Angle means your quad is not leveled. That means either you didn't have it on a leveled surface or your accelerometer is not calibrated.

Throttle means your throttle is too high. What is your throttle read in the receiver tabs? What is your min_check?

Hey Voodoo,
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. It is arming now. I did have the Min Check the wrong way. I also had the quad dangling upside down by the USB cable because it's difficult to stand it on a flat surface with the cable plugged in underneath, although I did do an accelerometer calibration by balancing it delicately on three legs. But those words, "throttle" and "angle" were the key.

I'm so happy it's arming now and I am beginning to get the hang of Betaflight. At the moment the motors race as soon as it's armed and I'm trying to work that out, but it does take off on about half throttle and hovers level so I'm almost there. It's getting very late now so I'll rest on my laurels and sort out the rest in the morning.

Thanks for your help. Where would I be without these forums?

Turn on Motor Stop under ESC section, and make sure permanent airmode is off. That should stop the motors from spinning on arm.

Glad to hear you got it working. The status feature from betaflight is such a great tool.

I'm afraid I'm still having problems. The QX65 arms and flies, but despite numerous attempts at setting things I can't get the motors to behave at low throttle settings. Currently three of the motors start up on arming and the third kicks in as the throttle rises, but once it's flying I can't get the motors to slow down enough to land. Sometimes they race faster and it tries to take off again and I have to disarm it to stop.

I have motor stop turned on in the ESC section, but I don't know what you mean by permanent air mode. I can't find that on any of the tabs in Betaflight.

I'm sure it's just a matter of getting the settings right and at least I'm relieved that it arms and flies. I was fearing it is faulty.

In the CONFIGURATION menu is a slider tab PERMANENTLY ENABLE AIRMODE.  Make sure that slide is in the OFF or grayed position.  This will set your craft in to ACRO (rate) instead of AIR mode.

In AIR mode, the craft attempts to hold a particular attitude and while it will appear to be at idle, the craft is still attempting to hold a particular attitude.  Micro variations while sitting on the ground at IDLE will cause it to attempt to correct.  This is likely why the motors are spinning up without your input when you have the craft ARMED at IDLE.

There is two ways to activate Airmode. Either through a switch which you can setup in the mode tab. This allows you to turn it one and off any time you want.

Or permanently turn it on as kaitylynn point out above.

Some have a lot of trouble landing with Airmode.

Thank you Kaitylynn and Voodoo.

I'm not sure why I couldn't find Airmode before, probably too late at night! But I've found it now and it was off already.

For some reason Betaflight dives off the screen when I attempt a screen grab so I'll have to detail some settings for you. Perhaps you can see where I'm going wrong.

CONFIG TAB
Motor PWM speed ... OFF
Motor stop ... ON
Disarm motors regardless ... ON
Disarm motor delay ... 5
Min Throw ... 1000
Max Throt ... 2000
Min Command ... 1000

OTHER FEATURES
All OFF, except OSD ... ON

BEEPER CONFIG
All ON

RECEIVER
A, E & R all centred on 1500, min 1000, max 2000
Throt min 1000 (TX Throt travel set to 147%)
Throt max 2000 (TX Throt travel set to 147%)

Stick low threshold 1021
Stick centre 1500
Stick high threshold 1900

3D throw headband 50

MOTORS TAB untouched

I hope this tells you something.

Thanks again for all the help. (My wife is amazed at all the help I get from you guys!)

Change min_throttle to 1050

I changed Min Throttle to 1050, but no noticeable difference.

But at last I think we've cracked it. What Kaitylynn and Voodo said about AIR mode set me thinking. Despite Permanent Airmode being already off, I wondered whether ANGLE mode that I've set up as my default switch position is having the same effect. I currently have the three way switch to ANGLE - HORIZON - ACRO, because they are progressively more responsive.

All my testing so far has been with the switch in ANGLE position and the motors go nuts. But just now I armed the quad with the switch in ACRO position and the motors stayed off - until I raised the throttle. Ditto with HORIZON mode. But the moment I switched it to my default ANGLE position the motors fired up and it started trying to tip over on the floor. So the obvious solution is to abandon ANGLE mode and just program the switch for Horizon and Acro.

I set it up with Angle, Horizon and Acro because that's how I have my Diatone Tyrant set up and that works well. No motor problems in Angle mode, which is how I'm flying it at the moment because Horizon mode is too fast and I can't handle Acro yet.

With the little QX65 I'm ok with Horizon mode but Acro mode is uncontrollable. Can I tone that down in the TX like I do with my planes by adjusting Dual Rates and Expo, or should I adjust something in Betaflight?

And one more question, is there actually any difference between Cleanflight and Betaflight? I can't see any. Both connect and each seems to reflect the changes I make in the other one.

Anyway, thanks to your input, Katylynn and Voodoo614, I now have a functional QX65 and a lot better understanding of Betaflight/Cleanflight.

Well, how stupid am I? I just went to Cleanflight (I prefer the green look!) to switch off Angle mode, and for the first time I scrolled down. There, near the bottom, is AIR mode, all set up already. I didn't know it was there because I hadn't looked down there, the other modes being at the top. The Modes tab must over-ride the Config tab because I have Air Mode turned off there. Anyway, it pays to explore rather than just go with what's before your eyes!

The truth is, I've been a bit intimidated by all this programming, coming from the more mechanical world of gliders and the it-just-all-works world of DJI. But I think I turned a corner now and realise I probably can get my head around this stuff. Me, messing around in a command line interface? That's why I became an Apple man, to avoid all that stuff. Maybe I'm discovering my Inner Geek...

There is quite a big difference between betaflight and cleanflight. If you have newer firmware, you should not be able to configure betaflight with cleanflight configurator and vice versa.

Acro mode is actually default. But you set up any way you like. There is probably still something wrong if your quad flips out in angle mode. None of my quads do that.

After all the help I've received setting up my Tyrant and QX65 - both of which are working great - I thought I could do it myself this time with a CC3D FC. But after days of research and Youtubes here I am back again. I really did try this time...

I've learnt that the CC3D needs to be in boot loader mode to flash the firmware on Cleanflight, so I'm powering it up with a battery and the bootloader tabs shorted out. This turns the green led on solid and the blue led off. But when I connect it to Cleanflight to flash the firmware it fails to open a serial port.

If I plug the CC3D straight in without shorting the bootloader terminals, both leds light up. After a few seconds the blue led starts to flash and it opens port /dev/tty.usbmodem1411. But now if I try to flash the firmware it says there's no response from the boot loader.

There are various youtubes about problems connecting and flashing the CC3D but most of them are 2015 and using discontinued configurators. I'm using the latest versions of Cleanflight and Betaflight, both of which work normally with my other quads and both behave the same with the CC3D.

I'm on OSX Sierra and have installed the CP210x drivers. Any help would be appreciated.

Go to preferences and security and make sure one of the option isn't blocking the Mac from opening the bootloader.

Here are steps to allow this extension:

1. Go to "System Preferences" -> "Security & Privacy"
2. In the bottom of the window, you will see a message "System software from developer "SiLabs" was blocked from loading."
3. Click on "Allow" button
4. Restart your Mac

Thanks Voodoo, but no blocked SiLabs. I had to go to security and privacy to allow a new version of Betaflight to download, but there's nothing blocked now. I might have had to do it for SiLabs too, I can't remember.