This is one of the most useful INAV functions for fixed wings! Servo autotrim solves the problem of trimming the airplane for level flight. Yes, flight controller does is “automatically” in stabilized flight modes, but for good Manual flight performance, you just have to have trimmed control surfaces. A long time ago you had to use some tricks and “adjustments” but for quite some time, INAV can do trimming for you.
ZOHD Nano Talon FPV Airplane, part 2
After a maiden, I’m not very happy… Nano Talon is quiet, efficient and small. But flight performance is not overwhelming. Even quite far good. Let’s say it’s OK. But the worst thing is that I crashed mine due to hardware failure. ZOHD, where is quality control? This should not happen.
DIY Dipole for Crossfire and FrSky R9M
Details for halfwave dipole for an 868MHz band are quite simple:
- two 0.8mm copper wires (used for welding) cut to 77mm and solder to the end of coax cable. Here I've used RG174
- put that thing into a 3D printed casing
- put antenna tubes around wires. I got mine from here: https://goo.gl/HrWNcY
- glue everything together
- you are done!
DIY Moxon antenna for TBS Crossfire and FrSky R9M
Moxon antenna in layman terms, it's probably a simplest linearly polarized directional antenna. It's like a bent halfwave dipole with a bent reflector in a back. Think about it as a very simplified Yagi antenna. It does not have much gain but has very good backward rejection. And thank's to a simplicity, Moxon is super easy to build at home. And I'm proud of radio carrying handle snap mount. I think I did a good job over here.
I've built mine with some 3D printed parts, 0.8mm copper welding wire, 22cm of RG174 coax and RP-SMA plug. And some glue of course! Result? It's definitely directional 🙂 I'm not using it very often, but it's small enough to be taken everywhere where I take my X10S.
Blow-o-meter review: Uni-T UT363BT anemometer from Banggood
No idea how accurate it is, but surely results are plausible. Bluetooth with iENV Android application also works, but instructions how to set it up were not clear. The secret is that you do not have to bind UT363BT with a phone. Just open the iENV app, enable Bluetooth in UT363BT and connect. No pairing required!
ZOHD Nano Talon – small V-Tail airplane
Small, light, quite well thought through. Here is how I've built my ZOHD Nano Talon, small FPV airplane using following components:
- Airplane: ZOHD Nano Talon PNF
- Flight controller: Matek F405-Wing
- Radio: FrSky R9 Slim long range receiver
- Motor: T-Motor F80 1900KV
- FPV transmitter: AKK X2-Ultimate 1200mW
- Camera: RunCam Eagle 2
- GPS: Beitian BN-880
- Software: INAV 2.0
First flight, quite soon. And I have quite a lot of expectations about this plane. Maybe even too much. But let's see how it will handle itself in the air.
AKK X2-Ultimate 1200mW 5.8GHz video transmitter power test
FPV, right? Long range maybe? With a 5.8GHz system, it’s really hard to call it a long-range but what if you put a ridiculous amount of power on transmitter module? 500mW? 800mW? Nope, not enough. Let’s go big and have a practical look at AKK X2-Ultimate which says it does 1200mW of RF output power! 1.2W put into the aether. Wow…
Betaflight 3.4 – how to get it and what changed
Competition from Butterflight changed the game. I might not be the biggest fan of Butterflight, but one thing is sure: thanks to it, Betaflight took a big lead forward. The best example of it is Betaflight 3.4 that currently is in Release Candidate stage.
The most important changes, that really influences flight (there are more not flight related changes, I will cover them separately) are revisited filtering and PID defaults:
- Dynamic filtering enabled by default
- Antigravity enabled by default
- Gyro stage 1 LPF bumped to 100Hz
- Gyro stage 2 LPF (not) Kalman FIR2 filter set at 300Hz
- Dterm filter type set to PT1
- Gyro notch filters disabled
- Dterm notch filter disabled
- Revisited PID gains
Now, it flies wonderfully!
Fear not, INAV 2.0 is here
We have finally done it! The first release candidate for INAV 2.0 is open for download. You can get it together with INAV Configurator 2.0 from GitHub.
What changed? The list is very very long and to be honest it is probably the biggest INAV release ever. There are over 200 tickets connected with INAV 2.0 release. The full list is just too long to publish over here. The shortcut of most important things is for you in a form of a video:
INAV Braking Mode for multirotors
Flying with a multirotor drone with INAV always had a problem: braking. When you were flying fast and then release the stick, a drone was not braking very fast, then it was going back to the place where you released the sticks. Rubberbanding. Irritating.
Over the time there were at least 2 attempts to fix it. Mine is at least the 3rd one and is called "Braking Mode". How it works:
- when you release the sticks and speed is high enough, the drone is allowed to boost braking angle and speed
- when braking is done, speed is low or close to zero, the current position is stored and new target position. Rubberbanding is gone