Hi all,

After watching a few guys on youtube flying INAV stabilized wings, I started to use that foamy stuff that has been laying in the box for a few months now. As of now I have only glued the wing and mounted the motor. The FC I intended to put on a micro brushless quad actually fits here perfectly and I plan to test INAV features on the REVO target.



Planned hardware:

• 800mm cheapo wing
  
• Arris 2205 2300kv motor
  
• Mini F4 flight controller
  
• Littlebee 20A ESC
  
• FS ia6b on ibus
  
• some old Eachine micro FPV AIO camera/VTX
  
• SLS Magnum 3S 800mah / Nano-Tech 3S 850mah
  

Mabe I'll use a Runcam HD to record and in the future, test some GPS capabilities if I don't run out of UARTs

The motor I am using is heavier than the one intended by the manufacturer - that is why I am also using a bigger pack which actually fits perfectly into the "canopy". At this moment the wing seems to be perfectly balanced. We will see how that evolves after I end with the build

I haven't decided on the servos yet, probably I'll go with anything that is available nearby.

Cheers,
Konrad

I've ordered some Pololu 1050 - Power HD Micro Servo HD-1900A (1.5kg-cm at 6V, more than enough), as I don't want to pull too much Amps through the FC onboard BEC, I've already installed a regulated power supply. That sucker is bigger than the ESC lol.

ESC signal soldered to the motor 1 output. USB will be accessible from the front.



INAV description on what settings to change on the FC will come in handy later.

Control horns on this wing are a joke - they bend far too easlily - great idea from willhaney form RCgroups to use a fat ziptie

DISCLAIMER: I DIDN'T FLY IT YET!

sooo... Inav is a no-go for this FC. 

This mini board uses Airbot F4 target (basically a simplified REVO), but I wasn't able to flash this with neither REVO nor Airbot target, so I started digging into Betaflight usage on wings and stumbled upon this description of how unsafe (a.k.a. not tested) it is to use betaflight on fixed wings.


Short story - YES, doable!

Did I fly it yet? NO! But it seems to work - at least on the bench.

I have soldered the servos (and in wrong order lol, but it doesn't really matter) to the motor 3 and 4 pins, so the step necessary to get it working is to assign servos to the motor output pins. The adresses from this article didn't fit my board, so I had to check what is actually assigned on mine. Open CLI and type:


This will list all addresses currently in use, example:


pic taken AFTER reassigning motors to servos

I found that motor 3 and 4 is A03 and A02. I simply typed:




Above commands will free up the pins and assign the servos to them.

After doing this you can safely plug the battery in and check if the servos are taking any commands. At this point they seem to have the pitch and roll axis reversed. Enable expert mode in betaflight configurator:



and go to the Servos tab to change the direction on one of the servos by selecting negative value on one of them:



You have to change either servo 3 or 4, depending on if you soldered them properly or the other way around as I did  I picked 50% and -50% as the servo rate to limit the range of movement, we will see how it goes.

Now check if the control surfaces are moving as they should. Best way is to do a "high five test" as in the Flitetest video:



If they are moving the other way around, switch the negative and positive values.

If everything is set, you will see a working wing:



But... I am not doing this just to do flip flops with control surfaces - I wan a stabilized flight on my wing!

Go to the Modes tab and set the desired flight modes. In my case I wanted:
arm switch (obviously)
flight modes: passtrough, acro (stabilized), and angle (self leveling)



AUX 1 is set to select flight modes:
passtrough is a mode in which the calculationf of the FC are totally ignored - the wing should act as it was plugged directly into the RX (with channel mixes), no stabilization etc.
acro is very similar to passtrough, but it also receives corrections to stabilize the flight, pretty much like quads fly.. sort of
angle keeps the craft leveled 
At least, this is how Inav seems to work, betaflight - we will see... A general suggestion is to have the passtrough mode available at all times to regain control of the craft if anything goes wrong.

The other things I have changed is I have enabled MOTOR_STOP and disabled dampened light on the ESC. I will use this to glide the craft if I ever wish to. Also it kind of seems safer to catch the wing when the prop is not spinning

I need to add FPV gear to this wing, but I want to check if it even works, so... to be continued


not so rainbow anymore

Great progress!  Can't wait to see some FPV footage!

(26-Jul-2017, 12:23 AM)sloscotty Wrote: Great progress!  Can't wait to see some FPV footage!

Have to agree!

One quick question, what does the self leveling do on wings?
Does it keep heading or actually levels out the plane for it to fly "straight"?
Sorry, have never done anything wing related

(26-Jul-2017, 06:32 AM)Fint Wrote: Have to agree!

One quick question, what does the self leveling do on wings?
Does it keep heading or actually levels out the plane for it to fly "straight"?
Sorry, have never done anything wing related

I expect it to level completely when I let go the sticks. Prerty much like a quad with no yaw

Not sure if heading assist is possible on wings. Even on Inav I saw a suggestion not to use magnetometer modes on wings due to no yaw authority.

crazy I tell you ... just plum crazy... what's all this about 1 prop and servos and things? you can't get a quad to fly with only one motor!

:p

Fun build to watch! I look forward to footage 

A bit of branding and the wing will be ready for todays maiden ^^



Can't wait to crash this thing haha

"Flying" hahahahaha

                     

                     

This is one of those situations where the problem isn't the hardware, but the pilot lol, I did learn to throw that thing, not much more

Unfortunately I enabled stabilized modes after bashing the wing too much - when it wasn't even flyable on passtrough - the wings were flapping around so much that elevons didn't do anything. I'm sure that the added weight of hot glue will solve this problem .

Ha! Not bad for a first time with a wing!! (Compare to your first time with a quad....)

I'm telling you... it's not the pilot... it's the lack of motors :p

That is pretty cool though... it looks like it would be fun (read enjoyably frustrating) to learn and it sounds like you'll have an easy time with repairs. I look forward to seeing more as you learn

Brilliant!

Wings are hard to fly. Also, you can't use the throttle like you do on a quad or move the sticks anywhere near as quickly.

It seemed to stand up to the multiple crashes really well though. For the silly price this wing costs, I might grab one to see if I can improve my terrible wing skills. (Which are about as bad as yours!)

I've been getting in some fixed wing time recently with a HobbyZone Champ S+, but living near the sea means that it's nearly always windy here and the feather light Champ really struggles to make progress against even a light wind.

(03-Aug-2017, 10:11 PM)unseen Wrote: Brilliant!

Wings are hard to fly. Also, you can't use the throttle like you do on a quad or move the sticks anywhere near as quickly.

It seemed to stand up to the multiple crashes really well though. For the silly price this wing costs, I might grab one to see if I can improve my terrible wing skills. (Which are about as bad as yours!)

I've been getting in some fixed wing time recently with a HobbyZone Champ S+, but living near the sea means that it's nearly always windy here and the feather light Champ really struggles to make progress against even a light wind.

Yeah, after flying quads that much, the wing was stalling a lot due to not enough throttle. I have to get rid of that and just push it harder  

The wing is all glued up now since both wing sides cracked at servo mounting points. Ahh how easy it was to fix that





But to give it justice - i only glued the servos on the bottom so it may have made a weak point there

i am about to build my first wing
just curious how much easier it it to fly with a FC on board, and without?

Cool!

Can't tell yet if it's easier, I bashed that thing too much on first few "flights", it was already unflyable when I turned stabilized mode on.

I will give stabilized a few more tries next week, but I don't expect it to be easier, rather smoother as it is supposed to only correct the flight path.

The "easier" mode should be angle/horizon as those are the leveling modes, just like in multicopters.