JR XG11 - Exploiting the features

[Peter Jenkins]

Having had an XG11 for well over a year now, I still struggle to achieve some of the more innovative programming tricks. I've had some very helpful input from MacGregors which I will share in later posts. So, the question is, are there enough XG11 users out there who would like to share their programming tips since, as per usual, the user manual is either confusing or silent on many great features - most of which I have never even heard!

[Tomtom39]

I'd be very interested as I've also got one sitting in its box!

[john stones 1 - Moderator]

Sounds like a good idea to me Peter. I don't use that specific set, but i'm sure there will be something to be learned.

John

[Lone_Wolf]

I'm very interested in this as I too have an XG11. It's a great radio with a poorly written manual in my view. I recently saw a "How to program the Futaba MZ18" book so I looked for something for the XG11 and found nothing.

There are some how to videos on Youtube related to the XG11.

Carl..

[Malcolm Blake 1]

Peter, how can you expect to learn all about your XG11 in just a year.

I have had my JR Apex 7 since 1989 and still haven't got to know all about it. But, then, I don't suppose I need to know a lot of its capabilty as I don't fly like that !!

[Peter Jenkins]

OK, has anyone tried the Stick Position Switch function? I fly aerobatic aircraft and my normal control movements are quite small. However, I now have to perform a flick roll (aka snap roll) and wanted to have greatly increased aileron movement.  I decided that the safest way to do this was to use the Rudder stick to switch in the high rate aileron.  That's because the only time I'll use full rudder deflection with aileron is for the flick roll.  For a spin, I normally just use the rudder.

MacGregor helpfully described how this should be done and I've reproduced that below.

Ok- SPS. Go into Stick Position SW and select SPS0. Click on INH and
select RUDD. You will now need to check and if necessary change the
fields on the bar at the bottom of the column. I have my ones set to
ON-OFF-ON. This means that its turned off in the centre and is on at
both extremes.

You can now go and adjust the range and position that they come on. In
this instance you need to adjust the first INH next to L & R. I have my
one set to 85 (%) in both directions. Now by moving the rudder stick you
should see the arrow on the bar moving and when you get to 85% movement
the POS change from OFF to ON.

This is now basically set and we need to go into D/R & EXPO menu.

On page 3/4 on the menu you need to select one of the SW-Auto switch
selects. I have used 6. In this select SPS0 as your switch and then
which ever P you want, ie high rate.

Now you should see the P0 change to which ever one you have selected
when you move the rudder stick.

RIGHT - did that and it all worked as advertised. However, I now have full throw on the Rudder as well which I didn't want! Anyone know how to deal with that?

Edited By Peter Jenkins on 16/05/2014 00:33:34

[Peter Jenkins]

I've just managed to answer my own question above.

In the DR/EXPO page, select RUDD and when the Rudder is fully deflected check and see which of the switches operates on the RHS. Set the P to the relevant Position i.e. P0, P1 or P2. Mine had defaulted to P0 so I was getting full rudder. I've now set it to P2 so that it retains its aerobatic (low) throws.

I also checked the ELEV and that had also defaulted to P0. So, I've set that switch to P2 and retain my low movement on the elevator.

It all seems to make sense but you just have to remember to check out all of the default settings on the major flying controls.

OK - has anyone else got any interesting features on the XG11 they would like to describe?

[Piers Bowlan]

I have a new and as yet unused XG-11 so I hope that there are other users out there who can share some helpful tips that may be useful.

[Lee Smalley]

i just use flight modes on my 11X so if i wish to have smooth flight i flick into that mode from land mode and when i want to go nuts, then i flick into wild, i would not use a stick position switch to flick in high rates personally, as in slow knife edge where i use substantial amounts of rudder, i would not want it flicking my ailerons into high rates and making it twitchy to hold the vertical plane in the circuit !

[Peter Jenkins]

Ah well, Lee, I usually set the expo so that up to half stick I get the same from each of the 3 modes. Gets a bit twitch after that though! But the way I have the expo set allows me to use max rates for the spin and if I don't have time on the pull out to go to low rates I know I can pull to half stick for a nice gentle pull out.

Having said that, I've got into all sorts of difficulties with the SPS function! I thought that by setting the rudder stick to switch to high rates on the ailerons (this is for the flick roll) I also ended up with high rates on the rudder and elevator. So, I had a look at the programming options and set rudder switching to remain on low rates. Aha - all of a sudden the aircraft wouldn't spin. Had a look at what was happening on the ground. As the rudder reached full deflection and the SPS kicked in, I got low rate rudder and elevator! Stick that! Removed the SPS function and, since I only have one snap to perform in the schedule, left the snap roll switch to do its job. I shall be writing to MacGregors to ask them how to resolve this undesirable state of affairs. If I get an answer I'll post it here.

[Peter Jenkins]

OK, the word from MacGregor is that the way I wanted to use the SPS function will not work. However, careful scrutiny of the Snap Roll function showed that there are four snap roll conditions and you are not limited to using the Snap Roll switch or a combo of Flight Mode and Snap Roll.

First thing though was to update the Tx firmware. Now, I was extremely chary about this but in the end it worked like clockwork. The first problem was trying to find what website I could find the various updates on. The MacGregor website was silent on this but a bit of googling turned up the answer and it's here. This page gives the latest update but if you scroll down to the bottom of the page you'll find where all the others are. You do need to upload all of them and in the correct order as shown by the numbering sequence - well, that's what I did and it all worked!

You will need an SD card so if you haven't got one you'll need to buy one. JR do say that not all SD cards work with their Tx but I had a spare 8 Gb card from my camera and that worked fine. There is no information on how much memory is needed. Before you start upgrading your Tx, JR tell you to download your model memories onto the SD Card as the model memory is wiped clean everytime there is an upgrade carried out. It all works as advertised.

It's essential to download the explanatory leaflet "Guide for Software Update" on the JR site and reading through it first.

The next task is to down load the upgrade program and get it onto the SD Card. Here, my desktop wouldn't recognise the card but my laptop (which was newer) did! The key thing seems to be the menu structure which should read JR for the first level and then MODEL (for model memory) and VERUP (for version update) at the next level. What I did was to set up the menu tree using the laptop and then, having downloaded the Tx upgrade software, copy the actual file from my computer to the VERUP directory. I copied each of the 4 upgrades I took one at a time into this directory and then followed the instructions in the Guide.

I did all four upgrades one after the other and then copied the model memories back into the Tx memory. Again, all worked like clockwork.

[Peter Jenkins]

Having upgraded my Tx, I then noticed that I had 6 Flight Modes in ACRO but no information on how I controlled more than the usual 3. Still, I found that with the Snap Roll function, that's not an issue. The Snap Roll function is found on page 1/2 of the Function Menu. When you enter the snap roll function you will see this screen:

The four Snap Roll conditions are listed across the top of the screen. On the next row down you find GAIN and STICK POS. GAIN is used to determine how much and in which direction your Ail/Elev/Rud move and STICK POS determines the position of the stick that triggers that GAIN. To input the stick position, scroll the highlight so it is over the INH for Aileron, say, and then click it so it then registers 0. Now, as you move the aileron stick you will see the stick position reads from 0 to 100 and the L or R indicator tells you which you've moved the stick. A little black arrow head appears on the bottom left of the screen with STO - when the stick reaches the desired deflection, hold it steady and press the bottom of the four buttons on the left next to the STO arrow head.

Now scroll to the AIL in the GAIN column and click to select the adjustment on. As you can see, I've adjusted my AIL to L115%. Click the roller again to store the information and then do the same with the elevator STICK POS and elevator GAIN. Same for the Rudder except that you can choose whether to use the Rudder stick position or not. I've left the Rudder stick out of this so the rudder movement is triggered by the Elevator and Aileron sticks when they BOTH reach 95% of movement. That's important, as I didn't want the condition to be triggered by one stick only. As it happens, I didn't notice that I hadn't adjusted the Rudder Stick Pos but the Rudder still moved as I had instructed it so I left it at that!

The final part of this was to select when I wanted the Snap Roll to be active. The bottom line shows that I have renamed FM0 as SPIN, FM1 as LAND and FM2 as AERO. AERO are my lowest rates and that's when I want my SNAP function operational so I have depressed the button.

It is then just a matter of going through the other 3 Snap Roll conditions to set up your 4 snaps, remembering always to set the correct FM switch as well.

I can now fly with low rates and get snap rolls up, down, left and right by moving my RHS stick (Mode 2) in the appropriate direction so top right gives a negative snap to the right etc.

When I select SPIN in the flight modes, the Snap is disabled so I can be sure that I will get full elevator and rudder without hinderance. If I choose, I can also use full aileron once in the spin without triggering the snap.

Hope that helps you. If anyone else has any good stuff on programming the XG11 please do share it with us.

[Peter Jenkins]

Hmm - nobody else thinking of adding to the sum total of how to get the best out of your XG11?

OK, here's the next good bit. I've had a natty telemetry gizmo pointed out to me. This is not a JR product but is aimed at a range of radio manufacturers and the JR DMSS protocol can be selected during setup. The details can be found here. The cost is 65.90 Euros plus you'll need to buy the lead to connect the sensor to your PC to set it up - another Euro 16 plus p&p. There is an English translation here (select the UniSense-E link). For this price, you get a whole range of capabilities: Rx battery voltage, drive battery voltage, current and wattage (if you tell the JR Tx what battery capacity you are using the Tx then uses the current flow to determine remaining capacity and you can set an alert on this), altitude, rate of climb and descent, RPM (to which you can apply a gear ratio in the JR Tx to allow for geared motors or heli g'boxes). The sensor also has an additional signal cable that can be plugged into a spare Rx channel and that will enable you to review the max and min values achieved in flight. I use 6 channels for flight controls and ESC so needed my 8 Ch Rx to fit all this in and even then I needed a Y lead to fit the telemetry data plug and bind fly lead together. Channel 7 gave me the max/min function and Chan 8 I used for the Rx battery (opto ESC used).

I've now managed to fit this into my F3A aircraft and the biggest problem was how to get sight of the telemetry data as the JR manual was silent on how you did this. Very simply, you just roll the roller to the right and get to a really odd looking screen. I was going to paste this below, but I need to put it into the photo gallery first so I'll post them in the next post I make.

On the screen below, select the first INH and you'll be presented with a list of telemetry parameters you can display. If you look at the second photo below, you'll see that I've selected RPM, Flt Pack - Amps etc. Just keep selecting the next INH and selecting another telemetry parameter until you've used up the 6 available slots.

As I'd run out of 3 way switches to select the max/min data, I used one of the slider switches to actuate Aux2 (Chan 7 on my Rx). With the switch in mid position you get real time data. If you select one of the other two positions you get max and min values displayed.

The only problem is that I've yet to find out if there is a different alert sound that can be assigned to differentiate between which alert has been triggered. If anyone's found that, please let me know how you do that.

[Peter Jenkins]

OK, here's what that screen looks like when you first move the roller to the right:

And here's what you can see once you've clicked on each INH and selected one of the telemetry parameters to be displayed:

The telemetry data is displayed in the dashed fields below the telemetry parameter. It's pretty useful and you get all these parameters without needing to buy any additional sensors other than the UniSens-E.

A word of warning - I've yet to fly this so I'll post again with my experiences when I've done so!