Hi everyone,

I'm looking for anyone with draganflyer III/IV experience (no speculations on this one please ) to fix something that must be a minor issue, yet being very annoying.


I'm a lucky owner of a DraganFlyer IV on which I am still learning to fly since a couple of weeks, and now I'm tired of something that isn't supposed to be normal on a machine that has gyros; I always need to compensate for the "heading" drifts, it either goes clockwise or counterclockwise, and even if I manage to compensate on the remote, it's still not "lockable" like an helicopter does. The pitch and bank gyros seems okay though, only the heading acts like this.

I don't know if it's normal behaviour and adding an extra controlling challenge on the device, but by looking at the example videos or other people's comment on flying it, it doesn't seem to be normal behaviour. there are potentiometers on the PCB, once is obviously to lock the PLL with the radio control, the other 2 I don't know but if they would be to set gyro gain, I guess there would be 3 of them (one for each gyro) so I don't want to mess with them before having any confirmation on what they do or how to calibrate the device better.

If anyone has experience or heard something about it, would be nice to pass along.

As for what this machine does, seeing it in the air; nothing beats it, yet

I've been flying the Draganflyer IV for about ten months. As far as I know, the yaw drift is the normal operation of the flyer, but I don't know if it can be compensated for by tweaking one of the pots. I've learned to compensate for it without thinking about it. It's not too bad when you're just flying it around normally, but it does make high bank turns and other hard turning maneuvers practically impossible. To do a bank turn with the draganflyer, similar to a helicopter, you need to yaw into the turn to keep the vehicle pointing forward (which is even worse with the draganflyer because it doesn't have a vertical stab). But, when the draganflyer comes out of the turn you need to throw the rudder in the opposite direction to compensate for the yaw drift, and it's yawing really hard at that point, which makes the maneuver very difficult. In ten months, I have successfully done this... twice.

To see the yaw drift really easily, do this... Put the flyer on a flat, smooth floor, throw the rudder stick to the left and start moving up the throttle to get it spinning as fast as you can without taking off. Then throw the rudder stick right until the flyer stops spinning. Then immediately center the stick. Notice that the flyer will immediately start spinning left again. The only thing you can do about this is hold the stick right for a few more seconds to let the "rudder" come back to zero.

I sure would like to know if there is a way to fix the yaw problem. It's really the only thing I don't like about the draganflyer.

-- Brian Stone

Thanks for the response Direwolf

If you say it's not too bad it's probably that your case is less critical than mine, Right now I am flying indoors (got access something the size of a small auditorium) so I don't have any wind issues. I can't imagine having that Drift added with wind, this would be brutal.

The downside of this setup is that I can't fly it really high, but then again at this point I wouldn't be able to land it properly if I would fly it over 5ft... it spins too much and at the speed this thing is going, you don't have much room for that yaw factor, someone would argue that outside it leaves more room for correction, but from what I am experiencing, I'd disagree; it would just accelerate the problem and crash it down harder.

There is an issue to distabilize the heli, if you don't have the exact same 4 blades (i.e. one is chipped, etc) obviously it makes it harder to compensate, but the gyro SHOULD compensate for the case where all 4 blades are the same.

Like I said, the bank and pitch are perfect, so why wouldn't the yaw be as stable? I'm sure there's a gain set somewhere... anyone ever removed the chrome surface over the gyros? I am wondering if there isn't a pot inside, but I don't want to canibalize the machine before knowing exactly what's involved .



Thanks

I would think that this question would be one best posed to the manufacturer/marketer of the aircraft at this point. To my way of thinking, there aren't that many of these out there being flown right now, so the chances of finding someone that's dissected the control system and diagnosed the yaw problem are pretty slim.

The other option is to dissect the craft yourself and start randomly tweaking pots until you figure out which one fixes the issue.

Hi - I have had a DF IV for several months and have similar concerns, but have learned to live/adjust for it somewhat.

After mild training crashes, I would notice that that drift would become suddenly excessive. What I learned is that one of the mounting points on the PCB was not attached perfectly to the leg- it would be just above or below the board or slightly pulled back - hard to spot when you are outside. A quick reattach always improved the drift. Also make sure the frame members are straight and not askew along with checking to see each motor is straight with a bubble level.

I agree 100% that watching the various DF videos, it does appear that other DFs have little to no drift, if you find out the cause from the manufacturer please let me/us know.

good luck and enjoy!