Recognizing, avoiding, and responding to botched landings

[pyrate]

its intersting looking back
I never knew about the down right arm, down left disarm until many months after flying solo.
to date sticks straight down has always worked
but I stopped auto landing after the first few times.
It was cool to watch but no fun at all

 

[Rich]

It will be interesting to see what the Dev's say about this. I guess I'm still using old habits from my Pixhawk days.

Considering that you must do full down and full left (not just some down and some left), I wonder if everyone does it correctly.

It may be easy to test, remove the props, put the Solo in various flight modes, perhaps turn it upside down, and then hold the throttle full down and full left, then see if you got a 'disarm' command. Perhaps check the logs to see if a disarm came in, or if the thing used crash detection or land detection to shut down the motors.

Thanks for looking into this, as I said, perhaps I'm learning something new. It certainly wouldn't be the first time!

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

I don't think the logs show the reason for disarming other than crash detection which shows up as an error message. There isn't anything I'm aware of that would say disarmed by pilot command vs disarmed by landing detection. I'm pretty sure everyone currently doing down/left in loiter and alt hold are seeing it disarm by landing detection and it's coincidence they happen to have the stick all the way left for no reason. I'd been doing it myself until recently when I realized all this.

 

[NewAgeAerial.com]

Following

 

[SARDG]

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[Pedals2Paddles]

Bump for the newbs

 

[BonsaiGuy]

So you're saying my way of landing by pressing "fly" and letting it shut off that way isn't the best way to stop the motors? lol

 

[pyrate]

I just did a search for this thread by typing in landing
it is amazing how many posts have come about botched landing since P2P took the time to write this.
This is why the people complaining about no printed manual crack me up
If you aint going to read the on line manual
or great posts like this
You sure as heck aint going to bother to read a paper manual

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

So you're saying my way of landing by pressing "fly" and letting it shut off that way isn't the best way to stop the motors? lol

In all seriousness, no it isn't the best. But that doesn't mean it's wrong, or you shouldn't do it. The automatic landing on Solo (and any other Arducopter powered drone) is fantastic. But there are scenarios where it isn't wise, and scenarios where you will need to do something else if it doesn't work.

 

[John armstrong]

I've had several flips on landing by holding throttle down and waiting to disarm they have been on uneven ground. Is it because of the uneven ground. Both situations it seemed to try to take back off both times I was in stabilization mode and did land mode would it be better to land in Manuel if ground is uneven or to hand catch then disarm ?

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

If you're landing in Stabilize mode, you need to put the throttle all the way down and all the way left. Stabilize operates differently than the modes that use altitude control.

 

[Jeffer]

Great post. So much knowledge here, it's scary...

Gotta' say, too, my favorite part was, "Since it isn't suicidal, it will not disarm..."
totally cracked me up.

 

[Eab210]

during fly mode I pressed stabilize and it flipped!

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

during fly mode I pressed stabilize and it flipped!

Highly unlikely. It is more likely that you were not prepared to control the aircraft in stabilize mode, and it crashed as a result.

 

[Jameson]

Wow, somebody brave enough should do a video like that.

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

Wow, somebody brave enough should do a video like that.

A video like what?

 

[Jameson]

A video like what?

I was referring your post. Didn't notice that the thread have a second page, lol

I think that would actually disarm it in flight. I seem to remember reading about some brave soul who climbed up "very high", disarmed using down/left in stabilize, let it fall a few hundred feet, then rearmed while it was falling. And it actually did manage to level itself and arrest the descent with full power applied. Long time ago, so I could be nuts, or the coding could be different now. But none the less, I avoid that stick position in flight like the plague too.

 

[jimloss]

I learned something that may seem obvious to some, but I don't recall seeing it documented anywhere:

If you have a flipover on landing, be sure to power down the Solo before using it again. Twice I've tried taking off without doing this, once resulting in another flip on take-off and a second time with an unstable take-off.

 

[Jameson]

Thats totally normal as the PID controller needs to reset

 

[skyhax]

During auto landing you still have full control of drift. If I stop it from drifting during auto landings they are 100% successful. So yes, it is one leg getting caught that flips it on auto landing.