Flight Modes Fly By Wire

Ardupilot Mega can fly your plane using input from your radio and the control loops from the autopilot code. You "tell" Ardupilot where to go (all 3 attitude axes).

For example, if you hold the stick 5 degrees to the right the plane will tilt 5 degrees to the right and hold that as long as you hold the stick there. By contrast, in stabilize (or manual), the plane would continue to increase the bank as long as you held the stick to the side, and would eventually do a roll.

In short, FBW makes a plane fly like a car drives. (Cars hold a turn at the wheel position)

This is a good mode for testing your APM settings and tuning Ardupilot to control your aircraft.

• Left = Roll -35°

• Center = Roll 0°

• Right = Roll 35°

• Up = Decend

• Center = level

• Down = Climb

Fly by Wire is available in two forms: "A", attitude and stability controlled by autopilot but throttle controlled manually (by the radio signal); and "B", attitude and stability AND airspeed is controlled by autopilot (GPS or airspeed sensor). Note: in FBW-B there is no direct elevator control; instead, elevator inputs tell the autopilot to increase or decrease altitude using its own logic, which will mostly involve throttle control.

To enter FLY_BY_WIRE mode, configure your RC toggle switch to select it in the CLI or Mission Planner, or select it with a MAVLink command in any GCS.

If you want to hard code it in Arduino, you can also set it in your APM_Config.h header file like this: #define POSITION_1 FLY_BY_WIRE_A #define POSITION_2 FLY_BY_WIRE_A or #define POSITION_1 FLY_BY_WIRE_B #define POSITION_2 FLY_BY_WIRE_B