E-flite X-vert

Revisited this one. Added a nose wheel for ground take-off, and adjusted the wing incidence. Flies much more stable in airplane mode. Hell-uv-a lot of fun to fly. Still not working for VTOL mode.
 

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Donamy said:
Revisited this one. Added a nose wheel for ground take-off, and adjusted the wing incidence. Flies much more stable in airplane mode. Hell-uv-a lot of fun to fly. Still not working for VTOL mode.
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Visited this model and worked with it a lot.
I removed all the VTOL controls and did a pure airplane setup.
I could not get it to hover at all like a 3D aircraft. If you cannot accomplish that, then VTOL will evade you.
I tried a lot of things … changing the airfoils and physics, … without success.
The airplane does not respond well to the elevator and appears nose heavy in flight no matter where I set the balance.
Donamy, you're good at designing planes and such … I have no idea what is wrong, but in my experience, the aircraft needs to be close to 3D capable to be VTOL capable.
 
@technoid It is an open source autopilot. For testing we can connect it to simulation backends like RealFlight. So you can use it to fly pretty much any vehicle you can make in RealFlight. We use RealFlight a lot when developing new flight modes and testing vehicle types. I mentioned it here as it is quite hard to get the builtin flight controller in RealFlight to fly some types of vehicle like the X-Vert, but that sort of vehicle is supported by ArduPilot, so by connecting ArduPilot you can fly those vehicles, including doing automatic missions.
 
tridge said:
@technoid It is an open source autopilot. For testing we can connect it to simulation backends like RealFlight. So you can use it to fly pretty much any vehicle you can make in RealFlight. We use RealFlight a lot when developing new flight modes and testing vehicle types. I mentioned it here as it is quite hard to get the builtin flight controller in RealFlight to fly some types of vehicle like the X-Vert, but that sort of vehicle is supported by ArduPilot, so by connecting ArduPilot you can fly those vehicles, including doing automatic missions.
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Thanks! So is the plane in realflight only flying from a programmed flight or can you fly the plane with a controller through ArduPilot? And if so why would you do that vs flying it with the realflight controller. Thanks again for your answer I've wanted to know this for a long time but never asked.
 
technoid said:
Thanks! So is the plane in realflight only flying from a programmed flight or can you fly the plane with a controller through ArduPilot?
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you can fly with the controller. I use the old interlink elite.
technoid said:
And if so why would you do that vs flying it with the realflight controller
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I do it because it means I'm flying with the same flight control software I use on my real aircraft, but you can also do cool things that the built-in realflight control code can't do. Like an automated landing, flipping a fixed wing plane into automated (or just assisted) prop hang.
For example, I own an AddictionX, and I use ArduPilot on it to allow me to do thing beyond my pilot skills, like doing nice prop-hang even in wind. I tuned it in realflight like this:
and here is my real addictionx, using the same flight control code:
it means I can take my realflight experience and transfer it to real aircraft.
Most RealFlight users won't want this, as setting up ArduPilot takes time and you need to learn a lot about it. But for those who do want fancy flight control in both the real world and simulator it is nice.
 
tridge said:
you can fly with the controller. I use the old interlink elite.

I do it because it means I'm flying with the same flight control software I use on my real aircraft, but you can also do cool things that the built-in realflight control code can't do. Like an automated landing, flipping a fixed wing plane into automated (or just assisted) prop hang.
For example, I own an AddictionX, and I use ArduPilot on it to allow me to do thing beyond my pilot skills, like doing nice prop-hang even in wind. I tuned it in realflight like this:
and here is my real addictionx, using the same flight control code:
it means I can take my realflight experience and transfer it to real aircraft.
Most RealFlight users won't want this, as setting up ArduPilot takes time and you need to learn a lot about it. But for those who do want fancy flight control in both the real world and simulator it is nice.
Click to expand...
Thanks that helps me understand it much better. Of course that gives me another question. You said you fly your real plane with ArduPilot so is ArduPilot "installed" in the radio or is it "plugged" into the radio some why. This is interesting I guess you could program an entire flight and just sit there and watch the plane fly.
 
technoid said:
You said you fly your real plane with ArduPilot so is ArduPilot "installed" in the radio or is it "plugged" into the radio some why.
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ArduPilot is running on a flight control board (about the size of a pack of playing cards) in the aircraft.
technoid said:
This is interesting I guess you could program an entire flight and just sit there and watch the plane fly.
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yes, ArduPilot is used by lots of people to do long flights, way beyond visual range. It can fly planes for thousands of kilometers. It also does sailing boats, submarines, rovers, helicopters, multicopters etc etc. A lot of companies base their UAV businesses on ArduPilot.
 
tridge said:
ArduPilot is running on a flight control board (about the size of a pack of playing cards) in the aircraft.

yes, ArduPilot is used by lots of people to do long flights, way beyond visual range. It can fly planes for thousands of kilometers. It also does sailing boats, submarines, rovers, helicopters, multicopters etc etc. A lot of companies base their UAV businesses on ArduPilot.
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Okay cool.. so last thing I guess. How do you give ArduPilot commands from the ground?

I guess the basic commands or program is stored in the ArduPilot module but you have to control it from the ground, right? By that I mean tell it the different things you want to do. From the video it seems you can tell it to do a basic pass-through so you can fly the plane with the radio but you also mentioned giving it other commands.

Thanks for all the info on this it's been on my mind a lot as I see forum posts about it but since I retired I don't research much like I used to when I was curious about something.
 
technoid said:
I guess the basic commands or program is stored in the ArduPilot module but you have to control it from the ground, right?
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lots of ways. Most common is with switch assignment on the transmitter for flight modes and special functions, combined with stick inputs. You can also fly with ground station software on a laptop or tablet or phone. Others use FPV goggles along with switches and stick inputs. It is common to have multiple comms links to the aircraft, one a traditional R/C system, and others as dedicated telemetry and control links. ArduPilot flies things ranging from 100g tiny planes to multi-tonne vehicles costing millions of dollars, so it really depends what you're trying to do.
If you really want to know more detail then go to https://ardupilot.org/ and https://discuss.ardupilot.org/
I think we should probably stop the hijack of this thread now :)
Cheers, Tridge
 
tridge said:
lots of ways. Most common is with switch assignment on the transmitter for flight modes and special functions, combined with stick inputs. You can also fly with ground station software on a laptop or tablet or phone. Others use FPV goggles along with switches and stick inputs. It is common to have multiple comms links to the aircraft, one a traditional R/C system, and others as dedicated telemetry and control links. ArduPilot flies things ranging from 100g tiny planes to multi-tonne vehicles costing millions of dollars, so it really depends what you're trying to do.
If you really want to know more detail then go to https://ardupilot.org/ and https://discuss.ardupilot.org/
I think we should probably stop the hijack of this thread now :)
Cheers, Tridge
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Okay thanks with your last post you've covered all the areas I had questions on. ArduPilot isn't something I'd want to do but I wanted to know what it is and how it works and you've covered all the areas I had questions on. So thanks for your time and effort helping me It's definitely a cool thing and I can see why there's so much interest in it now. I'm a retired software engineer so my interest was from a few directions. Again thanks for your time and effort answering my questions. Now back to the regularly scheduled program.
 
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