FinalGlideAus
terrorizing squirrels
One of the more annoying things I've had to put up with flying a multirotor coming from a fixed wing background is it's natural for me to chop the throttle during certain maneuvers. It's also a pain when you are trying to descend fast and you accidently drop the throttle just a little too much. The end result when you hit zero throttle is the motors stop and you loose all control and down it comes. Often throttling back up from a dead stop causes a spin which can be hard to recover in time. I have broken my fair share of props in similar circumstances and after getting my Warpquad airborne I heard some things the heli guys do so I decided to try a multirotor version out. One of the big reasons for trying this is because the Warpquad is soo over powered it hovers 20% throttle which gives little room for error when throttling back for descents.
Essentially what this mix does is allow a low enough throttle setting for the mulirotor to be armed and then after it is armed a throttle cut mix switch is used to change the minimum throttle stick position to just above zero throttle. This not only stops you from getting to the point where the motors stop but you also have full control at Zero throttle position. There are plenty of different ways to achieve this but I'll try to describe how I did it.
My quad's Flight Controller is a Naze 32 my TX is a DX18. When connect to the computer the Naze shows it is set up so minimum throttle is 1150 and max throttle is 1850. To get the quad to arm I must set the end point adjustment in my Transmitter to go lower than 1150 other wise the Naze will think I still have some throttle on an not allow me to arm. Normally you would set it to something like 1146 and it arms fine and you can fly but of course when you drop the throttle below 1150, the motors will stop.
What I did was adjust my throttle end point adjustment so low throttle was 1156 (just above the min value of 1150). This means the motors won't stop when I lower the throttle stick but I cannot now arm the quad to get them to spin in the first place. To fix this I then I set my throttle cut mix in my transmitter on a switch so that when it was active it lowered the throttle point to 1146 thus allowing it to be armed.
So now, after I plug the battery in I first make sure the throttle cut switch is on, then arm the quad and then turn off the throttle cut switch. This then starts the motors at idle speed and I have full control at Zero throttle. When I wish to stop the motors I simply flick the throttle cut switch again. It's really simple and works like a charm and I no longer need to worry about the motors stopping mid flight.
It is worth noting why I set the min throttle to 1156 and not to the Naze min level of 1150. I originally tried that but because the motors are so close to their min value some motors will cut out when you try to maneuver. Adding that little buffer fixes the problem and that value is less than .5% throttle you are loosing which was never really usable anyway.
Anyway, like I said, there are plenty of different ways to do this with your particular radio but if you spend a little time working out how to do it you'll never have to worry about that pesky in air motor stop while doing acro again.
I did a couple of zero throttle descents in the video I took of the maiden flight of my warpquad today:
https://vimeo.com/92301242
Essentially what this mix does is allow a low enough throttle setting for the mulirotor to be armed and then after it is armed a throttle cut mix switch is used to change the minimum throttle stick position to just above zero throttle. This not only stops you from getting to the point where the motors stop but you also have full control at Zero throttle position. There are plenty of different ways to achieve this but I'll try to describe how I did it.
My quad's Flight Controller is a Naze 32 my TX is a DX18. When connect to the computer the Naze shows it is set up so minimum throttle is 1150 and max throttle is 1850. To get the quad to arm I must set the end point adjustment in my Transmitter to go lower than 1150 other wise the Naze will think I still have some throttle on an not allow me to arm. Normally you would set it to something like 1146 and it arms fine and you can fly but of course when you drop the throttle below 1150, the motors will stop.
What I did was adjust my throttle end point adjustment so low throttle was 1156 (just above the min value of 1150). This means the motors won't stop when I lower the throttle stick but I cannot now arm the quad to get them to spin in the first place. To fix this I then I set my throttle cut mix in my transmitter on a switch so that when it was active it lowered the throttle point to 1146 thus allowing it to be armed.
So now, after I plug the battery in I first make sure the throttle cut switch is on, then arm the quad and then turn off the throttle cut switch. This then starts the motors at idle speed and I have full control at Zero throttle. When I wish to stop the motors I simply flick the throttle cut switch again. It's really simple and works like a charm and I no longer need to worry about the motors stopping mid flight.
It is worth noting why I set the min throttle to 1156 and not to the Naze min level of 1150. I originally tried that but because the motors are so close to their min value some motors will cut out when you try to maneuver. Adding that little buffer fixes the problem and that value is less than .5% throttle you are loosing which was never really usable anyway.
Anyway, like I said, there are plenty of different ways to do this with your particular radio but if you spend a little time working out how to do it you'll never have to worry about that pesky in air motor stop while doing acro again.
I did a couple of zero throttle descents in the video I took of the maiden flight of my warpquad today:
https://vimeo.com/92301242