CC3D - LibrePilot for Stabilization and Leveling

I've been looking for a quick and cheap way to add stablization to fixed wing aircraft. I think I may have found this in the CC3D board.

This year for Christmas I decided to built two FT-Explorers. One for me and one for my Friend Ted as a Christmas present. Ted is a beginner and doesn't fly too often so he tends to lose his feel for flying and has to re-learn each time out. Last year Ted came with me to Flite Fest and he crashed so much his wife nick named him "Crash Test Ted". I made up a little logo to put on his plane.

I wanted to do something to help him a bit and thought if I could figure out a cheep way to add stablization to his plane then I would go ahead and do it. 

I found a cheep CC3D Open Pilot controller on e-bay for about $10 and ordered one. http://www.ebay.ca/itm/351556163521?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

I mounted it on a piece of 1/16" plywood and mounted a reciever on it to make it easy to install in the plane in one piece

 Here it is mounted in the plane

You can find the PC softare for programming here. http://bit.ly/1jUC3YT and they also have a Mac verson.

The software has a fairly easy wizard to go through which updates the firmware, picks the model type, and leads you through the set up of the device and your radio. The only thing I had to do was swap a couple of wires betwen the CC3D and my reciever during the radio set up. 

I don't need to go through all the set up steps as the software is fairly self explanitory. One thing to remember though you will need to change the arming settings to "Always Disarmed" whenever you need to make changes or it will not save the changes. This is for safety so you won't spin the props if you do something wrong. After you make all your changes you will need to change this back to "Always Armed" or if you like you could set up arming to work like  a mulit rotor as an extra safety.

Here is a start to finish video of the setup of the fight controller for Fixed Wing stabilization used on this plane.

Step 1: Set up firmware

Step 2: Set up plane type 

Step 3: Set up endpoints and midpoint for control surfaces

Step 4: Set up radio

Step 5: Set up Flight Mode

Step 6 Level plane and set level point.

Step 7: Set up arming type.

Save everything.

Make sure to bench test your setup to make sure control surfaces are moving correctly to relevel the plane

Here is the first test flight.

The test flight went fairly well but not without a slight problem. When I enabled the stabilization the nose started to drop right away. I quickly turn it back to manual control and gained some altitude. When I tried it again I found that I needed to give some up trim to level it back out. After getting the trim sorted out it flew quite well. I noticed that it was holding things quite level and secure. When letting go of the sticks it went right back to level flight. Also the controller limited the roll and pitch amount preventing over control and one getting them self in trouble. Tried doing a couple of rudder only turns and without touching the ailrons the wings were held perfictly level. With the stabilization turned off you can fly anyway you like but like a panic switch, turning it on would level things back out for you. When I flew close enough to see the control surfaces you could see them doing small corrections continually holding the plane level. After testing everything out I turned off the stabilization and just flew this great plane. Thanks to all the guys at Flite Test for the Explorer Design.

I learned from this project that you don't have to spend a lot to get stabilization in you plane. Making sure you perform the leveling of the board after you mount it will make the maiden flight go better than mine. I really like the ease of the software. Having the wizards really helped lead me through the setup. For any other questions about the setup of this board you can go the well written Wiki here https://librepilot.atlassian.net/wiki/display/LPDOC/User+Manual 

This was a fun project and now the next step is to get this into "Crash Test" Ted's red explorer and set up for him. Maybe if it helps him to fly without crashing, I will need to come up with a new logo for his plane. 

Thanks, Jim

Edit March 2016. 

I've been flying this plane with the CC3D board and teaching my friend Ted with it. He loves it. His confidence has increased greatly and landings have become a breeze for him. One change I made after flying it for awhile is to turn the Yaw control back to manual from rate. I found that we needed to use the rudder stick (not just bank and yank). With the Yaw back to manual we could bank and yank just fine.