Some examples of set ups would be good for all just starting out with a MK set up.. especially ME!
I would appreciate some help with the Gyro and Misc settings especially the TX lost emergency Gas settings. I have looked at my current set up but dont fully understand it. Mine is set to ;- Emergency time [90] Emergency Gas [46] It would help if there was something in english!
dave
Last night I did an experiment with my Hexa to see the difference between where the parameter settings were and the out of the box setup with minor tweaks. What I did was write down all the really important settings that need to stay as is, those being the camera setup and poti/channel assignments, as well as a few that should be adjusted up from stock, the Emergency Gas Time and the Emergency Gas. Once that was done I clicked on the magic triangle in MKtool and let it overwrite all the settings back to factory/beginner.
Before I did anything else I reset the camera settings back to where I had them, I found out the hard way a while back that it is possible for the Pro Mini mount to drive the camera platform completely off the arch rollers if the roll servo settings are wrong!
Once I wrote those to the F/C I then proceeded to initialize the gyros and start the motors on the bench, everything was working as it should. Next I set the Motor Safety Switch to the same Poti that the altitude hold is on as I sometimes use Vario A/H and that will prevent motor shutdown as long as A/H is engaged, tested that by spinning up the motors, flipping the switch for A/H and trying to shutdown the motors, they didn't so it works.
Emergency gas time IMO should always be set to the maximum, 240 I think is the highest it will go. That way should the MK lose TX signal you have the best chance for recovery if the F/C is allowed as much time as the programming permits for an emergency descent. The Emergency Gas setting should be right below what it takes for your setup to hover, you want it to be coming down if the signal is lost, but slowly, not dropping like a brick and that's where having the right E-Gas setting comes in. You may have to do some testing to find the proper setting, I have mine around 110 for a fully loaded setup as it takes a bit over 1/2 stick to hover presently.
Two other parameters where changed from the current default. In Altitude tab the Z-ACC setting now defaults to 0 rather than the previous 30 due to concerns about prop imbalance or other vibration sources causing a problem. Since I'm using Graupners and have as little vibration as possible I set it back to 30 as noted in the .80 firmware documentation. The other big change for firmware .82 is the Gyro stability setting introduced in .80, it's explained as "This parameter can reduce the "hardness" of the attitude controller. In the beta test was noticed that there may be advantages to reduce the hardness."
I take that to mean that the sensitivity of the gyro control can be reduced (Hardness factor) by lowering this setting and I pretty much proved to myself when it was set too low and the Mk was all over the place in the wind at the lake last weekend that there is a point where it's too low. In .82 the setting has been changed to allow for a maximum setting of 16, the default now being 6 I believe. If they have increased the granularity of the setting to allow for 16 steps then IMO 6 is way too low, especially if you're trying to keep the MK steady enough for A/P work, so I set mine to 12.
Charged the batts and put the MK on the shelf for the evening. A while ago I took it outside to see what it was going to do. Perfect conditions to test in, it's been blowing strong gusts all day and only slightly declined as the sun starts to set. Wanted to try earlier but the wind was just too strong to take the risk of bouncing the MK off any of the myriad immovable objects surrounding the house like trees, cars, electrical feed lines, etc. I have to say it's a LOT steadier now, other than the fight to maintain a constant altitude due to wind gusts the MK was very well behaved. Whether that is enough of a change from where it was I won't know until I have a chance to get back over to the lake or at least to an area open enough to be able to get some altitude and fly around with the video camera recording, but so far it looks encouraging.
Ken
