AH-6Z Littlebird Night-Ops build project

[Gazzer1uk]

My brain hurts........

[Zeeflyboy]

Shimples??!! Yah Shimples, right. Genius work Zee, totally amazing,

Ah not really, plus I had a lot of assistance from my friend Sircana in figuring it out.

how the hell will you remember what each switch does, where it is and when to use it WHILST you are flying the heli, I have enough to do just flicking IU when I'm flying......

To make it more fun I'm blind too lol... Under the goggles obviously you can't see what your hands are doing.

It's not actually particularly complicated from a control stand point though. Gain will be fixed so you just have the normal heli flight controls plus a mode switch for manual/Atti/GPS. The only two pots on the transmitter control the FLIR pod, head tracking takes care of pilot head pan/tilt automatically, and missiles/guns are obvious by virtue of their location way out the way of the other switches as is the 6 position switch. So that just leaves you to remember that the camera switch is on the back and the OSD control is on the shoulder (and I have set it so it toggles left/right rather than fore/aft like the others).

In addition the taranis can do an automatic preflight checking the position of each switch is in the pre-determined position, and voice alerts read out the function as a switch is moved for confirmation (eg, move the flight mode switch to the middle and the taranis will say "Flight mode, Atti").

I will probably write down a quick reference guide too as to what switch does what!

[Zeeflyboy]

And of course I'm well practised in remembering buttons and switches

[PorscheBoy]

Cool, just a few more knobs & buttons to worry about then.... (wish i had been financially able to complete my PPL, got to 23hrs but then was made redundant, many years ago now), but at least you have the second seat to help you out.

Quick off topic question; what routes do you fly?

[Zeeflyboy]

Maybe one day you'll finish the ppl... ultralights are fairly cheap and abundant these days and make a good option to get flying without bleeding yourself dry. I fly mostly within Europe based out of Geneva for now... occasionally venture further afield such as morocco, Israel, Egypt etc.

[Zeeflyboy]

today I gave Juan the greatest gift a man can give his semi-automaton FPV heli pilot... legs, and most importantly perhaps, trousers with which to cover his modesty.


Here's a video to give you guys something to watch and also show off the beauty of Trinity head tracking

[Mike Sanders]

Go for it Juan!

[PorscheBoy]

today I gave Juan the greatest gift a man can give his semi-automaton FPV heli pilot... legs, and most importantly perhaps, trousers with which to cover his modesty.


Here's a video to give you guys something to watch and also show off the beauty of Trinity head tracking

Yet again, so very very good.

[Tiger Tank]

Yet again, so very very good.

That is awesome

[Mrmani]

This project is quite simply 'Brilliant' so far, like many others on the forum cant help but be very impressed with your progress on this, can't wait for more updates, keep it up
Garry

[Planehazza]

Hehe love the humour at the end of that video. I noticed the servos are a little slow. Will that disorientate you?

[Zeeflyboy]

Haha, yeah that was especially for sander (the owner of immersion rc). He's Dutch so likes his waffles

They aren't the fastest servos in the world (though this is at 5v, in reality they'll be driven at nearer 6v).

However, the speed they move there is enough to turn the whole world into an FPV blur. In reality 99% of the time you'd move your head much more slowly than that in order to keep things visible... The good thing about trinity though is that the accuracy is just spot on - even if the servo lags a little it always ends up in the right place.

Thanks as always guys, your support is invaluable

[Gazzer1uk]

Well, that's my "fix" for the weekend. I had not realised the virtual reality system worked in this way. The pilot also seems to move very realistically...... This really is a one in a million project..... bows down, I am not worthy!!!

[Zeeflyboy]

No pictures this time but I spent almost the whole day wrestling with my control systems...

Firstly I needed to get the Channel wizard talking to it's friend in the Heli... after programming it all and a few false starts I got that working by forcing a calibration signal through hyper terminal rather than the onboard button. Channel 12 is now nicely encoding the 6 position, 3 position and 2 position x 3 switches and decoding them out on the aircraft.

That small success out of the way I went on to try and set up the Naza with the new system. This is where it went wrong... Everything appeared to work fine apart from channel 4 (rudder) and channel 7 (flight mode) which were showing hard right in the Naza calibration screens. Removed the leads and connected servos to the deocder outputs and they functioned as expected... CONFUSED. I spent hours going through everything, tweaking ppm frame rates, code limits, removing the ppm decoders and connecting direct to pwm ports, swapping channels... nothing. I got frustrated and the only thing I could think of was that the rudder port on the naza was broken... so to confirm I plugged in my Jeti Rx, but that worked perfectly.

Then after some more swearing and fiddling it started working. But the settings were mostly all back at how they had been to begin with.... so I'm not sure why it started working. My working theory at the moment is that channel 7 was forcing a naza failsafe condition, but why that would only affect rudder and U I'm not so clear on. Anyway, numerous power cycles and stress tests have gone by and it seems to be behaving itself. So, I now have channels 1-7 (Ail, Ele, Thr, Rud, Gain, Pitch, Mode) functioning correctly in the Naza, channels 8 and 9 functioning with the trinity head tracking, 10 and 11 functioning for the pod pan/tilt and channel 12 encoding Lights, missiles, guns, camera switch, OSD control for a total of 16 channels. M'excellent.

Only one thing remains which is some odd throttle behaviour where after say 30 seconds it ramps down, spools up, ramps down spools up and then holds. This could come from anywhere (ESC, Batteries, Naza, control system) but I had had enough of diagnosing errors for one day so it'll have to wait for another day. Once that bug is tracked down however it'll be time for some new test flights with the new control system, head and tail.

In other news some more paint arrived so I can get on with finishing the fuselage off too. The list is finally getting shorter!

[Zeeflyboy]

Been busy today...


First up I put the finishing touch to the hellfires - a nice golden dome







I also completely repainted the front fuselage with the correct colour this time, pre-shaded, weathered etc again. Just needs a clear coat now but the colour matches which is better lol.







You may remember I said that the velcro straps at the back were tricky to undo when the mechanics are fitted in the fuselage.... time for a solution! First I printed a retaining bracket to install at the rear of the plates, then I printed a battery box. The box has a few advantages too - it keeps the wires of the battery tidy and also makes the battery mostly black rather than a shiney blue thing. Very simple, just insert battery into the box, slide into place and strap down with the forward strap.
















Given the mechanics will be getting tested again I need a GPS mount too that would hold the GPS in a similar position to the final fitting. Printed this little mount up to do that.







that's all folks.