If you are a drone aficionado you have probably heard of drone trimming and wondered if you should do it with your drone too. If you fly your drone often in urban areas, among crowds, or through bad weather, trimming can sure make a difference.
Drone trimming refers to the adjustment of the drone's roll, pitch, yaw, and throttle by using the remote controller until the drone's aerodynamics are perfectly balanced. A drone that will hover in one place without any input from the controller will be a perfectly well-trimmed drone.
Now let's take a deeper look at drones, their basics, and drone trimming.
What is a drone?
Drone or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is a technical device used at places where there is a need for recording and capturing from the sky but no space for huge airplanes or helicopters or where anyone's life cannot be held at risk. The drone is a reliable, comfortable, and easy-to-use device.
Components of a drone:
- Propellers: These are mostly present on the front of the drone. These propellers are used to guide the drone to move forward or in reverse.
- Brushless Motors: Engines without any mechanical brushes
- Landing Gears: This guides the drone to land or takeoff.
- Electronic Speed Controller: This is primarily used to control and limit the speed of the drone.
- Flight Controller: As we all know CPU is the brain of the computer. Likewise, the flight controller is called the brain of the drone.
- The Transmitter: It is responsible for transmitting radio signals through a controller.
- Drone Camera: The camera is used for taking photos and videos from high altitudes.
Drone trimming
Drone trimming is used to balance the speed of the drone. When we trim a drone for a speed, the drone will keep flying at that constant speed. If you trim and you change the power, the drone will pitch up and down to maintain the speed which you trimmed. If you trim your drone for climb speed, let the drone go and the drone will maintain climb speed. Trim the drone for a cruise, let the drone go and the drone will maintain its cruise speed. Trim the drone for final speed, let the drone go and you will maintain the final speed of the drone. This list goes accordingly ahead. The drone will hold its speed in the air which you wanted.
This is how drone trimming works in a perfect way. If you are flying a drone, sometimes you might have to continue making small power, pitch, and adjusting the trim to maintain altitude and speed. Some drones have the trimming option, some drones don't have trim. In case your drone has a trim, trimming is another way to stabilize your drone. If your drone moves unstably and uncontrollably, you may need to use the trim button. Trimming of the drone is simply adjusting the movement of the drone.
Adjusting the sensitivity of the throttle, pitch, yaw, and roll will give you much better control of your drone. This is maintained by the phenomenon of the 'trim' function. Trim function is usually present in the form of buttons on the controller/ remote controller.
The major factors which control the direction and elevation of the drone are yaw, roll, and throttle. As you become more and more familiar with your drone, you can adjust the sensitivity of each movement of the drone to suit your flying style.
One of the huge problems newbies have with the controls of a drone is that when the drone is facing towards the pilot, the operations of each stick is the opposite of what they were when the drone was facing away from you. This is why it is so important to maintain your sight in the line of the drone all the time. Losing your drone by flying off is becoming less of a problem as many drones have a "return to home" function that sends them back to you only at a push of a bottom. But as this feature is not much reliable, it is good to maintain a good accessible distance from a drone at least when you are not experienced.
When To Use Trim
The pilots who usually fly drones talk most of the time about when to use trim and is it appropriate or not. In my opinion, there is no right answer to this question and the choice is to your personal preference. Drone trimming is a very important asset in flying drones. You should use trim to reduce your workload. But you should not fly the drone using only the trim.
Do All Drones Have Trimming?
As we all know, if we want greater accessibility so we have to pay more for that. In the case of drones, the cheaper toy drones have drone trimming because they don't have any smart features. Other expensive drones GPS, gyros, and other smart features so they don't have trimming buttons. They are not as manual as the cheaper drones.
What Are Drone Trimming Buttons?
A drone has a set of trim buttons on its controller, each for its specific control. When the throttle is pushed forward to make an effort to get your drone off the ground, you might have noticed that the drone loses its balance and drifts a little to the right of the left. Maybe the drone is not tilting in one direction, but it keeps leaning in different directions and proving that it is not stable enough. As it is known that the drone is unbalanced, so to balance the drone, you need to set the controller so that the drone position is perfectly balanced to land safely and stably.
Usually, drones have four (4) buttons for drone trimming:
- One for Forwarding
- One for Backward
- One for the Left
- One for the Right
Forward and backward are referred to as the pitch of the drone, so the trimming buttons for forward and backward might refer as pitch trim buttons.
Left and right are referred to as roll, so the trimming buttons for left and right might refer to as roll trim buttons.
How To Use Drone Trimming Buttons?
Different drones have different controllers and different controllers have different trim button positions. You can easily find your trim buttons on the controller of your drone. There are two sets of arrow buttons on your transmitter which are the drone trimming buttons.
You can look over all the guidelines in your drone manual. Many drones have the mentioned setup, but some have a different setup. Two sets of directional arrows are the four trim buttons. One set of forwarding and backward trim buttons and the other set is of left and right trim buttons. Some setups which are different have three sets of trim buttons. The additional third set has yaw trim which is used to spin the drone in the air.
A drone is trimmed when it is flying. If you see that the drone is drifting towards the right side, push and release the left side of the trim button (the trim button which is pointing towards the left). You can push the trim button more than one time to bring the drone to level. If the drone drift towards the left side, push and release the right portion of a trim button (the trim button which is pointing towards the right) until the problem is resolved completely.
TIP: When you move in either direction, you will probably notice the drone dropping in altitude. To keep the drone at the same altitude, push the throttle and give it more power whenever you turn or move.
How To Adjust The Trim On Your Drone?
Every type of drone drifts a little in the air trying to get correct itself because of the fact that the wind affects the movement of the drone, so you should not trim your drone every time you see it unstable in the air. But if you see the drone very unstable and drifting very much and you have already set the controller of the drone, so then trimming can be used to fix the problem and adjust the drone.
As mentioned in the above paragraph, all four trim buttons are located in the control pad. You can set trim by looking at the screen of the controller.
The switches or buttons in the controller pad coordinate with the direction you want to move the drone. If the joystick moves the drone to the left, moving the switch to the left will also move the drone in that direction.
You can calibrate yaw but you can not really calibrate throttle when the drone is spinning in the air. This will let you control the movement of the drone and your drone should have a corresponding trimming switch for yaw.
Your drone controller should have a built-in speaker that makes a sound every time you adjust and trim your drone. The lesser you flip one of the trimming switches, the deeper the sound should get. And when you press the switch the other way, the sound will become higher pitched.
You can use this beep in order to help you calibrate and trim your drone. When you reach the middle level, the controller will make a louder beep.
How To Trim Your Drone?
Here is a series of steps on how to trim your drone perfectly:
- Hover your drone. In the period of time when it is hovering, you need to try to notice which direction it tends to drift to.
- Land the drone. At that time, trim in the opposite direction the drone was drifting towards.
- If your drone is leaning and drifting right, then you have to trim the drone to the left.
- You have to repeat this process until you get your drone to hover correctly.
Rules And Regulations For Flying Drones
Every work has its own rules. Some basic rules for flying drones are:
- The highest altitude to be reached by a drone should not be more than 400 to 500 meters.
- The drone should be visible to the pilot so that he can know where the drone is.
- The drone should not be too near to the surface of the earth in public places so that it could not disturb anyone.
- The pilot should be aware of the areas of lying according to the local authorities.
- The pilot should not fly a drone in dark, 30 minutes before and after can be the maximum time limit in dark.
- Precautions:
- As with all electrical devices, the battery ( power source ) should be removed before any maintenance.
- In case you lost control of the drone, reset the throttle so that the blades cannot turn after the impact.
Conclusion
Drones are technical devices used to capture photos and videos. There are many components of a drone including propellers, controllers, transmitters, batteries, and motors. Drone trimming means adjusting the speed of the drone and balancing the drone in the air. There are normally four trim buttons available in the remote controller to trim the drone. These trim buttons are forward, backward, left, and right buttons.
Drone trimming is very important to fly a drone perfectly. Most drones have a drone trimming system, and some have gyros and GPS. Now you have the inside scoop to try trimming your drone by yourself, and if you missed something you can always come back to this article to refresh your memory. Happy flying!
Shawn Manaher loves to play with new toys and dive into new hobbies. As a serial entrepreneur, work definitely comes first but there is always room for hobbies.