Tips for First Few Flights please

S

SeanArenas

Member
Hello!

With the help of Tomstoy I have gotten the bird flying. Now I need to familiarize myself with all of the controls and stuff.

I recalibrated my compass, then got it to lift off in my front yard. Trying to get the feel for the controls, I adjusted the throttle up and down and watched it gain and lose height, then moved it around a few feet with the other flight stick.

Then it moved itself up about 50 feet and hovered over my neighborhood, freaking me out. I tried to bring it back down and couldn't figure out how. I think it was in GPS mode and I am not sure how I eventually got it to land, but I did. Now I want to take it to the park and practice flying, but want to make sure I know how to take off and land correctly, in the 3 different modes.

I've looked around for a walkthrough on this but haven't had luck yet. Any advice, please?
 

Tomstoy2

Tomstoy2

Member
Hi Sean, glad you got back down ok! Scared me just reading about that.

Let's try a few things first.

First thing I want you to do is to take a few pics of your assistant screens, let's see what Tony has all your settings at.

Before you plug in the battery to do this, first, there is a DJI supplied connector between the battery and the power boards. This is a split connector, The fat leads go to a Deans connector that then powers your boards. Unplug this Deans connector.
The other set of leads goes to a yellow connector that goes to the s-ven which applys power to the WKM, so leaving this plugged in will allow power to the WKM still.
You don't need the power to the power boards when making changes so unplugging the Deans means the motors will not accidentilly power up.
Unplug this Deans connector every time you work on the WKM for safety.

Then take pics of every screen and post it so we can compair apples to apples.

Also, take pics of your transmitter settings and post them.

It's a good idea to save all these pics in a file in your computer so you can have reference later.

After you do that, then go to the trans. cal. screen in the assistant and redo the transmitter calibration.
When calibrating the throttle stick it is important to have the throttle stick in the middle, ( green in the screen ), press finish, then press write.

After checking your settings, we'll see what is what and converse some more.

What the problem sounds like, just guessing here, is that the WKM did not have time to climatize to the temp difference from inside temp to outside temp. This is important. The barometer may have had trouble deciding altitude. But, this is just a guess.

Don't fly it again until we figure this out for you. I know the temptation is hard to resist right now, but I would hate to see something happen to such a nice bird!
 
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S

SeanArenas

Member
Do you mean the grey connector on the left? The corner of it is up against that allen screw, makes it tough to pull out. I am going to try it for now with it still in and get you some screens in the meantime, unless you say it's absolutely necessary.
View attachment 8152
 

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Tomstoy2

Tomstoy2

Member
View attachment 8153

This cable. The male Deans goes to the battery, the female Deans laying against my battrey, plugs into the power board. That is where you disconnect.

Your pic was of the s-ven, do not disconnect that one.
 

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S

SeanArenas

Member
I'm really sure that what happened earlier, is that I accidentally hit the "failsafe" switch in GPS mode, which makes it go to original location at 10 meters height, hover for a few moments, then land. So it went from the 4 feet I had it, to 33 feet, floated, then landed. I'm sure it's working fine, I was just unfamiliar with the controls

Hope you can see my settings.
 


S

SeanArenas

Member
I put them in the next post.

I'm feeling pretty confident that I can take it down to the elementary school and try it out in the field and let you know how it goes in a few :)
 

Tomstoy2

Tomstoy2

Member
In that case you are right. That is exactly what it should do.

Get yourself a label maker and put some labels on the different switches so you know what they do and what position they should be in.

Remember, in gps mode, upon powering up the battery, give it time to lock onto all the satelites. When it's got a lock it will flash purple and 1 red, then it is safe to take off and home position is recorded. Taking off before gps lock will cause wierd things to happen. Depending where it is in the sky, when it finally locks it will think that is home and on the ground.
It won't shut off the motors in the sky, but do some hunting to find the ground, then shut off the motors.

When it did land, did it try to take off and land again, or did it land and shut off the motors?
 

S

SeanArenas

Member
I don't remember what it did earlier, just that I was glad it was back on the ground and not wandering randomly in to neighbor's yards.

The field behind the elementary school is quite large and should give me some safe space to practice it.

The craft takes 2 batteries at a time the way it's designed. Where on the transmitter do I see the battery status? And with this loadout, what should I expect for a flight time with no gimbal and camera?

CarbonCore 950mm Hexacopter, 1.5mm Carbon Fibre
Wookong-M Flight Controller
AG550-NX Camera Gimbal
6-Turnigy Plush 40a ESC's
6-Rc Tiger Motors MT3515-15 Motors
2-Power Distribution Boards
6-Graupner 14" Propellers
6-Graupner Spacers
DEVO-10 Transmitter
 


S

SeanArenas

Member
Tomstoy2 said:
In that case you are right. That is exactly what it should do.
Click to expand...
I didn't know that that's what it should do until I went to DJI's site and looked at the Features page for the Wookong-M and saw the video demonstrating the feature. I was like, "Ohhhhhhh!" Light bulb over head, etc.

What parts do I need to upgrade to Wookong-M VeryMultiWaypoint (or whatever the highest end is called)?
 

Tomstoy2

Tomstoy2

Member
With fresh charged battery, go out and fly for 3 minutes then land.

Recharge the batterys, and see how many mah's are put back into a battery, ( 1 will be slightly more than the other ).

Take the largest number and divide by 3, this gives you how many mah's per minute.

Using a 5000mah battery, (1), you then have 4000mah's of safe power.

Divide 4000mah's by the number for mah's per minute and this gives you the amount of safe flight time available to you.

Set the timer on your transmitter to count down to warn you when the time is up.


On the voltage screen of the assistant, click the voltage tab, see if Tony has this on or off and let me know.

What this screen does is to automatically land the model when it reaches the preset settings. Tony probably did this for you already, but maybe he didn't.
With time adding up over many flights this setting will cause the model to land before what you were used to. It's a good way to know that you need to check the internal resistance of your batterys, see if it is getting weak.
Your battery charger, depending on what you have, should be able to tell you resistance.

The timer on your transmitter is really the best way. As long as you do not discharge the batterys below 205 of capacity they should last a long time.

Read up and learn how to store your batterys correctly.
 

Tomstoy2

Tomstoy2

Member
I can't help you out with waypoints, but it's on Tony's site.
I believe you need to get the single waypoint system first, around $900, the the upgrade to multiple way points, another $400.
You'll need a ground station, ( laptop ), or DJI's controll station.
But, as I said, I really don't know, I fly fpv instead.
 

S

SeanArenas

Member
Tomstoy2 said:
With fresh charged battery, go out and fly for 3 minutes then land.

Recharge the batterys, and see how many mah's are put back into a battery, ( 1 will be slightly more than the other ).

Take the largest number and divide by 3, this gives you how many mah's per minute.

Using a 5000mah battery, (1), you then have 4000mah's of safe power.

Divide 4000mah's by the number for mah's per minute and this gives you the amount of safe flight time available to you.

Set the timer on your transmitter to count down to warn you when the time is up.


On the voltage screen of the assistant, click the voltage tab, see if Tony has this on or off and let me know.

What this screen does is to automatically land the model when it reaches the preset settings. Tony probably did this for you already, but maybe he didn't.
With time adding up over many flights this setting will cause the model to land before what you were used to. It's a good way to know that you need to check the internal resistance of your batterys, see if it is getting weak.
Your battery charger, depending on what you have, should be able to tell you resistance.

The timer on your transmitter is really the best way. As long as you do not discharge the batterys below 205 of capacity they should last a long time.

Read up and learn how to store your batterys correctly.
Click to expand...
I just went to the school and ran it for 10 minutes over a couple flights, and tested the homing mode. Worked like a champ.
Then I flew it a bit more and it came home on its own, and landed. I figured the craft detected it was low battery.

But then I hooked up the other batteries and it started coming home on its own immediately. I only flew that for 4 minutes because I wasn't sure if the batteries were low, or if the craft still thought it was low from the previous run...

Uploading videos
 

S

SeanArenas

Member
There's no way to get a readout of the current status of the batteries? Would be nice to take it to 30% then land every time, not be constantly landing at 50% to play it safe, and certainly never running it below 10%...
 

Tomstoy2

Tomstoy2

Member
That is why you want to disable the voltage on the assistant and just use the timer. No, it won't come home and land if low, just land where it is, but if y use the formula I gave you above you will know how long you can fly and the timer will tell you to land when time expires, still keeping the batterys save.

Only the charger will give you the current state of your batterys.

You could wire in a battery monitor into the system, so that when you plug in the batterys you know what voltage is.

What it sounds like, your second set of batterys were not charged up.

Glad your now having fun! It's such a hoot, and you have one beautiful system there.

Take your time with it, get good and familiar with it. Do get yourself so yellow tape or something to put in the front boom to help you out keeping orentation.
Just remember, if you do loose orentation, in gps mode at least, just let go of the sticks and she will just sit there and wait for you to get sorted out.

Looking forward to seeing your vid!
 

S

SeanArenas

Member
I noticed in GPS mode, it's very solid with holding still and stuff. In Attitude mode, if I move it Right, then let go, it will straighten back out but keep drifting right. In GPS mode, it will hold still when I let go of the stick. Both are awesome depending on what I want to do.

I dropped the throttle all the way one time, and it started falling fast, but pumped the throttle back up right away and it started back up and held itself up. That was fun, but next time I will do it further up so I have more time for the props to catch hold of the air :)

Just waiting for two batteries to charge up so that I can go in the front yard and test using your formula. After playing in that big field, I feel more comfortable that I can use it in the front yard without losing control.

So, you say, to not have it fly back home and land, I should disable the voltage on the assistant. Was it flying back home earlier because it improperly detected low voltage, or because it detected low voltage and properly decided to come back home? Or was there some other reason?

Here's the first video, another coming soon. Change resolution to max HD (use the gear icon at the bottom of the video)
 
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nytram

nytram

Member
I did the homing thing on my first flight and near sh1t myself. I did a flight and then landed, I wounded what light show so I flicked it on to go home and it took off went to 20m and then landed 1m from where it took off form (the original takeoff position)
 

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