Understanding Pitch Curve Use in the VControl EVO

Hi Guys,

I have experience altering pitch curves with my trusty old JR12X. It was very straight forward. Not only does it offer a 7 point pitch curve, it allowed me to delete and insert a point anywhere I'd like on the curve. Therefore the use of the pitch curve menus in the VControl has me feeling confused and disappointed and can't seem to find any information on their use and why.

Typically, depending on my setup. I like to hover upright somewhere between 50 and 66% when upright and between 33% and 50% when inverted. Via my JR12X is allowed me to fine tune collective feel as well as fine tune the feel at each hovering point using 7 points. Does the VControl not allow for such tuning or am I missing something? Some additional questions..

After setting total travel in the setup menu on the bench, does this somehow effect the defaulted points for bank 1, 2 and 3? I'm noticing my lowest point is negative 86 and my highest point is positive 81. Why does the curve not default to -100 and positive 100 for example.

What is the purpose of the Increase and Decrease function? I can see that increasing gives more pitch while decreasing gives less pitch, but why would I want to use this?

Anyhow, hope I'm on the right track here. Feeling a bit frustrated.

Thanks,
Raz

Well - this is what we have - 5 points. Poin1 and 5 is the min/max at full stick ends and point 3 is in center. Point 2 and 4 are half.

believe me - even flying scale ships is possible with that, just needs a bit time to get used i think.

regards (EN) / Gruss (DE)

Rainer Vetter

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Posting and answering - please use a PC and a standard keyboard. Answer all questions fully, take the needed time, don't forget probably requested attachments.

Für Posts und Antworten bitte einen PC und eine richtige Taststaur benutzen sowie alle Fragen vollständig abarbeiten. Nehmt Euch Zeit, beantwortet Rückfragen in Ruhe und vollständig.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Für Einzelkommunikation bitte ausschließlich Email verwenden! - PN, Messenger, Chat usw. werden nicht bearbeitet.
For single user communication please send a email only! PM, Messenger, Chat etc. won't be read.

Well, I understand the 5 points, but my mentioned use is not just for scale use. This is disappointing. Is there no plan to implement 7 point curves while also allowing a user to mark/notate the input/output value at hover to allow the user to move that point to their preferred collective stick position hovering point?

So it's just a basic 5 point curve? What about curve expo?

What's the use for the Increase/Decrease function?

Also, after bench setup (when setting total travel) does this somehow effect what points you'll see in each pitch bank?

Raz



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/10/2024 09:41PM by Razmo.

Hi,

please don't get me wrong, but it sounds like you're theorizing, 'just because'.

As of now, for technical and somehow historic reasons, only five points are possible. Period. Sounds harsh, but the world is harsh sometimes

Also, moving hovering collective and hovering throttle e.g. with a potentiometer is so 90's, so Futaba.
An anachronism from times where you adjusted everything in a hover so you could hover "look, mom: no hands!".
This was also the time when you had a switch for inverted flying.
Today, you just fly the machine.

And if you use the soft brake on the collective stick, not the notch-thing (another anachronism), everything's super smooth and precise, because you're not mechanically limiting the resolution of the collective stick to a countable number of steps (some 25 for the whole stick travel), but have the analog equivalent of 3,200 steps. Obvoiusly you need some tool to fine adjust, if one step (1/25th) of +/– 12° or even 16° equals .96° or even 1.28° of collective pitch angle.

Increase, decrease, makes the whole curve steeper or shallower.

What you see in flight mode (not in Setup) is always a bit different, because the control loop is already active, if yet open (no sensor feedback).
So swash plate angles from cyclic dilute accurate readings.
But ... doesn't matter ... once the setup is done, and everything looks good in a pre-flight, take her out for a spin, don't ... theorize —FLY!

Cheers

Eddi

Born to fly ...
forced to work.

Hi Eddie,

No hash feelings, of course. It's not a theory, it's proven. I can tell with 100% confidence, as I'm a rather proficient pilot, having 7 points with a notch-less stick can enable a preferred collective feel at the preferred pilots hovering stick position dependent on preferred head speed. It has nothing to do with the 90's, or for the newbie or when switches were used for inverted flight. It seems you're stuck on forcing the pilot to learn the hovering stick position where ever that may be depending on the model.

Anyhow, it's possible I may be capable of utilizing the forced 5 point Mikado curve that dates back to the ancients (simply have always used 7 points when needed) but my gut says it will also require pitch and head speed adjustments versus simply having the ability to add a couple additional pitch points while retaining my preferred pitch and head speed settings.

Thanks,
Raz

Hi Raz,

I hear you, I just can't understand, personally. I'm flying from 200 size to 1.8 m scale, cw and ccw main rotors to add to diversity, customer's models at times, too, and I never felt like I needed to have to equalize. Head speed is governed, on all. And that's that.
I'm not a very proficient pilot any more, even though I can claim 20+ years of heli experience only in my second tour in r/c.
I'm flying a desk more often than not these days :-/ but when I fly, I just fly.
That's me only, of course.

That doesn't mean that we want to constrain not using collective curves, or only coarse five points, but as of now, because of the design of the VBar environment, it's simply not possible to just add two or four points.

One reason is, while in traditional transmitters, all calculations are done on the transmitter side (you only need to update one piece of hardware, once), and the calculated stick outputs are sent out to the receiver or whatever there is behind, in the VBar world, the VBar does all the calculations, while the transmitter is only transmitting stick- and switch positions.
Changing that inside the guts of the flybarless' firmware and all its variants is not exactly impossible, but it bears all kinds of imponderables, if not risks.
One is, people tend to copy setup files (even the oldest ...), which wouldn't be compatible any more. Loading one could-would be potentially dangerous.
One other is, if you did such an update, you'd have to re-do the collective setup on every updated VBar, before flying again.
Miss that, and the next flight would become exciting, to say the least.

An idea of mine would be, add it in a next generation of VBar (EVO II or whatever, whenever), so it's there from the beginning, and there's no risk of messing things up with a simple update. Old setups would then also have to be rejected.

Again, nothing's impossible to the engineer but such a change would be an extensive one.
And honestly, the level of suffering is not high enough, yet, to dig into it.
There are (and have been) a few requests in that direction, but so far (10 years and counting) only so little ...

Best,

Eddi

Born to fly ...
forced to work.

Hi Eddi,

Greatly appreciate your reply here. Thank you . If we can request adding 7 points to the next generation of Vbar as well as also having the ability to move and delete point anywhere on the curve would be wonderful. Also, I would ask for the ability to be capable of swapping the pots on the VControl for long 3 position switches as I fly several different types of fixed wing aircraft as well. Also, although I've used the model tools feature for heli setup with the pots, I've found I really only need one or two active for setup, which the rotary dials can facilitate just fine. However, an additional feature when activating the pots via model tools for setup would be to offer voice change alerts as changes can be difficult to follow and remember without voice alerts. Could there be a feature request thread for the engineers to post to?

Another mention, although Mikado USA has been VERY helpful with fixed wing macrocell mixing setup. I feel users GREATLY need a user friendly instructional guide to understanding macrocell setup. I would have never been capable of creating the mixes I have without Mikado USA. The videos on VStabi are simply too difficult to follow and understand.

Thanks,
Raz

Hi Raz,

well, everything you (anyone) post here is more or less also taken into account when thinking improvements
We're a small team, and we're all reading and posting here.
I'm as sure as can be, you can not be closer to the developers of a product than you are with us

Macrocells, well, they also appear to be difficult to understand because 'people think too much'.
If you think from the servo output back to what should happen when, jot or sketch that down, then look what you need for it (OK, a channel cell at the physical output for limits, center, direction, delay, fail safe position, what should it do, OK, a curve input would help, or only three positions are required, or there should be different functions in different banks/flight conditions, so I need a multiplexer, then, what should it do when, and how or when it should be actuated), you get to it quite quickly. Of course there are different ways to skin a cat, like, you can do complex math with iterations of the rule of three, or you can compose a single equation, so it's always a bit of try and error, learning.

What I find interesting is, people start with macrocells but omit the model setup, which, most of the time, already has everything you need.
But 'they' seem to be used to program everything on it's own, and then it becomes very complex, very quickly.

What we also learned: programming a helicopter is simple. Period.
Compared to programming an aircraft, there are literally thousands of ways to achieve the same thing, and particularly if you come from a different transmitter, you are so fixated to it's programming logic that it can be really difficult to start on a blank page. No offense just observations!

If you have a task at hand, describe it the best you can, post here, and I'm sure we can help.
Remember: nowhere else you're closer to the product and it's developers than here

Cheers

Eddi

Born to fly ...
forced to work.