Gyro solution!

Now for something much more fun than my post above. I have worked out how to get programmable “fade-out” from the Weatronic built-in gyros. This is a feature of some third-party gyros such as the ACT Fuzzy Pro aileron gyro which has a user-settable rate of fade-out. Fade-out means that the gyro gain is reduced as the control stick is moved, so that the gyro doesn’t keep fighting against you. Without it, you need to have greater static travel on your ailerons than you actually need, because in flight the gyro will reduce the travel. If you use the published aileron travel you will get a slow roll rate due to the gyro opposing you and reducing the travel below that which you have set on the ground. Having to set greater static travel means sacrificing some servo power to get more travel just to compensate for the gyro. So fade-out is a good thing and the Weatronic doesn’t have that feature. Ah but it does, it just doesn’t have it as a separate self-contained feature! The trick is to set the gain curve as an inverted V shape and set the gyro control channel to your aileron channel. Then as you move the aileron control, it alters the gain. The gain curve has 5 points (maybe more, I didn’t investigate that) so set the mid point to the gain that you need, and set the far left and right points to zero or a low gain. The intermediate points, 2 and 4, can be set in a straight line, or higher or lower to “expo” the rate that gain is reduced. See photo for screen shot of gigacontrol. The inverted V shape at the bottom with the red dot in it is the gyro gain curve. In the boxes on the right tick the “alt. Sensitivity” to switch on the programmable gain curve, in the channel box select your Txs aileron channel, then click on the “Sens. Gyro x” to be able to alter the gain curve (if channel X is still highlighted in blue the gain curve won’t respond to the mouse!)

The only snag is that because you have to use the aileron channel as the control, you can’t use something else such as a slider for setting up the gain during test flying, or the retracts as a gain controller for landing/normal flight modes. If those matter more to you then you will have to do without the fade-out.