everyone makes it look so easy lol. but for my quad any surjections would be helpful to try to keep my crash's to a min. Thank you.

 

[RC-Mallory]

Thanks for your service Shawn,

First off, the Naze32 that you have does not have a magnetometer, so don't worry about it. It will fly perfectly fine without one. It is always possible to get an external one to plug in, but they are mostly used for GPS navigation and more advanced stabilization anyways. Are you flying on rate, self level, or angle mode? If you are up for it, I would suggest learning on rate so you don't have to relearn how to fly when you want to do some stunts, but I'm sure others would disagree...

This is probably more of a matter of preference, but I would personally advise switching to Betaflight instead of cleanflight. Then you can enable "airmode" which will make flips/rolls and upside down stuff way easier (but it won't fix your problems). I also find it just flies smoother in general.

If you can, try flashing Betaflight from the Betaflight Configurator (found on Chrome app store, just like cleanflight) and see if there are any posts online for the PIDs. Although, if your up for it, I would also suggest trying a self tune as it will help your understanding of how it flies and what effects different PIDs have on it.

Here is one method and the method that I personally find to work the best for tuning a quad from scratch.

To make it fly, I would set all of the PID settings to 0 to start, then increase only the P setting to about 20 and hover it on a calm day (or indoors if you have enough room, AKA about 5X the width of the quad and be ready to disarm and let it drop in case of emergency). It should be able to fly with just P settings. Then increase D until you notice small and very rapid oscillation, then decrease just a bit.

For the next steps, don't try it inside, take it out even it there is a bit of wind.

Next, increase I until it doesn't oscillate as much when there is some wind (this will probably end up being somewhere around 1/2 of the P settings). I is used in the quad to fix errors in movement, so it is most noticeable with a slight breeze.

Then increase D until it stops the little bit of oscillation when doing fast movements such as pitching back and forth quickly, D is used to slow down the movement before it reaches the desired orientation so that it does not overshoot, too much D feels slow and sloppy, but too low and it will overshoot and oscillate a bit on fast movements.

I would also set the pitch and roll rates to about 0.50 to start, and set yaw to about 0.25. It might make it easier to add a little bit of expo, maybe around 0.20, but play around until it feels comfortable (on betaflight, you get a little window that shows what the drone will do with different control rates and expo, but it must be plugged into the battery to power the receiver, so REMOVE PROPS).

If it still bucks around even with low P and no I or D, then it is most likely not the tune, but rather something else.
Good luck with it and hope you get in the air soon!

-Chase