13-09-2023, 12:17 PM
Arming - or not arming - has been a lively debate that has led to progress: John Hopke has now produced a definitive guide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARCfafma1rM
Some airplane flyers regard elrs as a drone rc system, with unnecessary features/requirements such as arming. They think plane flyers should stick to real airplane rc systems such as Spectrum and Futaba. Well they are right elrs is a drone system, that developed out of the need for fpv drones to maintain a rc signal with a decent rx signal to noise ratio at 20 km. The thing is, this elrs rc signal is also better than the legacy systems for flying line of sight planes at 200 m in noisy radio environments.
It is integral to elrs that channel 5 is for arming, it only has two positions, armed or not armed, unless you choose a special elrs tx mode which the video explains. However you do not need to worry about ch5 or special modes.
The video gives examples of calls for help, such as this: my betafpv or RM rx has 5 sets of pwm pins, I am using ch1 rud; ch2 ele; ch3 thr; ch4 left ail; ch5 right ail. Everything works except the right aileron, which only goes full up or full down, and nothing in between.
The solution is simple, but not intuitive for plane flyers who think 5 sets of pwm pins means 5 channels... but that is not true with elrs. You simply re-map the right aileron onto ch 6 in the mixer, leaving the R ail servo plugged into the 5th set of pwm pins (if this point or the next para confuses you please ask a club member who uses elrs for help).
Ch 5 remains empty in the mixer, but you assign a switch to arm or disarm ch 5. If you use a throttle cut/thr-active switch (which is always active when the plane is in the air), this switch is set in a special function to override ch5, so that whenever the thr is active, the plane is armed.
The bottom line: the video explains what being armed means, and reasons why you might want to be armed. Most plane flyers will want to use the elrs dynamic power feature and this works better if you are armed. A comment under the video by alanpaul1234 explains why dyn power works less well if you are not armed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARCfafma1rM
Some airplane flyers regard elrs as a drone rc system, with unnecessary features/requirements such as arming. They think plane flyers should stick to real airplane rc systems such as Spectrum and Futaba. Well they are right elrs is a drone system, that developed out of the need for fpv drones to maintain a rc signal with a decent rx signal to noise ratio at 20 km. The thing is, this elrs rc signal is also better than the legacy systems for flying line of sight planes at 200 m in noisy radio environments.
It is integral to elrs that channel 5 is for arming, it only has two positions, armed or not armed, unless you choose a special elrs tx mode which the video explains. However you do not need to worry about ch5 or special modes.
The video gives examples of calls for help, such as this: my betafpv or RM rx has 5 sets of pwm pins, I am using ch1 rud; ch2 ele; ch3 thr; ch4 left ail; ch5 right ail. Everything works except the right aileron, which only goes full up or full down, and nothing in between.
The solution is simple, but not intuitive for plane flyers who think 5 sets of pwm pins means 5 channels... but that is not true with elrs. You simply re-map the right aileron onto ch 6 in the mixer, leaving the R ail servo plugged into the 5th set of pwm pins (if this point or the next para confuses you please ask a club member who uses elrs for help).
Ch 5 remains empty in the mixer, but you assign a switch to arm or disarm ch 5. If you use a throttle cut/thr-active switch (which is always active when the plane is in the air), this switch is set in a special function to override ch5, so that whenever the thr is active, the plane is armed.
The bottom line: the video explains what being armed means, and reasons why you might want to be armed. Most plane flyers will want to use the elrs dynamic power feature and this works better if you are armed. A comment under the video by alanpaul1234 explains why dyn power works less well if you are not armed.