Today I tested an align rpm sensor pointed at the crank outside of the crankcase (under the muffler). I thought there was only one magnet on the crank, but can't be sure. It's the same mounting method that I used for the GV-1 governor on the BD.

At a setting of 1 in the Sensing Divider did nothing. A setting of three only got pulsing out of the engine. So I ended the test and went to throttle curves.

btw: the Spirit on my Goblin Gasser with a TRM VX300TT engine... nice! Had 8 flights today on it and it worked flawlessly. Looking forward to getting the governor all set up.

I installed magnets to the main gear and will try reading those magnets tomorrow morning. Still the sensing divider will be 1 as the magnets are installed with one pointing N and one pointing S, so the sensor will see just one magnet per revolution of the main gear.

I'll post back with an update.

Well I got the magnets installed on the main gear and rpm sensor mounted.

First attempts got this weird pulsing of the engine that didn't seem to promising. I also experienced odd servo movement in that the governor seemed to engage immediately at start up and I had no idle throttle control.

I called it quits and decided to retool. I originally set the end points of the transmitter to match the diagnose screen and the servo up mechanically so it all matched. Once that was set I enabled the governor and looked to set the min/max points. They seemed fine at -100 and +100 as the throttle was moving fine. The test flight proved that this procedure didn't work.

Instead of the above, I reset the end points to what was in the jeti from the start +100 and -100 and decided to move the endpoints in the spirit software first. The min is easy but the max isn't as you have to wait for the throttle to slowly advance to full to find out if the throttle is open fully. Got that sorted and realized my Jeti throttle cut didn't work. Which I then adjusted the max end point downward in the Jeti which allowed for the throttle cut to work. Almost like things were out of range and wouldn't work. Well once all the mechanicals seemed to be working I took it out for a test flight and at a Governor response of 3 and holding performance of 1 the engine raced and stalled, and raced and stalled. I finally settled on Governor response of 5 and that looked good for testing at this point. Tomorrow is another day

I remember reading that one governor user reported that he had success one day on the governor only to have it not work the next day. Got my fingers crossed. I'm going to put some flights in tomorrow morning and I'd really like not to fuss with this other than landing and changing Holding Performance.

It's a pretty convoluted set up process. Hope the updates to this make it easier.

Hello Scott,

I believe we will figure out where is the problem.
I recommend to start with the Gov. Holding Performance at 1.

Yes, we are doing lot of improvements in the governor, especially for a compustion helicopters to get the best results. Measurement of the RPM will work from 1 RPM which is much better for testing if everything is OK.

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Spirit System developer

Today's flying worked out ok. Governor doesn't like to engage until higher rpms are reached in the engine (1600 to 1800 blade rpms - out of a maximum of 2000).

Gov. power settled in at 5 or 6 (can't remember) and gov holding at 2. If I upped the gov holding to 3 the engine surged as if not being able to settle in on an rpm it was happy with.

With the settings at 5,2 what I notice when flying is that the gov performance is ok at one rpm but doesn't work when changing rpms (which I have four flight modes (1400, 1600, 1700, 1800))

I look forward to the revisions to the gov that you mention Tomas. In the meantime I'll keep flying. While there is still some slight surging of engine performance (especially when unloading the engine), at the moment anyway, I'd rather have the gov engaged that run it without. That said, with this engine at 1950 rpms the engine is so strong that a gov isn't really needed and if I wanted to run it at that level I might turn the gov off, however I probably won't as I don't really need/want that headspeed.

Got five flights in this morning. Spirit flight control rocks! Spirit governor... not so much.

The gov is pretty inconsistent and hiccups while flying after trying numerous settings in the first four flights, the fifth flight I just turned it off and ran throttle curves. Like I said earlier, this is a burly engine and it flies adequately without the governor. The sixth flight was the best one as I was able to work on the flying and not on the governor.

Tomas I'm looking forward to the revisions, no pressure but I hope you get them updated soon

Thank you very much for the info!

We are glad for your progress, I am sure it is possible to tune it. But I am also sure that upcoming firmware will be noticeable better in all aspects too.
I would recommend to start with the lowest gains to make sure that there is no strange behavior.

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Spirit System developer