a lot of good info here. Seeing a launch really makes it more clearer. Also, an excellent idea to record the flight launch tests for later review. Watching your slo-mo makes it possible to identify places that could be adjusted. For me, on my non-fc plane i have the throttle off to start (don't like spinning prop while holding wing), then throw and the motor turns on much sooner after leaving my hand. After reading many video reviews here and on other vids i noticed a common thread...many of the pilots really dont fully understand the process and how each command is supposed to work in the whole scheme of the launch sequence. a few years ago when i first started using INAV i took the time to read and understand as well as possible every cli command i could find associated with RTH which gave me a picture and understanding in my mind of how the entire RTH process was supposed to work on my quad. But mostly, we are probably anxious to get in the air due to time restraints, and want to fly rather than read cli commands. I appreciate your work, its very helpful.
I agree. Having a bit of knowledge of the system really does improve chances of success. And also that people are keen to get in the air as quickly as possible. That video was a little out of date. This one is more recent, and includes some features of the launch which weren't in the first video. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-rj_RSrXqib8.html
Just wanted to let you know I got my first fixed wing last week and have been struggling loads with launch (dropping like a stone, all of them!) after watching this I have much more of an understanding of autolaunch in general. Great tutorial man - subbed :)
Hi excuse me to bother you you are the only one that thrust i set autolaunch on both my ar 900 any reptile s800 it work the first time and after that first time its impossible to arm motor even if i disable the autolunch mode switch if i disable autolunch font ion wtith the gui then the motor arm maby you have an idee thanks
I can’t say I’ve ever heard of that before. Make sure that you have system messages enabled in the OSD. Then, if you can’t arm, check what it says there. The most common are that the throttle is not low, you are in a navigation flight mode, or there is not enough satellites locked.
Great tutorial, and nice recap!:-) What was your solution to get even better launches? Had my dart250 launching exactly like your ARmini and setting that made that initial altitude "drop down" disappear was to increase launch_climb_angle, now it flies straight off hand.
Thank you. The big one was to throw it better. On thing I didn’t pick up on in the video was that the plane was banked over quite a bit and I threw it at too high an angle. But yes, I increased the launch angle a little, to 25 degrees, reduced the delay, set the idle to 1350, and the launch throttle at 1700.
Flown with iNav for some time, just setting up autolaunch, so very helpful vid. Should be easy with the Albabird, more thought for the twin puller Goblin on 6S.
The ar wing is pretty light so this approach works ok. But if you have something like the tbs caipirinha 2 you need to give it full beans due to the weight and over head is the only real way to hold it / launch safely. So this might be ok for lighter models but not for all
The throttle level is always set based on the model. That’s why you use the hover test. So if the weight of a Capi needs full power to feel it hovering, that’s the right setting. I’ve never been a fan of overhead launches. Firstly, props near faces can never be a good thing. But also, you’re putting energy in to making the model go up more than along, so you’re not really gaining as much airspeed over the wings; as it will slow towards the peek, then speed up again after it has arched. You could minimise this by increasing the launch angle so that it keeps it on the same trajectory as when it leaves your hands. The best launch will see minimal changes in launch angle and a constant increase in airspeed. However, I have heard that the Capi is a pain to launch. I don’t think its the weight either. Even heavy Mini Talons need to be launched pretty flat to get airspeed over the wings quickly. Whatever gets you the most success is the path to take buddy. This video is really just to help people work out the settings for the launch.
In both your launches the model is thrown up at a higher angle than your climb out angle. Only my thoughts but could the model be detecting a high climb so it is correcting this by momentarily commanding down elevator. trying to maintain the 20 degree climb angle.
What am I doing wrong. Both my plank and s800 want to fly down within a few feet . The s800 throwing it up like you do here and the plank throwing it level. It’s like the stable mode pushes it down . I’m in stable mode and have launch activated when armed. Some times its good but I have to be fast on the elevator stick so it climbs out. I did buy two S800 wings in knowing I’d beet the shit out of the first one . I’ve been a rc plane pilot for more than 20 years recently retired from the warbird racing that dominated that hobby for 10 years. So yeah not new to flying fixed wing. I’ll go over the settings and videos again . Thinking of building a bungee launch. Nice work with the videos we all appreciate it.
Hi Dan. This happened to a friend of mine 2 weeks ago. Turns out his stabilisation was reversed on pitch. So autolaunch send the plane into the ground. That would be the first thing I’d check.
When I enable launch mode, the motor doesn't spin until I throw it. I see when you raise the throttle it immediately throttles up. Mine did that too when I used the wrong order to enable launch mode. So was it in launch mode or just stabilized?
It spins when I raise the throttle because of the idle throttle setting. The order you use to enable autolaunch should not have an effect on this. If the motor speed changed to whatever you set the throttle at, I’d say it wasn’t in launch mode, just whatever flight mode you had selected at the time.
I'm about to try it for the first time, did a couple no prop tests and all surfaces acted as they should to stay in programmed flight path. My no auto launches are going great and the craft is trimmed and tuned already so it should go ok 😬
Good luck with the launch Jay. It the plane is already flying well, this will give autolaunch the best chance. I have made a more recent video, which covers some of the changes for the later versions of INAV at ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-rj_RSrXqib8.html
@@MrD thanks man. Still feels odd throwing an RC plane and expecting it to fly away and then loiter on its own after years of flying los and manual FPV
I know what you mean. It’s cool though. What’s really cool is when there are folks or new pilots at the club, who don’t know that stuff like this exists. Then you just throw the plane away with your transmitter on the floor. The look on their faces is priceless.
I'm struggling with getting my Autolaunch to engage. Everything appears to be setup correctly, but when I toss the plane it doesn't go into AutoLaunch. it just stays at IDLE 1300... Setting for launch: set nav_fw_launch_velocity = 180. (I've used 150, with same issues) set nav_fw_launch_accel = 1500 Not sure what I'm going wrong. On my Dart 250g, the idle is strong enough for me to throttle down and then throttle up and just fly as normal.. My AR Wing Pro, wasn't so lucky....
To be honest, it just sounds like you’re not throwing it with enough strength. For most things I leave the accel on the default (1863 I think) and velocity the default of 300. I didn’t have issues with these settings on my heavy S800. That was around 1Kg. With those settings the AR should get detected easily. What might really help is to get a video of you launching the wing, showing you and your throw. It will be easier to work out what’s happening then. If your in the iNav fixed wing group on Facebook, that would be a great place to post it. If not feel free to share the link in a comment.
@@MrD That could be the issue, but I'm really tossing it.. The Dart 250g is sailing along after the throw.. The AR Wing Pro was another story.. See FPV video.. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-YFCxmZgUtIk.html. I've hand launched a fair amount of planes, but none with INAV until the last month.. Is it possible, there is another setting I'm missing? Maybe the ESC isn't calibrated? I'm grasping at straws....
Sorry will, your comment was hidden because of the link. It sounds like you've sorted it now. I agree, you can see that the throttle only gets up to 10%, not the 30% that you've set the idle to. I'm glad you have it working now.
Thanks.. I got the autolaunch worked out.. Now its my lack of ability to hand toss the this AR Wing... I'm clearly a clutz.... Thank God for quality foam glue...
Hey just got Bird running!! WOW so close to maiden!! Now lunching.. lol have auto on Always. About half throttle it hovers. No gps.. hope that's ok.. ordered wrong FC.. for Dji system matek 411wse. 250g dart
Awesome, I wish you great luck with the maiden. A GPS would be beneficial, as then RTH and all that good stuff will work too. I believe there's another target for the F411-WSE where you can have the receiver on UART 1, the GPS on UART 2, and the DJI on a full soft serial port. So you can have all 3 things.
@@MrD did you make video of? I'm finding hard to find. Seen some other's wondering too. Something you have to use cli for? Should have got different FC but Bird I'd dart250g so Small is Nice. Thought saw vid on someone using? New to wing's:( and fCs metek has let me down.. one Still doesn't work with I nav.. h743 other newest release F411wse And can't support DJI? Wings have something against DJI? Drones FCs all work with or don't sell. Lol Diatone make wing FC? That's a name I trust. Matek sucks... 2 fCs latest and greatest. Don't work. If fly DJI...
To be fair, this isn’t really Matek’s fault. Their FCs are pretty good for the most part. The H743 has is not yet supported by iNav. Matek have advertised it as works with ArduPilot and iNav coming soon. H743 will be supported in iNav 3.1, which will be released as soon as the H745 support is ready. The problem with the F411-WSE is that it’s made for a small size, so there has to be compromises. Only having two UARTs does mean that you have less options. It will work with DJI goggles. Any FC running iNav with a spare UART can use DJI. The workaround is the MATEKF411SE_FD_SFTSRL1 target, which allows you to use the LED pad as the Rx for softserial 1, making it a full duplex softserial port. You can then hook up your DJI to ST1 (FC Tx) and LED (FC Rx), leaving you UART 1 and 2 for receiver and GPS. This is nothing in CLI. You flash a different target to the board to make these changes. But you can make a diff from the MATEKF411SE target, flash the MATEKF411SE_FD_SFTSRL1 target, and restore the diff. There is information on the target variations for that board here github.com/iNavFlight/inav/blob/master/docs/Board%20-%20Matek%20F411-WSE.md
@@MrD as far Matek. I ment not DJI friendly. In drones FCs they added direct connection to Dji. If FC doesn't support? Doesn't sell. Now all FCs support. Matek will fallow suit soon. Or another company will. Wings different? Few have DJI? To me if doesn't support. I don't need. After hd Flying no going Back. Lol I'll watch video Link you sent. Once I see I can do.. Thanks again!!
I've been using auto launch and so far so good, but today I tried to cancel after maybe 5 seconds buy moving right stick but it did not abort auto launch until the 10 seconds was up this is what I've set. So on the bench with prop off I arm and as soon as right stick is moved auto launch aborts, well I tried again but this time with motor throttled up and when moving right stick it will not abort auto launch, servos will not react at all until I go back to idle and then by moving stick it will abort. This doesn't seem normal I would like to be able to abort auto launch if motor is running or not. How can I fix this? Thanks in advance
Check the minimum launch time (in advanced tab of configurator 2.6) setting. That is a time that the launch will ignore stick commands. This is called nav_fw_launch_min_time in CLI, for 2.6 and older versions of iNav.
That makes sense, so are you thinking that its timing out to quick or not quick enough, to me you want to be able to abort auto launch at anytime what time do you use for this? Thanks for all your help
This is the launch timeout. It’s how long it will disable stick movements. The launch timeout is a different setting. There is: nav_fw_launch_min_time which is how long stick commands are ignored. By default, this is off. But people tend to set this to around 2 seconds, to avoid accidentally bumping the sticks on launch. nav_fw_launch_timeout which is how long the actual launch process lasts for. The length of this would depend on your model, launch settings, and what you want to happen. Default is 5 seconds (5000). What values do you have for these 2 settings?
@@MrD the nav launch time out is set to 10000 this puts my plane at around 200ft high when it stops climbing which works out good for my surrounding alot of mountains and trees here in W.V, the other setting I've never setup so it would have to be set by default, so I guess it's off I will have to look and see. I'd like to be able to abort auto launch at anytime.
trying to get the launch throttle but with INAV 2.6 the outputs tab shows motor as a percent instead of 0-2000 or whatever it was in 2.4. best way to proceed with finding a good value for the CLI?
I know. This is a bit of a pain. Paweł updated the outputs page to only show percentage instead of microseconds (uS). I did put an update forward for 2.6, which showed both values. But it was denied. I believe that the rest of iNav will be updated to use percentage in time. However, this really doesn’t help now. For now you will need to do some maths. • First, take the percentage and multiply it by 10 • Next, add 1000 This will be the approximate value in uS. So if we have 64% throttle. That works out as: 10 x 64 = 640 1000 + 640 = 1640
@@MrD sweet, very helpful. My AR600 was set up just like yours and works fine but now doing an AR900 and it doesn't seem to have near as much thrust to weight ratio.
Someone at my club had a PnP AR Wing and it really felt lacking in thrust. It needed a good throw. For autolaunch on that I’d definitely add some idle throttle and set the launch thrust to 2000. His may have been on 3S. 4S may be better.
@@MrD i made my own settings im running on a 4s so i had to change the launch in cli because my model was preset on 3s. i didnt need as much throttle to take off and i lowered the motor time to spin and the shake. thanks
You shouldn’t shake at all. The idea is that you just thrown the plane. Shaking first can cause problems. I would recommend not changing the launch detection settings (threshold velocity and threshold acceleration). As these are perfectly fine with the standard values for small and medium sized planes. Reducing these values can make accidental launches easier. Yeah, with 4S the throttle can be a touch lower. Also, with iNav 2.6, you don’t need to use the CLI at all. All the launch settings are on the Advanced Tuning page 👍🏻
The default settings of threshold velocity = 300 threshold acceleration = 1863 are perfectly fine for detecting a throw of a Mini AR wing. I’ve never had a failed detection. The only really need to be played with for models that are up around 2kg in weight and over. A 500g Mini AR will have no issues with those standard settings. I know other RU-vid channels say to lower them, but I disagree. They just make the model more prone to accidental launch detections. Which is not a good thing.
I can see that working on some planes. But theres not really anywhere to grab the Mini AR like that, firmly. I used to launch my Nano Goblin like a dart.
I would personally: set nav_fw_launch_velocity = 300 # The default of 300 is fine for the Mini AR. Lower can trigger false detects nav_fw_launch_motor_delay = 300 # You should never set this too low with a pusher. 0 is only ok for a tractor plane with the prop already in front of your hand set nav_fw_launch_climb_angle = 25 # I found the slightly steeper angle better The other things look fine. The launch throttle may need to be adjusted, but try it and see. Depending on your flying area, 5000 may be too short for nav_fw_launch_timeout. If you need to clear trees, may be use 10000.
@@staydown.normal5323 it’s the other way around. Small planes should have higher values as they are easier to throw. Large planes have lower values as they could be travelling slower when you throw them. 300 for the Mini AR is fine.
great video, i will be trying my first auto launch tomorrow and this has helped me greatly to hopefully have things set up right, but also what i can change if things don't go so well, thank you.
@@MrD thank you, had a fun day, but unfortunately auto launch didn't quite go to plan. Think I need to lower motor spin up delay and improve my throwing technique but a couple of launches kinda worked.
Its getting there, which is great. If you can, video the launches. Then its easier to see what’s happening after the plane leaves your hands. It sounds positive though.
