First time out with a vbar control. Not a good first impression.

[PeteStewardson]

I didn't want to post this in the V Control Owners thread as I don't want to derail it but I really feel like this V Control is going in the bin right now.

I took delivery last night and decided to swap over my Chase 360 to it since it already runs vBar. So I upgraded the mini vbar on it to V6 and swapped the Spektrum satellite for the vbar one. That's the only change on the heli, nothing else touched.

Got the model in the V Control last night, everything seemed fine. Everything moving as it should etc.

Took it out to my flying site this lunch and figured out how to calibrate the ESC, all good to go.

So I flicked into run, 'bank 1' announced, heli spools up. Tail was wagging a bit but that's fine I think I'll sort that in a minute. Up to bank 2 and again looks ok. Into bank 3 and then it all went wrong. As soon as I did this the heli started to pirouette anticlockwise and started to drift away from me quite rapidly. Wasn't a blur pirouette, reasonably slow but it didn't seem to be something I could control but it was drifting away quite quickly. In the moments of panick I couldn't tell you which banks I tried but I tried to come out of bank 3 but by this point the heli was too far away. In the end I had no choice but to switch back into off and try and auto it down a bit. The problem is it's waste land and I was autoing to a spot I couldn't see the ground, and I'm not good at autos, and it was a long way from me with no canopy so difficult to see what was going on.

Once the power was off it stopped pirouetting but I was concentrating on trying to level it off to think about much else.

I found the chase quite easily in the end, the ESC cables had been sliced right through in the crash and so it was beeping at me for loss of signal.

Looks to have destroyed one frame, boom, boom supports, frame spacer, ESC tray, and ESC is toast as the cables have been sliced. Blades are fine, and everything else looks ok on first inspection.

But I'm not happy at all that switching into bank 3 caused this issue. The banks should have been identical other than the throttle output. Feeling like I've just wasted a very large amount of money as I've never had a problem with my 11x and sats on a vbar.

[philipjdall]

Feeling like I've just wasted a very large amount of money as I've never had a problem with my 11x and sats on a vbar.

Bought yesterday, flown today. Slow down springs to mind!

I find it highly unlikely there is something wrong with the vbar and more you rushed something in setup.

Still sorry to here it didn't go well

[George J]

Pete, pretty sure this is not a V Control or vbar issue but a set up issue which is a different thing entirely, I do however understand that you want to blame something when you've changed to something new and you smash a heli.
Hindsight is a wonderfull thing I know but as soon as you knew something was wrong everything should stop until you look into it which even in bank 1 it sounds like something wasn't quite right.
I've set up a few heli's now on mine with zero issue but I make sure everything is right in just one bank before going any further.
Sorry to hear that you've smashed a heli though Pete but I really don't think it's the V Control.

[trillian]

Sorry to hear that. What a drag! I so hate when things like that happen. Obviously the thing to do is look through all the TX parameters to see what changes in bank 3 that let the tail go wrong.

I'm the opposite of an 'early adopter' when it comes to radios, I'm still using the original DX7!

[ChrisB]

Bummer,sorry to hear that Pete

Hopefully you can find the cause and share it with us.

[PeteStewardson]

I don't know what could have gone wrong, I basically copied every setting into each bank and then just changed the throttle setting for each bank. At least I think I did.

When I say there was a wag in bank 1, it wasn't anymore than I've had before on this heli, I just figured it was down to the vbar being slightly different in V6 with the gain than V5.3. It's been a lot worse than that before and still flyable. The Chase 360 seems very sensitive to tail gain to tune the wag out completely when hovering. In fact in bank 1 I did move the heli around gently and it was fine in flight, just a minor bit more wag than normal in the hover but the headspeed was lower than I normally fly in so I just went up the banks as that's all I thought was different.

I'm prepared to accept it's my fault, but I don't understand why a setting could make it pirouette like that. As the ESC is written off I couldn't check any settings in the TX as you can't see them when the heli isn't powered up, but I went over everything 4 or 5 times last night checking everything

In bank 1 I was thinking I quite liked the TX, the sticks felt good and other than tweaking the expo a bit to get it 'just right' I was liking it. But that means nothing if I can't get it to work. Like I say I've used vbar for years and have never had a setup issue other than getting the tail direction wrong ( and now I check that at least 3 times on every maiden, as I got that wrong on FB helis too. ) so I don't know how I can have got something badly wrong in the TX. I guess I'll have to power it up later and try and check the settings again.

[mahbouni]

Did you check all 3 banks operate correctly on the table when you set them up? I'm wondering what actually could have gone wrong in your set up, because every model I've set up with VControl was pretty straight forward. After going through the basic setup, all 3 banks are flyable and the only thing I've ever changed on a per bank basis is head speed and gains. Of course I always check every stick input and gyro sens is correct for every bank before flying the model first time.

Check the Vbar logs to see if there's anything out of the ordinary. Perhaps the issue is nothing to do with setup.

[PeteStewardson]

I didn't check stick inputs in all banks no, but you can't change those per bank can you? It's just gains etc not control inputs. I followed the manual, then checked each setting afterwards. I checked stick inputs before taking off, but I guess that would have been in the motor off position, although like I say it was flying in bank 1, hovered ok in bank 2, but in bank 3 things went horribly wrong.

How do I check the logs? I'm thinking it's worth doing as it does seem very odd.

[mahbouni]

Each bank is an entirely different model setup. With V5.x you could theoretically program a different helicopter on each bank and hot swap the Vbar between them. Mr Mel always recommended to copy your first working bank to all the others, just in case it ever switched banks in a fail safe situation. With VControl I had assumed that during the basic set up it programs all 3 banks. At least that's the way it seems to have been working every time for me. Nevertheless I would always check every bank operates correctly on the table without blades before flying the model. Call it a sanity check.

Did you use the wizard to set up a new model or did you just start programming the different things manually?

To check the logs I think you can just power up the VControl and Vbar and then scroll down to the logs section. I believe it keeps a few flights worth of logs and overwrites the oldest ones with new ones. Let us know what you find.

[Peper]

Hi Pete, sorry to ear you stuffed the 360,
to check the logs, if you have the latest software on the Control, just go to the Archive and logs, (no need to be connected to the heli)
if not, just plug it to the PC with the usb cable, you should see a folder with your logs there.

keep us posted.

[PeteStewardson]

Each bank is an entirely different model setup. With V5.x you could theoretically program a different helicopter on each bank and hot swap the Vbar between them. Mr Mel always recommended to copy your first working bank to all the others, just in case it ever switched banks in a fail safe situation. With VControl I had assumed that during the basic set up it programs all 3 banks. At least that's the way it seems to have been working every time for me. Nevertheless I would always check every bank operates correctly on the table without blades before flying the model. Call it a sanity check.

Did you use the wizard to set up a new model or did you just start programming the different things manually?

To check the logs I think you can just power up the VControl and Vbar and then scroll down to the logs section. I believe it keeps a few flights worth of logs and overwrites the oldest ones with new ones. Let us know what you find.

I used the set-up wizard. I didn't know the banks did so much, I thought the general heli setup was generic and then only the agility, gains etc that were normally displayed on the first page of the PC software were configured per bank.

I'll try and check everything out tonight as much as I can, and try and get the logs out.

[pgkevet]

I'm no v bar user but if the esc is damaged you should still be able to plug a simple battery pack into the rx. A cheap 4/5-cell nihm with servo lead is well worth owning for setups

[PeteStewardson]

I'm no v bar user but if the esc is damaged you should still be able to plug a simple battery pack into the rx. A cheap 4/5-cell nihm with servo lead is well worth owning for setups

Yeah that's no issue once I'm home, just don't carry one with me.

[Peper]

No need to plug in the Vbar with v6.

every log is stored in the TX and can be accessed through the TX display screen or in a folder when plugging the TX to the PC,
its one of the good things I like about the Control, it makes the PC almost redundant

[PeteStewardson]

No need to plug in the Vbar with v6.

every log is stored in the TX and can be accessed through the TX display screen or in a folder when plugging the TX to the PC,
its one of the good things I like about the Control, it makes the PC almost redundant

Logs maybe, but I can't go through the setup for the heli to check things without the vbar powered up. There's definitely an improvement opportunity there, just have a read only copy of each models settings so you can check it offline.