A combination of the weather and other life intrusions conspired to keep me from flying for the last several days. I expected that I would have lost some of the progress I had made in Manual, but the reverse was true! The experience of flying in Manual mode seems to have “gelled” in the interim. That actually happens to me fairly often. I took off in Normal mode, climbed to 300 ft, and switched to Manual. I got in a solid 7 minutes of Manual time, even dismissing the low battery warning for a while, before deciding it was time to come home, and switching back to Normal.
I confirmed something that I had suspected before, which is that the elaborate menu dance to get into Manual the first time, only needs to be done once. After reaching my switchover point, I popped the RC switch to Manual, got the stick status screen, adjusted as instructed, and I was off to the Manual races!
When I was getting ready to take off, I got an error that said, “Remote controller control stick error”, or something very much like that. It went away when I started the motors and recentered the sticks, but I’m wondering what causes that? I also got a message saying to tighten the F2 setting, or something like that, which also went away.
Manual mode isn’t quite natural yet, but it’s no longer Mr Toad’s Wild Ride either. I set off down the canyon, with the intention of maintaining altitude, flying IFR to the Flag turnaround point, and then coming back home. Mostly that’s what happened. I got a bit more insight into the OPs question about aircraft attitude, and I’m starting to visualize how I need to point and power the aircraft to get it to what I want. I now understand the recommendation to set the camera at some angle and leave it there, which I may try on my next flight. I can now imagine using the view from the camera as the attitude indicator.
Up until now, rolling with the right stick didn’t seem to do much beyond putting the horizon at a funny angle. Now, I’m starting to get better at making semi-coordinated turns.
I’m still a little mystified by the fact that if I don’t stay on top of it, the drone consistently tends to drift backward and down…just like it does when I first switchover to manual. When it does that, I tilt it forward a bit, and add power, and that works, but not right away, and my responses for doing that aren’t smooth yet.
My first objective for Manual was to just not fall out of the sky. I had that nailed by the third flight. My second objective was to be able to fly down the canyon and back in a reasonably controlled manner, with no need to punch out. I just did that. I want to do that a couple more times to improve the smoothness of my control inputs, before gradually increasing my speed to the max, and bombing down the canyon and back at 87 mph, or as close to that as I can get at this elevation. For now, that’s my final Manual mode objective, but I may see some new horizons once I do that. Or not.
So I now have a grand and glorious total of about 16 minutes in Manual mode! No expert, to be sure, but now mostly in control of the aircraft for the increasing durations of the flights.
Could I extract my Manual flight duration from my Airdata logs?
Gettin’ there!
I confirmed something that I had suspected before, which is that the elaborate menu dance to get into Manual the first time, only needs to be done once. After reaching my switchover point, I popped the RC switch to Manual, got the stick status screen, adjusted as instructed, and I was off to the Manual races!
When I was getting ready to take off, I got an error that said, “Remote controller control stick error”, or something very much like that. It went away when I started the motors and recentered the sticks, but I’m wondering what causes that? I also got a message saying to tighten the F2 setting, or something like that, which also went away.
Manual mode isn’t quite natural yet, but it’s no longer Mr Toad’s Wild Ride either. I set off down the canyon, with the intention of maintaining altitude, flying IFR to the Flag turnaround point, and then coming back home. Mostly that’s what happened. I got a bit more insight into the OPs question about aircraft attitude, and I’m starting to visualize how I need to point and power the aircraft to get it to what I want. I now understand the recommendation to set the camera at some angle and leave it there, which I may try on my next flight. I can now imagine using the view from the camera as the attitude indicator.
Up until now, rolling with the right stick didn’t seem to do much beyond putting the horizon at a funny angle. Now, I’m starting to get better at making semi-coordinated turns.
I’m still a little mystified by the fact that if I don’t stay on top of it, the drone consistently tends to drift backward and down…just like it does when I first switchover to manual. When it does that, I tilt it forward a bit, and add power, and that works, but not right away, and my responses for doing that aren’t smooth yet.
My first objective for Manual was to just not fall out of the sky. I had that nailed by the third flight. My second objective was to be able to fly down the canyon and back in a reasonably controlled manner, with no need to punch out. I just did that. I want to do that a couple more times to improve the smoothness of my control inputs, before gradually increasing my speed to the max, and bombing down the canyon and back at 87 mph, or as close to that as I can get at this elevation. For now, that’s my final Manual mode objective, but I may see some new horizons once I do that. Or not.
So I now have a grand and glorious total of about 16 minutes in Manual mode! No expert, to be sure, but now mostly in control of the aircraft for the increasing durations of the flights.
Could I extract my Manual flight duration from my Airdata logs?
Gettin’ there!
