First off, I'm pretty abusive on the sticks and expect a lot out of a governor. Tuning today yielded nice improvements in performance compared to the Hobbywing internal governor on this heli.

I spent about 8 flights fine tuning the Spirit gov function on my Goblin 380 today and it was interesting. First flight I fine tuned the main gyro gain dead on for this headspeed. 2 points less than where I could get any tail oscillations. Steady 20 mph winds, so it was a great day for finding the limits!

My Setup:
Goblin 380
Zeal 380/70 blades
23T motor pulley - 3500 headspeed
HW Platinum 100 v3 (heli governor off)
KDE 500XF-925-G3 (3514, 9T+9T, YY, 12S10P - 10 poles)
Jeti R5L rx

Then using different banks and tuning 1 parameter at a time, I experimented with 'Governor Response'. As suggested in another thread, I kept 'Holding Performance' at 1 in this phase. I ended up with 8 for 'Governor Response' with no ill effects. On the scale of 1-10, it seems high, but it definitely responded better at 8. I might have imagined a slight speed oscillation at 10, so left it at 8. I'll probably try 10 another day to be sure I' getting the most out of it.

Next, with 'Governor Response' at 8 in all banks, I experimented with different values for 'Holding Performance'. I tried the full range of possible values (1-6) and settled on 4 as best. 5 had noticeable fluctuations after working it hard.

What was interesting to me was the relationship between these two tunables. My initial flights last weekend and today were with 'Governor Response' at 3 and 'Holding Performance' at 3. Raising and lowering 'Governor Response' with 'Holding Performance' at 3 seemed very erratic and inconsistent. No way to be sure if 'Governor Response' at 4 was better / worse than at 3 or 2.

The suggestion to start with 'Holding Performance' at 1 and tune 'Governor Response' first was gold! Thanks Thomas

When tuned in this manner, I ended up with a much higher 'Governor Response' at 8 and no hunting with 'Holding Performance' at 4.

Where I ended up:
HobbyWing ESC set to 'Heli Governor Off'
100% flatline throttle curve in radio
'Max Headspeed' = 3500
'Governor Response' = 8
'Holding Performance' = 4


*** It would be nice if different banks were allowed different headspeeds (like vbar gov).
That way, you could use banks as your flight mode. Each bank with a different headspeed and gains, agility, etc. perfectly tuned for it. I can work around this with my Jeti transmitter, but folks with less flexible radios may not be able to set one switch to multiple functions (banks -and- flight mode).

Great post...very helpful!

Curious though...what was your criterion for good or bad, i.e., how did you determine that 8 was better than 7 or 9? Were you looking at logs showing rpm fluctuations, listening to the sound of the motor, mAh consumed, ???

Thanks.

Normally, I'm all over the logs to help quantify / corroborate what I think I have observed.

Unlike most of my other heli's though, this one with the HobbyWing ESC does not have as much logging. I have mah, volts, amps & watts through my Jeti MUI sensor, but that's it. No RPM or PWM. Looking at my logs for today didn't help much since I was slamming 80amp peaks (max my 75amp MUI will report) all over the place with my aggressive tuning:) Will need to see how my regular flight times compare to before the change to Spirit Gov. Also, I was landing at storage charge (voice alert from mah telemetry) each flight so as not to complicate my tuning efforts with less than optimal power. I'm hoping that my flight times will be extended a little based on past experience with VBAR governor compared to other internal govs, but don't have any data on that yet.

All of this tuning today was done through trial & error with direct observation. Using the recommendations of Thomas and specifically pg. 55 of the new manual. One thing I like with the Spirit and tuning, is it's usually pretty easy to see the results of tuning (compared to tuning style in VBAR and it's very subtle differences in response).

I can say that Governor Response at 8 held headspeed much better in fast aileron tic-toc's than at 4 and below. Gradually better all the way up to 8. By much better, I mean that I could hear the headspeed holding better and see the tail not kicking as much due to lost tail authority that goes with lost headspeed.

I was looking for tail artifacts related to fluctuating headspeed under load through the whole process that would indicate Governor Response was too high. I 'thought' I saw that a little bit at 10, but it was pretty windy and I had the tail into the wind as well to accentuate any problems.

With 'Holding Performance' set too low, I was able to steadily lose headspeed (hear it) in a tight full cyclic funnel. Once I got it to 4, it held speed. At 5 however, you could hear the headspeed 'hunting' up and down when you relaxed the load after this maneuver.

Hi,

thank you very much for your comments!

You can use different TC with flight modes in normal radios and couple it with Banks easily too. So it can work together even with simple radios without using mixes. With 6ch radio you can just set one bank per Flight mode by Gyro Gain.

The unit itself is sending telemetry data over EX Bus, Current RPM is included there.

_________________
Spirit System developer

Just an update on my Spirit governor performance on this heli. Apparently I spoke too soon.

Flew it again Saturday, and it flew great the first flight. After that, the headspeed would not reach my target. Spirit - Jeti integration with telemetry would have been awesome at this point, but I'm stilllll waiting on the REX receivers ... (another story). HS holding was all over the place, but that makes some sense since it was probably at least 500 RPM short of my target (gearing not right for that HS)? Very strange indeed. Repeated this behavior for the next 3 flights with variations of 'Governor Response' = 1 -8 and 'Holding Performance' = 1-4 and the same headspeeds very short of my target. Felt like I was wasting prime weekend time at the field at this point and put the 380 up to fly my big helis instead.

I need to do some blades off bench diagnostics to get to the bottom of this. I am curious to see what turns up. Was thinking maybe my RPM sensor was malfunctioning, but it seems others are having similar problems. Thought maybe the governor response is too high (at 7 or 8) and impeding a good lock on initial RPM? That doesn’t make sense with an RPM sensor, and why does it work sometimes and not others? Also, I've repeated this with the same results using much lower 'Governor Response' values... Very inconsistent right now. Headspeed holding was solid and predictable using the Hobbywing internal governor function, so that rules out possible mechanical influences to bad gov performance after enabling the Spirit gov.

I tried the Spirit gov on My G700 comp with Rotorstar(yep) esc. On the bench I was getting the requested hs and actual hs and this correlated with my telemetry rpm readings using the iisi system.
At the field I got the expected rpm coming back to my telemetry but terrible RPM control. I am getting rpm drops of 200 doing pitch pumps and tictocs, even just normal loops gives a noticeable drop in rpm. I increased both the gains to the max with little benefit. I resumed back to the esc int gov and everything was working as it should.
Very disappointed with the performance. I can't understand why this is happening with the spirit gov, as the esc gov works very well.

I've got several posts scattered around here and HF documenting the same experience. I'm seeing rpm swings of +/- 200 rpm on my Gaui X3 running the Castle Edge 50 ESC. This is not my ear talking...I have the data in the Castle logs. Flights are pretty much constant pitch pumps, but nothing terribly dramatic. I started at governor response/holding performance 3/1 and made 2 minute flights all the way up to 9/1. Did the same thing for most other combinations of GR/HR and never really found anything that held the rpm's to within +/- 50, which is what I expect based on my experience with the Castle and iKON governors. I'm not giving up...planning on more testing, but right now I'm not satisfied and looking for answers.

I tried again today with no luck. I tried setting the esc for external GOV mode as per MR Mel video using plane fast. Still no luck.
I have had enough for now.
Waiting for answers before I try again.

If your RPM does not hold even that gains are so high, then the problem is most probably in the throttle range.
With Max. parameter it is limited by the firmware, so you have to match top limit that is programmed in your ESC.
If it is lower, then governor can't get full power from the motor. It could be for example throttled to 90%.
With Max. parameter you can increase this limit.

With YEP esc there could be issue with programming throttle range. We recommend to use Min./Max. parameters to match the range.

_________________
Spirit System developer