User`s manual

AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual
• Do not ignore the battery warning giving by the
AutoPilot (acoustic signal as described above).
Discharging the battery deeper than 9V could
drastically reduce its lifetime.
• All sensors on the AutoPilot are compensated
for temperature drift effects. However, if the am-
bient temperature changes too rapidly, for in-
stance when you fly from a warm room to a
cold outdoor environment, the angles estimated
by the datafusion algorithms might not be totally
correct. As a consequence, your vehicle would
be tilted a bit, even with a neutral pitch and roll
command. In this case we recommend to wait a
few minutes, until all sensors have adopted to the
ambient temperature.
3.4 Learning to fly
3.4.1 General hints
It is important that you learn to fly the vehicle
manually before using the autonomous functions, i.e.
you need to be able to fly without height control and
position control by air pressure and GPS. Good GPS
receiption can never be guaranteed - consequently
you must be able to take control manually at any
time during flight. In most countries even by law
a safety pilot must always be within visual range
to an air vehicle as the AscTec Hummingbird and
must be able to control it at any time. Due to the
onboard sensors and the sophisticated flight control
algorithms even in manual mode the vehicle is much
easier to control than most other R/C aircrafts and
therefore operating the vehicle is comparatively easy
to learn.
3.4.2 First flights
We recommend to do the first flights on some big
grassland, as the soft ground will soften possible
emergency landings. If you have never controlled an
R/C aircraft before you will have to practice a bit
until you are able to fly in tight spots.
Make sure that the battery is fully charged, connected
and mounted correctly. Switch on the vehicle and be
really careful during the startup phase. The vehicle
must NOT be moved during startup as the gyro
sensors are being initialized! If the vehicle was
moved during startup simply turn it off and on again.
The startup sequence is completed once LED 2 is
blinking. Now the vehicle is ready to fly.
Before starting the motors make sure that the three-
position switch on your R/C controlling channel 6
(GPS and height control OFF – height control enabled
– GPS and height control enabled) is in OFF position.
To start the motors you have to move the yaw stick
to the very left or right whilst holding throttle in zero
position.
If it is the first flight after a while or the first flight
at all hold your AscTec Hummingbird down to the
ground. You can grab the center part of the frame, but
make sure that you don’t touch any of the rotors.
In case the vehicle tries to tilt in any direction and
one or more of the propellers are going crazy: Turn
the motors off immediately (same stick command
as used for turning the motors on)! Then, switch the
vehicle off and on again and try again. If the problem
still occurs please read the troubleshooting section of
this manual.
Angle stabilization in pitch and roll is active even
when the propellers are running idle. Use this fea-
ture as you hold the vehicle from below and tilt it
carefully to check that everything works. As you tilt
it to one direction you must feel some counterforce
from the motors if everything is o.k.. You can also try
to steer the pitch and roll axis and see that you can
directly steer the angles. Please check if the vehicle
is leveled in your hand with the pitch and roll stick
in neutral position. If not, correct any undesired tilt
with the pitch and roll trimmers.
Before the first take-off make sure that the red mark
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