"GYRO-ED" Cyclic Servos: The DIY Small FP Flybarless Project

[EQMOD]

ok. Going away with the mechanical means of stabilizing the rotor head (flybar, hiller, bell hiller), i decided to tackle this head stabilizing concept using electronics on a small FP. Particularly a LAMA V4 Coaxial head converted to a SINGLE ROTOR + Tail Rotor WITHOUT the flybar .

This means, removing the flybar, directly linking the swashplate to the head.
Now for head stability, basically adding two simple electronic component on the aileron and elevator servors - that is two GYROS in rate mode;




The idea is use gyros to detect flybarless pitch and roll errors and apply the correction directly on the servos controlling those movements.

[EQMOD]

I got two old gyros which are still working;





and for my "EXPERIMENTAL" platform, a LAMA V4 Rotor head which is already modified witht the swashplates direcly linked to the blade grip;





I removed the old wires from the gyro;





and directly soldered them to the aileron and elevator servos;





* So technically they are now "Gyro-ed" servos with the usual aileron and elevator input channel having a commong Gyro GAIN input.

[EQMOD]

Details of the swashplate and blade grip links, and the Lama V4 Blades.






Here are the gyro boards as mounted at the back of each servo. Each gyro is mounted "representing" the axis that it should correct;
- The Left servo+gyro controlling/correcting the elevator (pitch)
- The Right servo+gyro controlling/correcting roll.

[EQMOD]

installing the rest of the components;


A small brushless motor (including ESC - worldmodels) for the main motor, a telebee gyro for the tail rotor;






And guess whats on the tail ? YUP! I believe so much on this configuration, i am using a walkera 4#3 small can motor coupled with a stock walkera 4#3 tail blade in direct drive mode. Brush ESC is a GWS100Li - For the spirit of experimentation

[EQMOD]

Ok, lets do away first with the aesthetics and component placements. The idea is to wire them first, do a test fligth, confirm that it works, then arrange the components later.
Here is the pre-flight setup .





I am using a 72Mhz 6EX Futaba configured in 1S mode.
I used a couple of CF rods for the heli's legs. With that long tail boom, look where i got the Lipo battery for correct CG

[EQMOD]

And here is she guys;
Maiden Test hover videos;





I mentioned before that the gyros have a common gain input. This was connected to Channel 5 so that i can make adjustments on the TX as i tune them.
Here is the gyro gain settings when the above flight tests were made.




Initial flight report:
- Flight duration on fully charge - between 8 to 10 minutes
- Throttle: Very sensitive (need to adjust the throttle curves)
- Cyclic response : INSTANTANEOUS - had to lessen the servo throws.
Things to do:
- Shorten the boom
- Find the most optimum gain settings on the gyros
- Work a new component layout
- Tweak the settings (throws, trims, etc, curves,) some more

and here is a side-by-side pose with a walker 4#3 for size referencing.

[EQMOD]

Ok. Here is an outdoor video with just a couple of "subtle" cyclic inputs.


and here is an outdoor Fast forward flight "test" video. I forgot that the head doesnt have a flybar thus FF is "INSANELY" fast that I ran out of bank space ;



Anyway, i like Lama V4 parts as they dont get easily damaged and heli is still intact after a "flight-panic" crash.

[ginnz]

wow!!!!!

thats really cool! impressive use of small cheap components!

[Kadath]

It's strange that you didn't get any more feedback than that. Pretty cool idea. Keep us posted on the flight characteristics once everything is tuned to perfection.

[Dusty1000]

Very nice, thanks for posting. Look forward to hearing more. My old lama could be doing with something like this

[legine]

looks a bit unstable....or is that just you
...and a bit off topic, but why is the flybar on your 4#3 so damn short, i like mine heaps long so its really stable

[Tom77]

I'm curious to hear more about this. Have you gotten it tweaked the way you wanted to? How is it flying for you? Do you recommend trying this? Are those heading hold gyro's?