Originally Posted by johnorama

I am a professional UAV flight instructor.

For who?

That's not the funniest thing he said...this is...I am a professional tech writer.

Originally Posted by johnorama

I am new to this thread but not new to the subject. Vova brought me in to write the RVOSD5 User Manual and Quick Start Guide. You should be seeing a first draft really soon.

I am going to be actively listening on this thread to help drive the direction of the RVOSD5 documentation. RVOSD for Dummies is a pretty good idea and I intend to make the documentation so it extremely simple yet deeply informative. If you other ideas or questions, post them here and don't let them go unanswered.

I am a professional tech writer and UAV flight instructor. I have written military UAV user manuals targeted towards "the lowest common denominator" so I understand how to write things simple and clear. Also, I have zero experience with the RVOSD so I will be writing this with no preconceptions. I will be confirming every single sentenance in the manual to ensure that it matches what the system really does.

I hope I can serve you all well.

Happy and safe flying, everyone!

I am new to this thread but not new to the subject. Vova brought me in to write the RVOSD5 User Manual and Quick Start Guide. You should be seeing a first draft really soon.

I am going to be actively listening on this thread to help drive the direction of the RVOSD5 documentation. RVOSD for Dummies is a pretty good idea and I intend to make the documentation so it (is) extremely simple yet deeply informative. If you (have) other ideas or questions, post them here and don't let them go unanswered.

I am a professional tech writer and UAV flight instructor. I have written military UAV user manuals targeted towards "the lowest common denominator" so I understand how to write things simple and clear. Also, I have zero experience with the RVOSD so I will be writing this with no preconceptions. I will be confirming every single sentenance in the manual to ensure that it matches what the system really does.

I hope I can serve you all well.

Happy and safe flying, everyone!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++
Expect typographic errors and word omissions.

Just poking fun, of course.

Oh, my! That's dang funny.

It looks like I will have to apply a little more effort on the user manual than on my RCG posts.

Edit: ...and yes, right now it has a number of grammar and typos, but I will make sure they are addressed as soon as all the necessary technical info is added.

Originally Posted by borneobear

For who?

To be brief, I've taught Pioneer and Sentry HP and a few other sub-systems. I recently was on a small team that produced two (2) UAV basic aviation skills courses (FAA Ground School equivelant). I've produced entire user manuals from the ground up for the Viking 400 and Tarzan. I've been a student of many more.

Originally Posted by johnorama

Vova brought me in to write the RVOSD5 User Manual and Quick Start Guide.

I am going to be actively listening on this thread to help drive the direction of the RVOSD5 documentation. RVOSD for Dummies is a pretty good idea and I intend to make the documentation so it extremely simple yet deeply informative. If you other ideas or questions, post them here and don't let them go unanswered.

FPV is taking off like wildfire. So, there are lots of people (like me) that might know the ends and outs of RC flying, but KNOW NOTHING about setting up the RVOSD. I have found that some of the instructions are written with some of the "common FPV knowledge" stuff left out. In the G5 instructions, there is no mention that in PCM set-up, the throttle AND Aux channels are required to keep the RVOSD from glitching in Fail-Safe mode. I was beating my head on the bench last night over that one. There was 4, 6" extensions with the RVOSD, so I was bench testing with ch's 1,2,4,6. I was wanting to test the OSD control with my Tx and the 3 flight controls. Alex told me this morning that ch 3 (throttle) and ch 6 (Aux) where required to make it work in PCM mode.

There are some of the settings that are a little vague to me too. Like:

Max pitch angle:
Maximum angle the autopilot will allow the plane to pitch while correcting altitude.

Ok, I get that, clearly. But what is a good base to start at and how far is too far. Some BASE starting numbers would be SUPER. Just so a particular parameter that should be somewhere around 15-25, isn't set to 80 by a dummy like me.

Here is another one.

Glide ratio:
Set the estimated glide ratio of your airplane. This parameter will be used by the estimated range left calculations.

Ok, I understand what a "glide ratio" is. My OSD come pre-set at 4.5:1. What if Im flying a brick, and it wont glide at a 4.5:1 ratio? This comes back to giving a range of "base numbers". What happens if your RTH is bringing you into the wind? Whats that going to do to the glide ratio that the OSD is trying to hold?


I could be wrong, but I feel it needs to be written like your explaining to someones mother, over the phone, long distance, how to set-up and adjust the settings.

Damnn, past my bed time. Thanks for reading. Scott

"Also, I have zero experience with the RVOSD so I will be writing this with no preconceptions."

Best part. The hardest part I find about doing white papers and technical manuals is remembering that the guy reading it doesn't know all the details that I know because I'm the guy that built the thing.




Also, I flew my RVOSD yesterday afternoon. I didn't tweek any of the settings other than to setup PPM and what I did/didn't want displayed on the screen.

WORKED GREAT!!!!

Extremely pleased.
Fly by wire worked just like I had hoped.
RTH kicked in and did it's job.
Just wonderful. My vibration sensors were pegged out when I had any kind of throttle but it still worked just fine.

Great work Vova and ElCheapo.

Thanks for posting the results about the vibrations being maxed out guys. I am having all sorts of trouble shoehorning the G5 into my plane along with vibration absorbing sponge. I previously had the G4 in there and it was a squeeze but didnt need any vibe isolation. I just ran a first test with balanced prop and G5 sandwiched between memory foam, Although the airframe didnt seem to have much vibe, the needles jumped off scale. Looks like im stuck with it. Might just have to try it as is.
Hoping for a test flight this weekend.

Hi Johno,
I think the area in the G5 instruction set that would benefit mostly from clarification is the section covering how the autopilot PID adjustments relate to the flight characteristics, and what adjusting each parameter will achieve.
I wish you the best of luck, and look forward to your instruction set.
Cheers
Frank

I wrote the manual, Although I understand that it is unclear in some aspects. It wasn't really meant to teach "someones mother, over the phone, long distance, how to set-up and adjust the settings".

The autopilot needs almost no configuration, basically it works out of the box. You do need to plug everything, configure R/C link lost detection, check vibrations, run the wizard and it should be ready to go. That's the closest I could make it to be flyable by "someones mother".
The manual will be updated, but you will need to have some knowledge about piloting. Else it will have to become a piloting manual .

About vibrations. It is ok to have the vibration measurement display to the top, as long at it does not stay at top at all throttle levels.
What it is more important to know if that you should never set cruise or glide throttle levels on the autopilot to match the highest vibration detected. Also if you cant keep vibrations at any throttle level to stay under the maximum. You better don't use FBW at low level flying, because the IMU could fail and crash your plane.

Just to echo Elcheapo, Be very careful with vibrations, Im pretty sure my rvosd came loose from my anti vibration system(double sided sticky pad) during flight and hence vibrations went off the scale, Heres the result
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAP-xhibiy8

It hurts to post this but I'd rather let someone see it than risk it!, My RVOSD is now on its way back for repair(hopefully) and the skywalker luckily was easily fixed. Oh and I know the AHI is wrong at the beginning of the flight this is when I think it came unstuck :-(, Until this point the RVOSD had worked perfectly(about an hours flying) and it was flew very well as Elcheapo said basically out of the box.

Originally Posted by Elcheapo

I wrote the manual, Although I understand that it is unclear in some aspects. It wasn't really meant to teach "someones mother, over the phone, long distance, how to set-up and adjust the settings".

Good one! HeHe

You have the patience of a saint.

Originally Posted by Elcheapo

I wrote the manual, Although I understand that it is unclear in some aspects. It wasn't really meant to teach "someones mother, over the phone, long distance, how to set-up and adjust the settings".

The previous manual is good. If it wasn't, people wouldn't keep buying RV products. It does what it supposed to do, which is explain how the RVOSD works and how to use it. The extra information such as installation tips and guidelines for settings starts to put the manual and RV in a "tight spot". There is risk to telling a person how to install/configure a product for their particular plane. For example, no two Easy Star aircraft are the same once they are built, many of us fly in different environments and have different flying styles. This means that no two RVOSD settings will be the same. If RV provided specific instructions for your aircraft, those same settings could have ill effects on someone elses similar aircraft.

The best approach is to continue growing the manual based on the previous work of others and include more information on how everything works, troubleshooting items and techniques for reducing the risk of RVOSD5 flights.

For example, the video and experience from sheep600fx proves that the RVOSD mounting system should be inspected before every flight but if it happens to come loose in flight there will be some indications on the OSD and there are some basic steps to take to keep your plane from crashing. These things happen and this "basic" information can be included in the user manual. Thanks sheep600fx for sharing your experience so others can learn from it.

It's up to every RVOSD5 user to bring some knowledge and common sense to the flying field. We will do our best to bring you the RVOSD knowledge.

For example, the video and experience from sheep600fx proves that the RVOSD mounting system should be inspected before every flight but if it happens to come loose in flight there will be some indications on the OSD and there are some basic steps to take to keep your plane from crashing. These things happen and this "basic" information can be included in the user manual.

The procedure to avoid crash on this situation could not be more simple and logical. toggle the same knob you used to enable autopilot mode. So you take manual control back.
At the same time since the IMU is fixed to the OSD board you could expect that having the board getting lose from the airframe will cause the attitude indication to be different on both reference systems.

You have the patience of a saint.

Well, RVOSD have being 3 years around. I had learn a lot about dealing with people in that time. My patience is getting limitless .