I am not blaming Spirit for this but I wanted to share this experience as warning to others. I was flying close to the ground inverted. Wanted to test low altitude rescue. Hit the rescue switch and the Spirit decided to go nose down to get to the upright position. It was way too close to the ground for that maneuver and the heli went in nose first. I understand that the Spirit unit does not know how close the heli is to the ground and selects the fastest way to get back to the upright position before applying positive collective. But this might not always be the best idea, as my experience demonstrates. It would be better if when the rescue mode is activated in inverted position, the Spirit unit applies first a bit of a negative colective to get a safe ground clearance and only than flips it to upright position whichever way is the fastest and than go with positive collective. I believe the new V bar NEO does exactly that.

Sorry to hear about your crash.

For this reason we are offering two rescue modes and collective settings. Vbar Neo has only limited rescue where you can't configure nearly anything so here can be main difference.
With Rescue (normal) it is not safe to use it in low altitudes, but with proper collective settings and Rescue (acro) it should safe the helicopter even 1m low if heli is agile enough.

But of course there are always limitations that should be considered. Lot of helicopters can't react so fast so flying in higher altitudes may reduce risk very much.

All in all thank you for your post.

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Spirit System developer

Can you offer a detailed set up guidance for the proper collective settings in acro rescue mode. I would very much like to follow your advice and set my heli accordingly. But I still believe that the idea I suggested about the negative pitch first and flip second if in inverted position should be considered in the next Firmware. Than it would be able to safe the heli even when "grass cutting"
thanks

Actually it is working in this way. But if there is not too much collective, then it will not climb up.
You can increase collective pitch in the Stabi tab to solve the problem.

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Spirit System developer

Thanks. I was not aware of it. My helicopter is set to 80% colective in rescue mode. But if the rescue is activated in inverted position it flips first and climbs second in upright position only. Where do I have the option to set up the amount of negative pitch climb before the heli flips to upright position and climbs with positive pitch?

This is configured just by collective settings. Higher it is configured, faster it will ascend (more negative collective will be there). So it is rather about the possibilities of your helicopter. For some it is hard to act so fast.

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Spirit System developer

Well, with all due respect I think that your reply is a bit deceptive. Do not get me wrong, I love your product and the way it flies in my heli is amazing! But when I describe a specific problem and ask a simple question I would like to get a straight answer. Will the heli climb inverted first and flip second or not. It is a simple question. Would you please answer YES, it will climb inverted first or NO, it will not. My understanding is that it only climbs in upright position. Am I right or wrong ??

Yes, you are wrong.

I can't answer your question directly, because the way how it is doing horizontal recovery is not that easy.
First it will apply negative/positive pitch and at the same time it will start gradually to change inclination. In respect to the current inclination negative collective pitch value is changed to use optimally the power.

So if your helicopter will do the flip very fast but your collective is not high enough then helicopter can't ascend so fast.

So either YES or NO answer is not true. There is sophisticated algorithm that makes recovery as fast as possible with using kinetic energy of the helicopter.

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Spirit System developer

I appreciate the complexity of the algorithm of the recovery process. I have tested its effectiveness on my heli many times in various attitude positions and it always worked well. But the sequence of the rescue process seems to be always the same and pretty straight forward. The heli flips first very fast to upright position in direction to affect the flip as quickly and as efficiently as possible and than the positive collective is applied at the rate set in the software to affect the ascend. I never noticed the heli climbing in inverted position first and only than flipping to upright position and than continue climbing. Therefore I was seeking clarification. Thanks for trying to explain.

If you will lower Cyclic Ring value then the flip rate will be not that fast thus there will be more time for the collective. This can also help you.
But this change should be performed just in case your Cyclic has enough angle.

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Spirit System developer