So for freestyle flying I have found that pitch and roll RC rate @ 1.35 and Super Rate @ .75 which produces 1080 degrees of rotation per second or more specifically 3 rotations per second feels the most comfortable for me. It's the right rates to get me to where I know somewhat how far I'll be rolling or flipping (although admittedly I still have a ways to go with this and learning to smooth things out has helped mask the mistakes some)... 

However, one of the guys from the RC field that I fly with said that he was having success by turning his rates "way down"... I don't remember what he said he was setting them at but he basically keeps a second profile with race rates, and then switches profiles based on a switch on his radio. This intrigues me because the first thing I pushed myself on when learning to fly was my rates... I started low at 360 and bumped them up every few days of constant sim flying until I was at about 750 by the time I was flying the vortex, and it was while I was still flying it that I was up to my current rates (right after upgrading to BF 3.1. Also note, the poor heavy vortex does not actually rotate at 1080 degrees per second which I suspect has something to do with my comfort on the bumblebee). 

So I tried it on liftoff.... I dropped down to like 1.00 RC rate, and .7 super rate which I think is default? Its a little challenging to get used to... and for some reason I have to re-learn some throttle control habits but it does seem to change the feel in a way that I could see how I could be more precise, such as specifically trying to make it through gates. 

My questions (TLR here)

Do any of the racers here use slower rates? 
Any of you who do both, do you find that different rate profiles help accomplish the different needs? 
Does having 2 different set ups confuse the muscle memory or is the fact that the flying uses different techniques somewhat help create a demarcation? 

I'm not a racer, and i also don't use multiple profiles, but just to add to the discussion:
I also read of some racers who prefer a lower pitch rate compared to roll rate, in order to be able to react quickly on roll, but having it a bit easier on pitch...

(16-Jun-2017, 07:48 PM)fftunes Wrote: I'm not a racer, and i also don't use multiple profiles, but just to add to the discussion:
I also read of some racers who prefer a lower pitch rate compared to roll rate, in order to be able to react quickly on roll, but having it a bit easier on pitch...

Sounds like this slightly slower pitch could give a bit more leeway with throttle management, but yeah pretty sure any significant changes would require getting used to? The analogy of 'racing in a car set up for drifting' just came to me..?

That makes a lot of sense. When I am practicing more race like techniques I do not change pitch as rapidly. I might have to try that next.

(16-Jun-2017, 08:16 PM)Tom BD Bad Wrote: Sounds like this slightly slower pitch could give a bit more leeway with throttle management, but yeah pretty sure any significant changes would require getting used to? The analogy of 'racing in a car set up for drifting' just came to me..?

I raced my buddy's scion FRS a couple of times when they first came out.... let me tell you those cars were really built to be drift cars not race cars if you ask me... so analogy works for sure!

Of course, the one I was driving was on street tires... so that might have had some to do with it... but I had raced other peoples' cars on street tires before.

(16-Jun-2017, 08:16 PM)Tom BD Bad Wrote: Sounds like this slightly slower pitch could give a bit more leeway with throttle management, but yeah pretty sure any significant changes would require getting used to? The analogy of 'racing in a car set up for drifting' just came to me..?

I would even say, not only get used to, but also get tested under race conditions i.e. under pressure

Generally i would think lower rates are much more forgiving. The surprise might be bigger if you find your rates to be too high...

I've spent a bit of time today in liftoff flying lower rates... I decided to spend some time on the minus two map (for non-liftoff users, it's a car garage with tons of obstacles). I've never really worked to be able to fly that map before but by the end of the day I could get some turns in and get around the map some... lots of crashes though. I definitely wont be flying a parking garage in real air for a while :p

The feel of the rates... still is awkward... it's like I have to try harder... I was thinking about reducing the expo to a negative number (since betaflight automatically applies expo with the RC Rate / Superrate stuff these days) but that seems counter-intuitive to me... whats the point of reducing the rates if you're only affecting the endpoints.

Negative expo is only going to make the quad react more to your sticks when they are close to the neutral position. To avoid small movements of your fingers causing the quad to move more than you wanted, I'd say that adding more positive expo to further flatten the curve at the centre is more what you're looking for.

(17-Jun-2017, 10:06 AM)unseen Wrote: Negative expo is only going to make the quad react more to your sticks when they are close to the neutral position. To avoid small movements of your fingers causing the quad to move more than you wanted, I'd say that adding more positive expo to further flatten the curve at the centre is more what you're looking for.

yeah... we'll see... I am not sure I am going to adopt any of this long term... just trying it on really... 

I get how negative expo will affect the rotation... I am already skilled enough that it's not like I am making huge exaggerated movements with the sticks when working on racing techniques... If anything, throttle is the only input that ever goes near endpoints and I am staying as far away from curves on throttle as I can get. 

I suspect in the end I'll stick with what is comfortable for me in one type of flying as with the other. I may have built up past noob status these days but I am still learning constantly and outside of brief experimentation the more stable I can make my environment as I learn the better. 

As for considering adding additional expo, I think I'd have the same problem that I have with bumped down rates... feels like inputs are too far away from one another to be precise. It's psychological I know, I could probably learn to adjust to the difference... but with extra expo i feel like I'd lose some of the precision in the middle of inputs which I've just started working on adding finesse and smoothness with this past month. (I'm maybe 20% to where I want to be with that)

i use the same rates for both racing and freestyle flying. on the other hand, i have several different setups depending on the track. but that's a whole different topic. as for my rates it took a while to find a happy medium. i try to set my rates as close as possible to about 2 1/2 rotations per second on roll and pitch, and 3 1/2 rotations on yaw. i first start out using the graph in the configurator, then i'll tune the quad, then set my rates by feel. i use to race with really aggressive rates but i found really hard to make small corrections at high throttle.

@Carl, instead of negative expo, have you tried increasing rc_rate and putting srate to zero? This would result in an almost linear curve with good response at center...

I was wondering how to flatten that back out... ultimately it would do the same thing though wouldn't it?

(17-Jun-2017, 05:11 PM)Carl.Vegas Wrote: I was wondering how to flatten that back out... ultimately it would do the same thing though wouldn't it?

Yeah, but, while keeping it sensitive at midstick, it could maybe reduce the risk of overshooting in the heat of battle... you know, when you suddenly have to stab sticks hard? All in all it may be more predictable than a steep expo curve.

I have about 800 degrees per second and I don't really do much freestyle. I do find that my rates are a little too slow for freestyle. For a long time I flew with rate of 2!! I found that I was barely moving my fingers and didn't make much use of the rest of the stick range.

I was hoping you'd comment! So even 800 is faster than I had been testing but not by too much. Seems I might be in the neighborhood.

Truth is I haven't tried the slower rates on the diatone yet, but I might give it a shot. Perhaps I'll try around 800 to start just to get a feel without going all the way.