So I've barely got to fly since mid December. Life has just been crazy busy, my wife's schedule has had her off on days I have to work and working on my days off so even when I do get time off I'm single dad (and my daughter can't be trusted to entertain herself while I fly yet) and the few times we have had days off together I've had to focus on things like keeping our house from falling down, vehicles running and doing family things (at least I tend to enjoy that last one!)
Today was my wife's day off this week, and after work I was granted some precious free time to go flying! All three of my quads should have been flyable...except....
The FPV250: Technically it's flyable. I finally made a new "Sander style" antenna for my LRS RX which is why it was grounded. But...the other reason it's grounded is I've been having issues with the nylon screws that hold the FC mounts coming loose in flight leaving me with a FC that isn't connected to the quad by anything other than wires. Which makes for some rather interesting flying characteristics to say the least. It's back together but I'm down to just 3 FC mounts now so I'm kind of waiting until I have four on there again to fly it. They're in the mail but it's a federal holiday so they won't be delivered until tomorrow. So it didn't get to go.
The Knuckle Tau: I've been dying to get oneshot going on here but have had issues with USB and the nightly builds of GCS for windows don't have oneshot support yet (the next one will, but was left out of yesterdays builds for some reason
) Oh well, it's kind of windy today and I'd like to see how it's position hold does in the wind...and hey, maybe I can finally try out RTH too. Except...it's not responding to my TX. And I think I know why. Last night while debugging the USB I found that the micro USB port isn't wired to power the board by default - it just powers pin PA9. Hmm, maybe if I jumpered that to VCC to power the board I could run it off one USB cable instead of having to use the micro for data and the mini on the other end for power. Except I misread the board and jumpered it to PB9 instead of PA9. PB9 is the PPM input for the RX. Crud. No wonder I have no RX now. Not sure if I fried the pin on the STM32 or if I fried my homemade FlySky RX - or both. Going to have to do some debugging to figure that out I guess. Either way it's not up for flying today.
Well....the Twitchity 230 is ready for some thrashing! Just put new carbon arms on it Friday and have flown a few packs in the front yard where it's feeling great. The current props are a bit beat up...but I've got more in my field bag and beat up props are an excuse to fly crazy so let's give it a go at the big field!
Yeah, that didn't go well. Think I listened to too aggressive of music on my way up there. First flight didn't last very long at all before I sent it bouncing off the road. oops. Second flight something felt odd and crashed right away when it didn't seem to be responding quite right. Replaced one broken prop ( should have done all four but I'm getting low ) and tried again. Props still sound bad...and the wind is gnarly...and..something still feels wrong - crashed right away.
Gave it a full once over trying to figure out what could have it feeling so odd. Figured it must be the props...let's try one more time before replacing them. Give it a little punch out to see how bad the props sound...and...um...it's still punching out but my throttle stick isn't. Uh oh. Thankfully just as I realized something very wrong was happening and had no control and the quad was becoming a dot in the sky - failsafe kicked in just before I even got my TX shut off. Did what it was supposed to and it fell to the ground from way the heck up there.
After 3 minutes of trying to figure out why the TX won't re-connect I found the problem. Signal wire from the sat to the RX broke.
Oh well, at least it's a nice CF frame and sucked up the abuse with hardly a scratch (the bounce off the street did cause a bit of a scratch but that was about it), I only broke one prop...and I did get maybe a minute of flying in. Beats no flying I guess :black_eyed:
At least the twitchity will be a quick easy fix, resolder one wire and this time go ahead and add some hot glue to reinforce it and keep it from happening again like I should have in the first place.
The KT...that's going to take a bit more investigating...really hope I didn't burn out pin PB9 for PPM input....Will have to put another RX on there and see...$15 for a new discovery board will suck if it's only one pin bad. Hopefully I burned up the arduino on the DIY RX...that's only about $1.50 to replace but does require firing up the soldering iron
Today was my wife's day off this week, and after work I was granted some precious free time to go flying! All three of my quads should have been flyable...except....
The FPV250: Technically it's flyable. I finally made a new "Sander style" antenna for my LRS RX which is why it was grounded. But...the other reason it's grounded is I've been having issues with the nylon screws that hold the FC mounts coming loose in flight leaving me with a FC that isn't connected to the quad by anything other than wires. Which makes for some rather interesting flying characteristics to say the least. It's back together but I'm down to just 3 FC mounts now so I'm kind of waiting until I have four on there again to fly it. They're in the mail but it's a federal holiday so they won't be delivered until tomorrow. So it didn't get to go.
The Knuckle Tau: I've been dying to get oneshot going on here but have had issues with USB and the nightly builds of GCS for windows don't have oneshot support yet (the next one will, but was left out of yesterdays builds for some reason
) Oh well, it's kind of windy today and I'd like to see how it's position hold does in the wind...and hey, maybe I can finally try out RTH too. Except...it's not responding to my TX. And I think I know why. Last night while debugging the USB I found that the micro USB port isn't wired to power the board by default - it just powers pin PA9. Hmm, maybe if I jumpered that to VCC to power the board I could run it off one USB cable instead of having to use the micro for data and the mini on the other end for power. Except I misread the board and jumpered it to PB9 instead of PA9. PB9 is the PPM input for the RX. Crud. No wonder I have no RX now. Not sure if I fried the pin on the STM32 or if I fried my homemade FlySky RX - or both. Going to have to do some debugging to figure that out I guess. Either way it's not up for flying today.Well....the Twitchity 230 is ready for some thrashing! Just put new carbon arms on it Friday and have flown a few packs in the front yard where it's feeling great. The current props are a bit beat up...but I've got more in my field bag and beat up props are an excuse to fly crazy so let's give it a go at the big field!
Yeah, that didn't go well. Think I listened to too aggressive of music on my way up there. First flight didn't last very long at all before I sent it bouncing off the road. oops. Second flight something felt odd and crashed right away when it didn't seem to be responding quite right. Replaced one broken prop ( should have done all four but I'm getting low ) and tried again. Props still sound bad...and the wind is gnarly...and..something still feels wrong - crashed right away.
Gave it a full once over trying to figure out what could have it feeling so odd. Figured it must be the props...let's try one more time before replacing them. Give it a little punch out to see how bad the props sound...and...um...it's still punching out but my throttle stick isn't. Uh oh. Thankfully just as I realized something very wrong was happening and had no control and the quad was becoming a dot in the sky - failsafe kicked in just before I even got my TX shut off. Did what it was supposed to and it fell to the ground from way the heck up there.
After 3 minutes of trying to figure out why the TX won't re-connect I found the problem. Signal wire from the sat to the RX broke.
Oh well, at least it's a nice CF frame and sucked up the abuse with hardly a scratch (the bounce off the street did cause a bit of a scratch but that was about it), I only broke one prop...and I did get maybe a minute of flying in. Beats no flying I guess :black_eyed:
At least the twitchity will be a quick easy fix, resolder one wire and this time go ahead and add some hot glue to reinforce it and keep it from happening again like I should have in the first place.
The KT...that's going to take a bit more investigating...really hope I didn't burn out pin PB9 for PPM input....Will have to put another RX on there and see...$15 for a new discovery board will suck if it's only one pin bad. Hopefully I burned up the arduino on the DIY RX...that's only about $1.50 to replace but does require firing up the soldering iron
