Copilot II, DX7 and 3-way switching (for inverted)

[traeside]

Okay 2 short questions. in my above set up.
1 i want disarm flight mode set to level flight?
2 i want Emergency recovery off?

[benji]

"When the CPII is assigned for remote on/off, one position will always be off, then the others can be assigned for flight modes. When you only have a 2 position switch available, one position is off, the other is assigned for inverted hover. This does not leave a position for level flight but there is a way to "cheat" and get both level flight and inverted flight and still have the off position (which you can't change). This is because of the specific steps to arm the CPII for inverted flight (which are outlined in the manual). To arm for inverted flight, the on/off switch must be in the off position, you roll to inverted, then turn the switch to on while inverted. The CPII will now keep the aircraft in inverted level flight, you just have to manage the collective. Here is how to get level flight stabilization even though the switch is assigned for inverted. You can either take off with the switch in the on position or turn the switch to the on position as long as the heli is upright. This will not arm for inverted, the switch must be moved to the off position and the heli flipped inverted, then the switch turned back to on. Also, when you are in inverted hover (with switch on), and if you were to roll out to upright, the CPII will be in level flight stabilization until you turn the switch off. This function is set in the preferences section and called "Disarm Flight Modes to:" level flight is the default.

[benji]

and one more thing, Emerency Recovery must be off, that system is still in development.

[traeside]

yep i set it up for 2 position switch off and inverted and it works perfect. the one thing that did trouble me is the gyro sensitivity. i started with it at 78 where i had it in the radio and ended up at 48!!! it seems to be HH mode still so i guess the 50% rule does not apply with the CP2?
i must say it was much smother then i though with the sensitivity set at 70 and stick authority at 115 you would hardly know it was on.
i have not tried inverted yet as it was too windy and that made setting the angels a bit tedious.

[nightflyr]

Originally Posted by traeside

yep i set it up for 2 position switch off and inverted and it works perfect. the one thing that did trouble me is the gyro sensitivity. i started with it at 78 where i had it in the radio and ended up at 48!!! it seems to be HH mode still so i guess the 50% rule does not apply with the CP2?
i must say it was much smother then i though with the sensitivity set at 70 and stick authority at 115 you would hardly know it was on.
i have not tried inverted yet as it was too windy and that made setting the angels a bit tedious.

The gyro gain you input into the CPII programmer is 'ACTUAL" gain, as with Futaba radio's.... 32% is 32% where as Spectrum 72-78% on the radio is "actual" ~ 30 - 34% gain at the gyro.

nightflyr

[traeside]

so i might be over driving my servo if i am in the 40's like if i was in the 90's?
thanks!
so what do you fly your gains at?
also i did leave Auto trim at 6 but i had to give it a few degrees of flight angels. did you find that to be true? i mean i understand that flight angels is just compensating for how i set the sensors on the bird but it was still drifting a bit.

[nightflyr]

Originally Posted by traeside

so i might be over driving my servo if i am in the 40's like if i was in the 90's?
thanks!
so what do you fly your gains at?
also i did leave Auto trim at 6 but i had to give it a few degrees of flight angels. did you find that to be true? i mean i understand that flight angels is just compensating for how i set the sensors on the bird but it was still drifting a bit.

I have it setup on a 600ESP with a Spartan 760 my gain is 28%

if your in a wide open field and still drift..you can try adjusting the main sensor to compensate


nightflyr

[traeside]

thank niteflyer, i will do more adjustments in the field if it doesn't rain this weekend. i was at least 25 to 40 feet away from any buildings but around here there are very few spots where you are not going to have some objects blocking the horizon. it is funny how if you walk up to the heli it acts like a scared puppy and wants to go away from you. LOL
do you have yours set up for inverted flight?

[nightflyr]

I have one setup on my 600 ESP/AP rig, the other is on my Super Stretch that's going through shake down flights for now when the weather permits me

nightflyr

[cmb2003svt]

The more i read the more i am interested in the CPII. I swear i read somewhere there was a new version coming out but for the life of me i cannot find it. I looked on the website and no announcements were posted so i subscribed to the mailing list. I just don't want to purchase and a month later a new version comes out. I have not read far enough to see if the previous versions are upgradable.

[nightflyr]

Originally Posted by cmb2003svt

The more i read the more i am interested in the CPII. I swear i read somewhere there was a new version coming out but for the life of me i cannot find it. I looked on the website and no announcements were posted so i subscribed to the mailing list. I just don't want to purchase and a month later a new version comes out. I have not read far enough to see if the previous versions are upgradable.

The basic hardware is here, any further upgrades would be in the form of software/firmware updates which the CPII is capable of accepting with the interface connection.
Any further hardware upgrades would be an add on to the existing components.

nightflyr

[justwannahavefun]

Originally Posted by jrohland

Guys, I spent a little time last Friday figuring a way to setup my Spektrum DX7 radio to allow the FMA Direct Copilot II to switch between off, level flight and inverted mode.

It requires the use of a mix (I used PROG.MIX1) on the DX7. So here is how I control it:

Gear=Copilot on and off. You could use AUX2 to do this if you prefer.
Stunt Mode switch=NR [down]=level flight stabilization (or off if gear switch is forward)
Stunt Mode switch=1 [middle]=level flight stabilization (or off if gear switch is forward)
Stunt Mode switch=2 [up]=invert stabilization (or off if gear switch is forward)

It might be possible to use a second mix to turn the CPII off in Stunt Mode NR. I never use that mode so I did not care.

One problem I did not find an answer for is the Idle up (DX7 calls that the Rudder Dualrate switch) puts the Copilot in level flight stabilization. This would be a problem if you wanted to use the copilot while doing an inverted auto-rotation. Of course, if you are doing that you probably are not using a copilot anyway. (I did just now have an idea of how I might be able to fix this but I'm at work and can't test it right now.)

I am going to assume you have the Gear (or AUX2) already controlling the CPII. If not, get that figured out first.

First go into programming mode on your DX7. Get to PROG.MIX1. When there, do this:
[PROG.MIX1]
GEAR->GEAR ON [again, if you are using AUX2, put that here]
RATE: 0%
-100% [I can't remember if this is -100 or +100 right now.]
SW:F-S2
OFFSET: 0

Now, get to the CPII setup and tell it your remote control is a 3-way switch. Put the Stunt Mode in 1 and gear/AUX2 off. When instructed, switch the gear/AUX2 on and off. Assign switch position one to level flight. Assign position 2 to inverted.

IF YOU GET AN ERROR ABOUT OVERLAP, go back to PROG.MIX1 and change the -100% to +100% in RATE. That should fix it.

Go into preflight and test the switches. You should see Off when the gear/AUX2 it off and Level Flight when it is on. Now switch the Stunt to 2. You should see Inverted in preflight.

When flying, have your Stunt in 1 (middle). Get inverted and switch Stunt to 2. It should stabilize upside down. To get out of inverted, just flip over or switch Stunt to 1.

Before I start I wanted to say that anything I use in quotations regarding CPII instructions is paraphrased. I may not have the EXACT terminology down but it's so close you shouldn't be able to mistake it for anything else.

I thought I should convey my experience with the new CoPilot W/Hard deck. I've had CPII for about a year and a half now and just received the hard deck module recently. I updated the firmware for the aviionics computer and the hard deck without incident. (Windows XP Pro, you gotta like it.)

All set-up went as the first version until.......I tried to set it up to turn on and off with my DX6i. I was able to do it with the previous version but not this one. Well, I spent an entire evening going through the motions and finally gave up.

I called product support the following day. Thankfully I had an unusual day off during the week. The phone rang twice and Howard answered. He when through the "Quick Set-Up" with me. I was thinking, "I told him I already did that", but I thought I'd shut-up and just do what he said.

So when we get to setting up the cyclics, I told him I had not done that before because I thought if you were doing the initial set-up WITHOUT hard deck that it wasn't needed. ( I was going to make sure everything worked fine without hard deck before installing it.) WRONG.

Once I completed that portion of the "Quick Set-Up", everything worked as it should. I should tell you what WAS happening.

When you go to "Set Flight Modes" and go through the motions of setting your TX, everything was going fine. When it said, "Move Switch To Verify Transmitter", or something very similar, it said 979 us and 2029 us respectively. More than enought "movement".

When I did the, "Set TX Switch To Off position", then On position, that worked fine. If at that point you don't have the TX set-up correctly it will warn you, "Not Enough Movement". That didn't happen.

Now is the problem. When it said "Move TX Switch and Set Flight Modes" the screen is supposed to change. The old version actually said, "Move Switch to Change Screens". The new version DOES NOT SAY THAT. It does tell you that however if you use the PC Display.

Anyhow that was my sticking point. If the screens didn't change at "Move TX Switch and Set Flight Modes", then I was dead in the water at that point and could not continue on. If I couldn't turn CPII on and off from the TX I didn't want to use it.

The bottom line is that once I went through the "Quick Set-Up" with Howard AND set the Cyclics as I had not done before, when I got to "Move TX Switch and Set Flight Modes", the screen changed when I flipped the switch.

Thank you RevoLectrix and Howard for your great help and great product. If you choose the ONLY other option on the market for Hard Deck you'll have to buy Skookum 720 and GPS. Over $900.00. I'm sorry Skookum, I know you have to pay for everything it took to develop your system, but $900 is just too much considering the one alternative.

Now CPII is a pain with all the wires and sensors, but some would say the biggest advantage is that CPII doesn't turn itself off if there's too much vibration.

That's the sticking point that kept me from buying Skookum. If there's even a very small chance that my self-leveling/bailout feature will turn itself off without my knowledge it WILL happen to me.

I wonder if there's too much being said about this vibration thing. I can't seem to find any information regarding bailout failures with Skookum. So maybe it's really a non issue.

In my case, I already had the CPII computer and sensors and what not, so the hard deck module was not a lot of money at that point.

I hope this can help someone that's stuck like I was.

[apper001]

Hello All,

with a 7 channel Rx, is it the easiest way to use mix1 and combine the AUX2 and F-S12 switches for off/level with HD/3D inverted?!

If the CPII sw would allow it you could also have a four way switch with mix1 and mix2 plus the AUX2, F-S12 and Gear switches for all flight modes ( keep gyro sense at the CPII)

Regards,
Apper