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Coordinated turns

dwallersv

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Saw this issue pop up in a few threads here, so thought it would be good to make it more visible to the many new pilots joining the hobby because of the Mini and Mini 2.

I wrote something up about this a few years ago that serves well today. Read here to learn about the what and how of coordinating your turns. Once it becomes reflexive, you'll be a more awesome pilot, and the video when you're turning will look much more natural.
 
The Air 2 self-coordinate. By applying elevator and rudder stick only, the drone will bank by itself to fly a perfect circle. Just wondering if the Mini 2 can do the same.
 
The Air 2 self-coordinate. By applying elevator and rudder stick only, the drone will bank by itself to fly a perfect circle. Just wondering if the Mini 2 can do the same.
This is not true. At least not for my Air 2 (or Air 1, Mavic Pro, Pro 2, Phantom 3... none of my DJI drones auto-coordinate). They all slide around in a circle with no banking at all.
 
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Hmmm... I'll make sure I'm up to date and test it this morning. I certainly could have missed that -- haven't done any radical sport flying with my MA2 yet.

If it is doing that I'll be pissed if I can't turn it off.
 
Though on the Mini 1 and 2, you can't control roll (which seems to be a focus of that link). You can change the pitch of the gimbal (and only the pitch), and the yaw of the aircraft (and whatever you call side to side movement).

Usually when I'm doing rotations, ie: such as going around a point of interest, I'll try to carefully time both control sticks, usually in opposing directions gently until it's at the pace I want it.

Which ended up with something like this (with the drone facing inward at the start of the curve):

1605372950458.png
 
Though on the Mini 1 and 2, you can't control roll (which seems to be a focus of that link). You can change the pitch of the gimbal (and only the pitch), and the yaw of the aircraft (and whatever you call side to side movement).
That's called roll on a quad. It's EXACTLY what I'm talking about. And it works the same on the Minis as on their bigger siblings.

Pitch/roll/yaw are aircraft concepts independent of what kind of aircraft you're flying. For helicopters and quads the terminology and controls are the same as on a fixed-wing aircraft, and produce the same movements.

Quads can be barrel-rolled quite easily if you don't have a controller between your sticks and the aircraft doing most of the flying for you. You can't roll your drone over completely because the firmware won't let you.

But then most people on this forum flying an old-school quad without all the nearly-AI software doing all the hard work would crash in 2 seconds, over and over and over and over. That was the old way of learning to fly, and its really expensive!
 
Hmmm... I'll make sure I'm up to date and test it this morning. I certainly could have missed that -- haven't done any radical sport flying with my MA2 yet.

If it is doing that I'll be pissed if I can't turn it off.
Confirmed -- updated to the latest on the MA2 and yes, it DOES bank when giving yaw input and moving forward.

It tries, not very well, to coordinate. F's it up terribly, and trying to coordinate yourself with roll input just makes the whole thing worse. It makes "Sport" mode nothing more than "get there fast" mode. Any sort of sport FLYING is now impossible.

Thankfully, the MM2 is not auto-coordinating. In sport mode I can turn the thing on a dime with good coordinated turns.

Did some sport flying with my MA1 again too yesterday, and it still exceeds any other DJI drone I have for wild, fun, all-over-the-sky whipping and diving around. IMO the MA1 is the stealth sleeper of the Mavic line, way better and more capable than it ever got credit for.
 
I've done some crazy coordinated and counter-coordinated moves with my P3 and it did OK. Just need to take the usual caution not to hit anything.
 
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