Flight Modes 101 – Fly Better With These Easy Radio Settings
Intro to Flight modes
By Andrew Griffith
At their most elementary degree, flight modes are a set of settings that may be turned on with the flip of a change or switches to regulate how a mannequin behaves in a specific flight situation. These settings embody however usually are not restricted to things like management charges, exponential, trim (however not sub-trim, which is world), throttle curves, and offset place of management surfaces. Even that may be a simplistic view as a result of flight modes might be prioritized and/or nested.
Flight Modes for Gliders
Glider pilots love flight modes as a result of they permit us to configure the wing camber and elevator trim exactly for particular flying situations. Picture a glider with flaps and ailerons on the wings. You can have a flight mode that units the elevator trim a bit up, the flaps a bit down, and the ailerons impartial and name that “launch mode.” Flip the change to launch and your settings are optimized for a winch or high-start launch. At the tip of the launch, flip the change and maximize raise with thermal mode, by which the elevator is centered, the flaps are down just a few levels, and the ailerons are each down just a few levels, altering the camber of the whole wing. This maximizes the power of the glider to fly slowly and discover or work raise.
Let’s say that the raise is terrible, and it is advisable pace out of the sink and off to a different space of the sky to search for raise. Flip the change into pace mode and the ailerons neutralize, the flaps reflex upwards just a few levels, and the elevator trims down a bit; the glider will scram to some place else the place you may return to thermal mode, decelerate, and begin your seek for raise anew. When the inevitable occurs and it’s time to land, choose touchdown mode and the flaps prolong, the ailerons reflex upward for crow combine or butterfly braking mode so you may exactly management your descent and nail that precision touchdown.
Motorized gliders make even higher use of flight modes. Your launch mode has the throttle stick controlling throttle, the down-elevator trim often required when a glider below energy and some other settings you need to optimize. Yet while you’re in touchdown mode, the throttle stick reverts to what most glider pilots use it for: adjusting touchdown spoilers, or the crow combine for precision landings.
Scale gliders are splendid candidates for flight modes. They typically have a number of aileron servos per wing together with flaps and spoilers that may be set for wing camber and trim relying on the part of flight.
What’s in a reputation?
Despite having comparable performance, completely different radio manufacturers have their very own terminology for flight modes. Here’s a fast rundown.
Futaba: Flight situations
Graupner: Q.Link (fast hyperlinks)
Jeti: Flight modes
PowerBox: Flight modes
Spektrum: Flight Modes
My Graupner MZ-24 calls flight modes “Q.Links” however the performance is similar.
Flight Modes for Helicopters
Helicopters have 4 primary flight modes: regular, idle-up 1, idle-up 2, and throttle maintain. Each mode has a curve managed by the throttle stick that units the principle blade pitch and throttle response to the stick place. Idle-up modes will let you add throttle from half stick and beneath on the identical time the blade pitch goes destructive, so you may hover and do aerobatics inverted. Conversely when throttle maintain is activated, the throttle is pushed to idle whereas the principle blade pitch remains to be managed by the throttle stick permitting you to autorotate the mannequin for enjoyable or to take away torque so you may land safely if there’s a tail-rotor failure.
Helicopters use flight modes to stability the principle blade pitch and throttle factors to regulate the rotor pace in addition to shut the motor off in emergencies or auto rotations whereas sustaining management of the blade pitch.
Flight Modes for Sport and Scale Aircraft
One of essentially the most primary makes use of of flight modes entails configuring elevator compensation for flaps on a fixed-wing plane. This applies to jets, scale, and different flap-equipped sport plane.
You begin by creating three flight modes, utilizing the flap change to regulate the flight mode. Then set your elevator trim from widespread to single flight mode. In flight, you may then alter the elevator trim for the right amount of up- or down-elevator as required to trim out every of the three flap positions. If your radio permits you set the transition time between flight modes, and most of them do, set the transition time to the match the pace of your servos. (Note: Spektrum radios use a slick flap menu that matches the flap pace to the elevator trim, so using flight modes on this specific case will end result within the trim coming in instantly and never matching the pace of the flap deployment.)
Additional features might be added to every flight mode by tying in settings akin to management charges and expo. I ceaselessly add gyro achieve to the touchdown flight mode as a result of a gyro can use extra achieve when an plane slows down for touchdown. This might be expanded to incorporate such options as touchdown lights and equipment akin to pace brakes or slats. The extra difficult the plane, the extra alternatives to simplify pilot workload by grouping these features right into a flight mode that may be known as upon on the flip of a change.
A Spektrum DX20 has a desk the place you may visualize what flight mode is energetic with every change place. In this case, SWB controls the row and SWG controls the column for 9 whole flight modes. A really highly effective system!
Flight Modes for Aerobatics
Despite the relative simplicity of their plane, IMAC and competitors aerobatic pilots make in depth use of flight modes. No offense after all to IMAC planes; I simply imply that this sort of airplane usually has mounted touchdown gear, no flaps, and no gyro, they’ll in any other case be extraordinarily advanced machines!
Once you get the a number of servos per floor working correctly, you can begin organising your flight modes. Control charges, exponential, trim, and throttle curves can all be exactly optimized for the maneuver being carried out, akin to having max charges out there for snap roll model maneuvers or extra sedate charges for gradual precision aerobatics. A throttle curve with a excessive idle and good low and mid-range throttle response can make sure you don’t have an in-flight useless stick, however when switched to touchdown mode the throttle idles down usually.
The extra superior radio techniques not solely provide you with extra channels however while you dig into the specs, additionally they improve the out there options, and that is typically seen within the variety of out there flight modes that may be created.
IMAC and aerobatic pilots use flight modes to set charges and expo for every maneuver or section of their routines.
Nesting vs. Prioritized
As talked about, flight modes might be nested or prioritized. An instance of nesting is utilizing a pair of three-position switches to activate your flight modes. Switch A in place 1 and three are completely different flight modes, however the center place prompts change B, which has positions 1, 2, and three energetic for 3 completely different flight modes however none are energetic until change A is centered. An awesome instance of precedence is seen in helicopters the place throttle maintain mode overrides all different flight modes, so whether or not you’re in regular or one of many idle-up modes, while you hit maintain the throttle all the time goes to idle (or motor off for electrical) and the principle blade pitch is managed by the pitch curve set for maintain mode.
This Skymaster F-18 Hornet makes use of the flight mode setup on the PowerBox Core radio to activate a number of flight modes, together with a touchdown mode that makes use of the elevators as ailerons for elevated low-speed roll management together with a pace brake and gyro management.
Wrap-up
Don’t be afraid to experiment with flight mode settings, however all the time create a backup of your mannequin file earlier than tinkering with settings chances are you’ll be unfamiliar with. That means in the event you ever have to revert again to what you recognize works, it is going to be simple. Start by incorporating charges and expo. Add options as you get snug, and in the event you don’t like one thing, begin over. Pretty quickly you’ll marvel the way you ever bought alongside with out flight modes!