TOILET BOWLING !

[Rayray]

, everything looked good but I had a funny altitude reading

Don't pay too much attention to the Height readings. If the barometric pressure is rising or falling (even a tiny bit) the reading will be off.
When the TH motors start, the reading will zero for a second, but may start going bonkers again, Generally accurate within 10 to 20 feet. It does not cause operation problems.

 

[ChadCloses]

View attachment 5573
Chad,

This type of tower typically "leaks" energy in the 800MHz band, which is something we normally don't need to worry about. In case you wonder, it was a stock lens H photo.

Nice photo great detail!! We pretty much only have these kind of power lines around here:

 

[PatR]

I don't have any hard data to back it up, but after flying around a lot of those for a long time I have yet to have a problem near them.

 

[CraigCam]

Unless you hit them.

 

[PatR]

There is that...

 

[gr8wing]

Probably best not to cal your compass in the backyard, go to a local field, start your st16 put it on the ground and then take at least 5 long steps, place your H on the ground facing north and start it up.
Remove any metal, watch, rings, phone and place alongside st16. Now do you compass cal which will be a lot more accurate...

I'm a newbie to all of this as well. I did my calibrations in my backyard as well and everything worked very well. I should mention that I have 5 acres out in the county and my backyard is big enough for a couple of football fields with a couple of trees. How often should we have to re-calibrate?

 

[FlushVision]

...<snip>... How often should we have to re-calibrate?

1. After every update re-calibrate everything that you can re-calibrate (compass in the field, though);
2. Whenever you see any strange behavour;
3. If the system asks for a re-calibration;
4. Compass if flying a large distance, particularly East or West, of the last place you calibrated the compass. What people see as a 'large distance' differs from one individual to another. Some may see this in terms of hundreds of miles, whilst others will be much more cautious and see 10 miles as a large distance...I'm among the latter category.

 

[PatR]

I'm in the former. A 10-30 mile difference in locations is very common for me and thus far have not provided cause to re-calibrate several different brands over that distance. OTOH, I frequently make trips >600 miles and all those have demonstrated a need to re-calibrate. Those have all been generally north/south trips that manage to cross a magnetic declination line. So where might the distance requirement be? I don't really know but my aircraft tell me with reduced stability and somewhat degraded control response. The H can do things a bit differently and throw out a compass error warning, but it has most often demonstrated a reduction in stability and control response.

 

[Dooogie]

Did my compass cali last nite at a big park near my house , Facing North , went textbook .
Came home it was 12-14 mph winds , fired up the rotors again ran them for 5-6 minutes , did not go up , will try again Friday nite after work , no wind forcast . The video is posted on Youtube under TB crash if anyone cares to view . CHEERS !

 

[ChadCloses]

Oh man, I've been there, it's frightening. Could you not get it over the grass and kill the power? The circular movement was definitely evident!!

 

[Typhoon Charlie]

So has anyone pinned this down? One of my three Hs is doing this at low battery 14.5 volts or less. I thought is was a bad compass so I replaced it with a new one but no luck. It flies perfect otherwise up until the the first battery warning or a bit before. The other 2 Hs are rock solid up to the second warning. This has me stumped.

Good piloting Dooogie.

 

[NorWiscPilot]

So has anyone pinned this down? One of my three Hs is doing this at low battery 14.5 volts or less. I thought is was a bad compass so I replaced it with a new one but no luck. It flies perfect otherwise up until the the first battery warning or a bit before. The other 2 Hs are rock solid up to the second warning. This has me stumped.

Good piloting Dooogie.

I was hoping to get somewhere with this via my own customer support case, chronicled elsewhere. Unfortunately, the final verdict, at least final at this time, is this: "low voltage will cause the toilet bowl effect". Telemetry did not indicate a loss of GPS. It did confirm low voltage and movement even though stick input was not there.

Not accepting that, considering I did extensive testing with multiple (4) fully charged batteries, I will continue to monitor my primary H. The good news is, I have only seen it s couple times since my initial incident. I have even intentionally gone down to 14.3v just to see if I could force it. Nope! Hopefully it stays away. But if it returns, I will resume my testing.

One more note: I would not consider my particular incident a toilet bowl. Rather, at about 4 feet, it would not hold position, making a slow side to side pattern that would eventually result in more of an oval flight pattern. Rise up and it would stabilize. Almost like GPS signals were bouncing off the ice and snow, confusing the bird. (I know, sounds ridiculous, but...)

Now that I have a second hull, I have options if things get out of whack.

Jeff

 

[Typhoon Charlie]

Well I just flew 5 batteries with the one thats is exhibiting this anomaly. It only did it once at 14.3V and only at low altitude, less the 15ft. I purposely went to the flying field where there is no interference what so ever, so there seem to be a correlation between low voltage and low altitude, but the puzzling thing is that I have not noticed it on the other 2.

Jeff
See if you can get the other one to do it.

Carlos

 

[NorWiscPilot]

Well I just flew 5 batteries with the one thats is exhibiting this anomaly. It only did it once at 14.3V and only at low altitude, less the 15ft. I purposely went to the flying field where there is no interference what so ever, so there seem to be a correlation between low voltage and low altitude, but the puzzling thing is that I have not noticed it on the other 2.

Jeff
See if you can get the other one to do it.

Carlos

Carlos,

I definitely will be putting "TH Hull II" through its paces. In fact, just before posting above, I had it out above the country driveway, in among the trees, just to break it in (not literally, of course). The ice has turned dark so my days of a wide open space are gone, at least until the pontoon is back in the water and i can start landing on the dock or deck.

By the way, despite the wind, hull II did pretty well. Not much to do but hover 10 ft, 6 ft, 4 ft, 2 ft, when the tall pines and populs are taunting me. I know better than to give in and call their bluff with a new, untested machine. We will see how it goes in the coming weeks. I may start my own thread, as hinted at previously, if I have anything solid to report.

Jeff

 

[Ed88888888]

I get TB when i hover for long periods and that sucks cause i want to get time lapse or a long tripod style video of something moving. I do a compass calibration and go back up and seems to fix. But it is a shame it can so easily go into the TB.

I concur my TB also happening on long hover gain height and it reduces

 

[CraigCam]

Could be more magnetic interference lower to ground? That can happen here when I fly over more iron rich rock formations.

 

[dsodano]

Quick history , had my H for about 10 days , first weekend did the firmware update that just came out in March .
Did my first compass cali in my front yard , (I know , but it worked) First 3 flights were textbook , never went above 200 or 100 out. Saturday I drained the battery just to see , landed , no issues . Sunday , cloudy , drizzled ,
could not fly . Came home from work tonite , windy , 10 mph . Had to get my fix , went through the same routine ,
all systems good , took off . After about 7 minutes it got breezy so I went to land (yes , in angle) About 10 feet she started to "Toilet Bowl" Did I mention I was filming all of this ? Double checked Angle , went to turtle , almost hit my truck . then my neighbors tree . Bounced off the street right near the curb , twice . I would have just shut the props off at this point and taken the loss but she just kept circling . Anyways seconds later I came down at a 45 degree angle in some ivy , shut it down . By the grace of God only 2 damaged props , ST-16 even prompted my it was going into "5 rotor Mode" after the crash , I guess thats good . I watched the video , almost funny . I can say this has not swayed my confidence , it was 1 black , 1 white , did an accelerometor and gimble cali just now and they went fine . My next compass cali will be in a wide open grassy space . I might post the video , its worth watching .
Not gonna call unless my next flight is weird . I luv this stuff and I'm just gettin started , Cheers !

 

[dsodano]

I concur my TB also happening on long hover gain height and it reduces

Quick history , had my H for about 10 days , first weekend did the firmware update that just came out in March .
Did my first compass cali in my front yard , (I know , but it worked) First 3 flights were textbook , never went above 200 or 100 out. Saturday I drained the battery just to see , landed , no issues . Sunday , cloudy , drizzled ,
could not fly . Came home from work tonite , windy , 10 mph . Had to get my fix , went through the same routine ,
all systems good , took off . After about 7 minutes it got breezy so I went to land (yes , in angle) About 10 feet she started to "Toilet Bowl" Did I mention I was filming all of this ? Double checked Angle , went to turtle , almost hit my truck . then my neighbors tree . Bounced off the street right near the curb , twice . I would have just shut the props off at this point and taken the loss but she just kept circling . Anyways seconds later I came down at a 45 degree angle in some ivy , shut it down . By the grace of God only 2 damaged props , ST-16 even prompted my it was going into "5 rotor Mode" after the crash , I guess thats good . I watched the video , almost funny . I can say this has not swayed my confidence , it was 1 black , 1 white , did an accelerometor and gimble cali just now and they went fine . My next compass cali will be in a wide open grassy space . I might post the video , its worth watching .
Not gonna call unless my next flight is weird . I luv this stuff and I'm just gettin started , Cheers !

same issue here after it crashed I returned it to Yuneec they replaced the compass board seems to be OK total turn around time was 3 weeks they never forget to say have a Yuneec day I told them there bad production of the compass board caused it to crash, I replaced the camera mount and two arms at my expense thinking it was my bad flying but luckily I was filming and after review you can see the TB,

 

[NRRTRAINS]

the only thing i would say is when you are landing don't come straight down , the prop wash of your drone creates a turbulence that has been posted before on many drone sites .

 

[RiverRunner]

That video is a perfect example of why we need a switch to turn off GPS.