Stick Control Issue

mannarchitect · Apr 24, 2016

I finally got the chance to get my P4 airborne this weekend; just some simple take offs, hovers, run around the yard a bit to get a feel for the RC and response (I'm a noob and wanna take baby steps so I don't crash this thing!). I had heard these things were rock steady, but it: 1) won't hold a firm hover, drifts sideways and down, and 2) later in the day, the stick forward stopped working (it worked earlier just fine). Stick back, side to side, up, down and yaw worked fine....just no forward. Had to yaw it around and back it over to the landing spot for touchdown. One other oddity; I was practicing doing soft touchdowns (and was able fine control it down like a feather early in the day, but later, it would shudder just as I was touching down. Could have been me? but was having good success earlier.

I powered down everything and rebooted, did a controller calibration (not sure what that does? it didn't seem to do anything differently). The RC calibration is a confusing operation to perform in comparison to how finite the other calibrations are with this product)...and still the same problem with no forward stick. I had previously done a dead level IMU calibration (used a bubble to get the table calibrated first) before the compass calibration and I get green bars on all of the IMU and compass readings. GPS was good...9 satellites at the time.

Any thoughts?

PS...new to all of this and really enjoy the chatter and the wealth of info and insight.

With The Birds · Apr 25, 2016

No forward doesn't make sense. Could it be the OA system?

An observation I will offer is that if your new to this your back yard is the worse place to practice. Open areas are much better with enough height to clear any obstacles.

mannarchitect · Apr 25, 2016

WTB...that's gotta be it...good catch. There is a tall hedge wall forward from where I was launching...probably 10 to 12 feet away. Even as slow as I was moving the P4 around, that clearly falls within the spec on distance of the OA. As to the practicing in the yard comment, totally get it. I live in LA proper and not many places that are not in all of the overlapping "airport" radii on the B4UFly app (helipads are included which occur in this City everywhere!). I just couldn't wait to get it airborne and slowly inch it around to get a feel for the controls. I'm gonna get out of the City this next weekend so I can let the big dog run a bit.

Thanks again for the OA system lead...much appreciated.

With The Birds · Apr 25, 2016

mannarchitect said:
WTB...that's gotta be it...good catch. There is a tall hedge wall forward from where I was launching...probably 10 to 12 feet away. Even as slow as I was moving the P4 around, that clearly falls within the spec on distance of the OA. As to the practicing in the yard comment, totally get it. I live in LA proper and not many places that are not in all of the overlapping "airport" radii on the B4UFly app (helipads are included which occur in this City everywhere!). I just couldn't wait to get it airborne and slowly inch it around to get a feel for the controls. I'm gonna get out of the City this next weekend so I can let the big dog run a bit.

Thanks again for the OA system lead...much appreciated.

Was just a guess..... I don't have a P4 so not familiar with the OA system.

please report back to satisfy my curiosity.