The examples below assume Mode 2: throttle and yaw on the left stick, pitch and roll on the right.
Throttle: ratchet or friction
The throttle stick on a radio for multirotors does not spring back to the centre. It stays where you leave it, held either by a ratchet (a small metal strip that clicks over notches) or by a friction strip that only adds drag.
Oscar Liang removed the ratchet on his Taranis and loosened the throttle. His reasoning: the ratchet was designed for RC planes, and every notch skips a range of throttle values, which makes holding a steady hover harder. With smooth friction you can stop the stick anywhere.
How hard the friction should be is personal. Too loose and the stick drifts when you let go; too tight and small throttle corrections become jerky. He found a looser throttle gave him smoother and faster control.
Spring tension on the other axes
Pitch, roll and yaw centre on springs. A tighter spring needs more force to move the stick off centre. Oscar tightens all three, because a loose spring makes accidental input easier, for example bumping roll while flipping on pitch. He also mentions that some pilots like pitch lighter than roll.
Where the screws are depends on the radio and gimbal:
- On radios with M7 gimbals, such as the FrSky Taranis Q X7, he adjusts roll, pitch and yaw with a 1.5 mm hex key and throttle friction with a small Phillips screwdriver. Radiomaster's support page gives the same tools.
- Radiomaster AG01 gimbals have tension screws accessible from the front, so you do not need to open the radio.
- On some cheaper radios only the throttle can be adjusted. Oscar found this on the BetaFPV LiteRadio 2.
On direction, Radiomaster and Oscar both say that for the spring screws, clockwise loosens and counterclockwise tightens. That runs against habit, so turn a quarter turn at a time and check the result by moving the stick. Do not back any of them far out: if a screw drops inside the radio, you have to open the case to get it back.
Change one axis at a time, fly a few batteries and only then adjust again. A simulator works well for this, since it removes the pressure of a real flight. The simulator article on this site explains how to connect a radio with EdgeTX as a USB joystick.
Grip: thumbs, pinch or hybrid
Stick tension and grip go together. Oscar's guide compares three styles:
- Thumbing: thumbs on top of the sticks. Easy to pick up if you have played on a gamepad, gives full stick travel and suits small radios. It is less precise for small corrections, makes shaky fingers more noticeable in stress or cold, and your thumb can slip.
- Pinching: thumb and index finger on the sides of each stick. More precision and stability, especially for small inputs. It takes time to learn, can strain the wrist over long sessions, makes full stick deflection harder and feels awkward on compact radios, where many pilots add a neck strap.
- Hybrid pinch: thumb on top, index finger lightly guiding the stick from the side. A compromise that is easier to switch to from thumbing.
There is no right answer. Oscar suggests trying different stick ends and adjusting tension and stick length to the grip you settle on, and practising the change in a simulator first.
Calibration after any change
After changing gimbals or springs, or when the centre does not read exactly in the middle, calibrate the sticks in the radio. In EdgeTX this is under the radio's Hardware settings, Calibration. The EdgeTX manual gives a few rules:
- Move each stick left-right and up-down to the limits. Do not stir it in circles.
- Use normal pressure at the ends. Pushing too hard can produce a wrong calibration.
- If the radio has a 6-position switch, press its buttons from left to right with about a second between them.
The Analogs page in the radio's debug screen shows the calibrated and raw values of each stick. Use it to check whether the value at rest holds steady or wanders.
On the same Hardware screen there is an ADC filter. The EdgeTX manual says it should normally be disabled for models with a flight controller.
Check it in Betaflight
Finally, connect the drone and open the Receiver tab in Betaflight Configurator. With the sticks centred, roll, pitch and yaw should be at or near 1500, and full deflection should reach close to 1000 and 2000. The receiver tab article on this site describes how to fix endpoints that do not match.
If the centre jitters by a few values, the Receiver tab also has deadband settings, which ignore small stick movements around centre, with a separate setting for yaw. Oscar measured a centre on the LiteRadio 2 that moved between 1496 and 1504 and set the deadband to 5. Keep it as small as possible: a deadband also ignores your own small corrections.