Different flybarless electronics

[Ade_Law]

hang on. are you saying that are complaining about responsive, accurate, attitude holding and consistent stick response.

All the tweaks that I did to the head of the knight, like the 3rd hole on the mixer arms, delta angle adjustment, grip flip and all those different blade/paddle combos I tried were to try to attain exactly that....

how can this "robotic feel" be a bad thing???

or am i missing something.

[KevDavies]

Haha

That wasnt me, but I can guess who it was

wasnt me that fer sure!!

[Ade_Law]

wasnt me that fer sure!!

I have been back on the forum 5 mins and seen enough not to believe you!

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[pgkevet]

I glanced at the survey and gave up. Evidently I'm subhuman since initial setup of both beastx and brain took me the order of many many hours - even after the initial plodding through forums reading about the device before buying it then the installation of latest updates, plodding my way through setups with changes of mounting, changes of servo horn and ball link distances etc. Even when setup and figuring I have a handle on it's understanding there's the first spool-ups blades off before going for a first flight.

On the other hand I've not crashed on a first flight - which equally has been gentle and familiarising myself to the unit's response. The very first time I set up an fbl with beastx I even managed to set the wrong swash type on my tx but managed to fly it - but by heck the flips were sluggish....

I thnk I spent some 5 days setting up the brain.. a couple of hours per evening fiddling and then reading online and considering stuff, checking , understanding, changing the way i was doing it...

[Ade_Law]

Its interesting reading the comments of the survey.

Somebody mentions they aren't sure what the last question means. Its the ratio of successful maiden flights to maiden flight crashes...

Its quite interesting how the first setup and subsequent setups change... almost half are 1.5hrs for the first setup and that switches the other way. Possibly suggesting that the manuals aren't good enough?

Its also nice to see the niggle/fine tune time is quite low. One of the reasons I liked the spartan ds760/futaba 601 was that the setup was 99% on the bench especially on the bigger models. Even my little gaui hurricane 200 was just a matter of dropping the deceleration value.

22 responses is quite a small sample, so its a bit unfair to really make any real analysis but there are defo patterns there.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/12xQ.../viewanalytics

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...4ZXhQaUE#gid=0

[jwatts007]

Whats with all the questions anyway...why dont you just buy a unit you fancy and go play with it...I think you just like too much google nonsense...helpouts google...plus google...stuff google....

[Ade_Law]

Whats with all the questions anyway...why dont you just buy a unit you fancy and go play with it...I think you just like too much google nonsense...helpouts google...plus google...stuff google....

theres always one that comes along to spoil a perfectly good conversation. Learn some respect please.

Yes I like google, it works very well and is one of my interests, as well as contributing to my income.

Im a geek, I like to know how things work, I do not just go out and "buy what i fancy" I do research first, it decreases the chances of blowing my budget on something that will be replaced quickly after. I am also interested to know how people are getting on with this new tech which is relatively complex.

[jwatts007]

theres always one that comes along to spoil a perfectly good conversation. Learn some respect please.

Yes I like google, it works very well and is one of my interests, as well as contributing to my income.

Im a geek, I like to know how things work, I do not just go out and "buy what i fancy" I do research first, it decreases the chances of blowing my budget on something that will be replaced quickly after. I am also interested to know how people are getting on with this new tech which is relatively complex.

Its not new tech and many beginners who have never flown a model heli set them up just fine...there are plenty of vids on youtube too help you...I will fill the survey out for you later if it helps you...I just dont understand how it helps anyone "my bad" didnt mean too affend....

[Bee_random]

Ha ha Ade, you're a geek.... Just like everybody else here
Stay curious and live longer.

[Planehazza]

I've owned BeastX, CGY750 and Vbar. Vbar so far is my favourite.

BeastX was fun and relatively easy to use and program, especially as it was my first FBL unit. Until v3 when it was rewritten by a guy on here (Asid?), the manual was rubbish. Lots of settings that weren't explained. BeastX on v3 was great, but I was never happy with the tail and I had bad luck getting it to work on my nitros. That was likely a lot to do with my tuning etc though. Thinks like HeadingLock gain parameter vs standard gyro heading hold gain. Which do you adjust? Even to this day these are two values that aren't properly explained IMO. This improved a lot with V3 as said as it at least gave starting values with an instrution for tweaking. Once setup, there was very little needed changing. Most set it to transmitter mode instead of using 'profiles', allowing pilots to choose their own cyclic and rudder speeds as well as expo etc. Getting the tail to be consistent in both directions, especially stops, was the biggest issue for me. Other than that, I did enjoy the experience

Then I bought into the Futaba CGY750. v1.3 is a fantastic unit, but as usual with Futaba their manuals are like flight manuals for the Space Shuttle. 1, 1.1 and 1.2 especially weren't brilliant. When 1.3 came out it drastically improved it's user friendlyness - features were actually explained, along with examples of why you might need to adjust each one. 1.3, like advertised was very much almost plug and play. Most of it was just setting the swash level and getting it set for the model the geometry etc. Unfortunately, it took so long after the poor 1.2 update before 1.3 rolled out, many people jumped ship and you rarely see people fly them. I did notice at the RCHA fly in that Matt Botos and Nick Maxwell both flew and were keen on the unit. Nick does fly for Futaba though... As you'd expect from futaba gyros, it flies like it's on rails and the governor was fantastic. No support for E governor as yet though.


Now, Vbar. What I can I say? VBar isn't as much the cool kid on the block as it used to be. There is a definite trend on here of jumping ship, "the latest is the greatest". Hordes of people buy the newest thing, then sell them on a month or 2 later for whatever reason. I'm not judging here, or complaining - it's just what I've noticed. I love Vbar for the PC interface. Ian "Coolice" on here does a great £25 bluetooth adapter for this (and the Brain IIRC?) so if you have a laptop or android phone, you can tweak, log and monitor live statistics. It's great for VBar maidens, dropping the need to buy the expensive control panel (£100 I believe). The governor is also very good, but IMO on nitro model it is very fiddly to set up properly. Vbar benefits from bank switching which at first I wasn't interested in, but when I gave in to curiosity I really like the feature.

Currently I have Vbar on my E models, and CGY750 on my nitro. I've been so happy flying the VBar'd E models that I've not touched the nitro in over a year. I've bought Stuart's G4 so that might change over the winter

[Angelos]

hang on. are you saying that are complaining about responsive, accurate, attitude holding and consistent stick response.

All the tweaks that I did to the head of the knight, like the 3rd hole on the mixer arms, delta angle adjustment, grip flip and all those different blade/paddle combos I tried were to try to attain exactly that....

how can this "robotic feel" be a bad thing???

or am i missing something.

Ade,

most people don't understand where this robotic feel comes from but they can see it in flight. It has nothing to do with how well the aircraft tracks / holds attitude. It mostly comes from how hard it is trying to follow the pilot's commands. As you operate the stick there is a small lag on the helicopter accelerating to your command due to inertia. There are also aerodynamic and gyroscopic forces that generate such lag. When a system is very robotic it tries very hard to follow your commands. This often gives the feel that the heli is moving when it shouldn't be; in fact it is still trying to catch up any with lag that had accumulated previously. These are very small amounts of movement but it is enough to generate the robotic/disconnected feel.

-Angelos

[Planehazza]

I suspect when people say robotic, they mean different things. When I say robotic, I mean it as a good thing. I like the computerised "on a gyro" feel, but it doesn't feel disconnected to me. In fact, when I think of the robotic feel I think of it as more connected.

Jeez, it sounds like we're talking about sex robots or something... lol

[scallybert]

'Hiller Decay' is key - and AFAICS, only Skookum recognise this. [Partial ]

One of the things that sold me on Skookums (having got on ok with a VBar) was that Skookum's parameters suggested (to me) they understood flybar dynamics, and their parameters reflect this; whereas the VBar ones suggested the reverse, and a more black box / secret sauce approach.

IIRC, the VBar set-up actually refers to a 'robotic feel'.

[George J]

Wasn't going to comment but I have to agree with what John W above was saying. (although not quite so harsh maybe!!)

Ade, you could have a 1000 people fill in the google thingy and it still won't really tell you anything as you will be different to every other person that fills it in. Some find them hard to set up and some find them super easy etc etc etc, they all fly differently anyway as it depends on so many factors and opinions don't really help much when it comes to choosing a FBL unit as what I say is fantastic you may hate in flight.

I've seen a couple of videos of you on youtube and you were/are clearly a good pilot and understand helicopters well so buy any of the main units and you'll be happy.

Personally I was using Beastx and then moved totally over to Vbar as I think it's better but plenty love Beastx though so who's right. IMHO there is only 3 to choose from, Vbar, Vortex and Beastx.

[waveydavey]

Somebody mentions they aren't sure what the last question means. Its the ratio of successful maiden flights to maiden flight crashes...

That was me, maybe just the wording but I didn't read it like that. For the record, none on any of the systems I've used