ZAxis
Member
Recently made the first overseas trip with the ADH3X/MK Y6 hexacopter, broken down with legs+gimble separated from the body and packed into a foam lined box.Had to convince the Southampton FlyBe staff the Lipos has to be hand carried and not put in the hold. It took them a little while to confirm this and were cool about it afterwards. It arrived in one piece and flew perfectly. The results have already been posted http://www.multirotorforums.com/showthread.php?113-Show-what-you-filmed&p=75082#post75082
Packed it back up again and flew back. No hassle from French check in staff ... is it a wet cell ? ... no ... all is OK then.
Waited a couple of days before trying to fly again. When I did, it powered up but did not give the normal calibration beeps - only one beep. It also showed no telemetry on the MX20 Tx. The motors started up as normal but on attempting lift off it flipped forward immediately and broke 4 props. Bummer ! ...... Middle of the Welsh country side and this has to happen ! Gave up, went home.
Back home, checked things over. Everything was the same so there was a permanent problem of some sort. Did a physical check over and nothing was broken or loose.
Hooked up to MKtools to check the electronics, again everything looked normal. No errors so did a reflash of the FC firmware. No change. Did a magnet calib ... no change. Looking back at the MKtool settings noticed that the Rx was set to Jeti Satellite rather than Graupner HOTT .... something WAS wrong but why ? Set it correctly but the Gyro initialisation still gave the single beep so there was more to it than that. Mulling things over it seemed that the problem was the electronics but what had happened ... the only thing that came to mind was airport X ray scanners and their effect on electronics. The hexa had been hold luggage so would have gone thru the baggage hall X ray which is capable of higher output than the departure lounge ones. So did a complete firmware reflash and wiped the EEPROM. On startup, it initialised correctly and gave the right number of beeps - hurrah! A very cautious flight test confirmed things were pretty much back to normal.
So I'm going to blame an over enthusiastic X ray operator trying to figure out what the strange three armed thing inside the wooden box was turning up the power to penetrate deeper which zapped some EEPROM settings.
It would be interesting to know if anyone else has had similar problems but it also a warning to others that travel with their gear not to assume everything will survive air travel intact.
Andy & Lec
Packed it back up again and flew back. No hassle from French check in staff ... is it a wet cell ? ... no ... all is OK then.
Waited a couple of days before trying to fly again. When I did, it powered up but did not give the normal calibration beeps - only one beep. It also showed no telemetry on the MX20 Tx. The motors started up as normal but on attempting lift off it flipped forward immediately and broke 4 props. Bummer ! ...... Middle of the Welsh country side and this has to happen ! Gave up, went home.
Back home, checked things over. Everything was the same so there was a permanent problem of some sort. Did a physical check over and nothing was broken or loose.
Hooked up to MKtools to check the electronics, again everything looked normal. No errors so did a reflash of the FC firmware. No change. Did a magnet calib ... no change. Looking back at the MKtool settings noticed that the Rx was set to Jeti Satellite rather than Graupner HOTT .... something WAS wrong but why ? Set it correctly but the Gyro initialisation still gave the single beep so there was more to it than that. Mulling things over it seemed that the problem was the electronics but what had happened ... the only thing that came to mind was airport X ray scanners and their effect on electronics. The hexa had been hold luggage so would have gone thru the baggage hall X ray which is capable of higher output than the departure lounge ones. So did a complete firmware reflash and wiped the EEPROM. On startup, it initialised correctly and gave the right number of beeps - hurrah! A very cautious flight test confirmed things were pretty much back to normal.
So I'm going to blame an over enthusiastic X ray operator trying to figure out what the strange three armed thing inside the wooden box was turning up the power to penetrate deeper which zapped some EEPROM settings.
It would be interesting to know if anyone else has had similar problems but it also a warning to others that travel with their gear not to assume everything will survive air travel intact.
Andy & Lec
