What Is Drone Trim? Everything You Need To Know

If you have a drone, you have probably come across problems such as unintended drifting and tilting in one direction. This may happen because of the wind that pushes your drone in one direction. Another reason may be that your drone controller needs trimming. It is normal to trim your drone now and then, but let’s first learn what drone trim actually is.

**Drone trim is adjusting the yaw, pitch, roll, and throttle on your drone using the buttons on your transmitter. You need to keep adjusting them until the aerodynamics of your drone are perfectly balanced. This is required when a drone is off balance or drifting. **

When you trim your drone well, you allow it to hover in one place with no input from the controller. It is perfectly normal to have to trim your drone during a flight, and that is why it has trim adjustments on the controller. 

It’s important to master trimming because it will help you a lot when flying. It may seem confusing or annoying at the beginning, but when you learn to observe your drone’s movements, you will know what exactly you need to fix. If you do not know your drone or how to trim it, you will probably panic when you notice a slight tilt or drifting. To avoid having to experience such a thing, let’s learn more about drone trim, its buttons, and how to trim a drone successfully.

Do All Drones Have Trim? #

Not all drones have trimming, typically only the cheaper ones. It’s only necessary for drones that do not have smart flying features and because of that, the process to get balanced flight needs to be more manual. More expensive drones, such as DJI drones, use smart flying features such as GPS and gyros to stay in place, and you usually do not have to trim those.

This is one of the best perks of having a GPS drone – no need to worry about stable hovering and smooth flight. To learn more about GPS drones and whether or not they’re right for you, read our article here. 

Why Do I Need Drone Trim? #

As I just mentioned, trim adjustments allow you to have precision piloting, and provide everything you need to become a first-class flyer. It is the first skill you need to learn to prevent any trouble. If you grasp how to use trim buttons, your flying will be much easier and safer. 

You’re probably wondering why drones even have trim adjustments. Every control on the controller has its own trim button. You use them when you notice any movement that you did not command or intend to make; for example, any tilting or drifting that you did not want to happen. To avoid this happening, you need to know how to use the trim buttons.

If you’re nervous about trimming your drone in flight, not to worry, your drone does not have to be flying to adjust the trim. As long as you have a controller connected to the drone, you can adjust trim settings, even with the drone landed on the ground. You’ll just need to launch the drone again to check whether your trimming is successful.

Before we move on to exactly how to use the trim buttons, I need to mention something about your remote sticks. You have to understand the basic terms first before you can be a good drone pilot. 

Basic stick controls and their trim buttons #

You will see the trim buttons around the control pad. The trim buttons adjust the movements for the same function as the nearest gimbal stick. For example, if you want to move right, you press the right trim button. To monitor the level or progress of the trim, you can look at the screen on the controller. 

The role of the right stick is to control roll and pitch. It moves your drone left/right and forward/backward. The left stick adjusts the height at which you are flying (throttle) and rotates your drone clockwise and counterclockwise (yaw). 

» MORE: For more about the control sticks on a drone and how to learn them, see our Beginner’s Guide to Drones. 

Almost all drones have four trimming buttons: right, left, forward, and backward. Forward and backward are called the pitch of the drone, or pitch trims as they are named in a manual. When you combine pitch with roll, your drone will be able to make banked turns, changing directions smoothly and quickly. The pitch trim controller is the small switch on your remote control to the left of the right thumbstick.

The left and right buttons are called roll, or as the manual refers to it, roll trims. It is the small switch below the right thumbstick. There is also a yaw switch, which is below the left thumbstick. This will balance the right and left spin of your drone.

What do those beeps mean? #

The drone controller has a built-in speaker and it beeps every time you trim your drone. For instance, when you press the switch higher, the beeping will become higher pitched. When you flip the switch lower, the beeping will get deeper. These sounds can help you trim and calibrate your drone. The controller will make a louder beep when you reach the level or middle of a drone. 

How Do You Trim a Drone? #

Even when you calibrate your drone, it may drift while it is in the air. Adjusting the trim will help you better control your drone and counter these drifting movements. It’s possible to adjust your trim while in a stable hover, and do not make any sudden movements. Alternatively, the best way is to adjust trim while the drone is landed. In that way, you will avoid any potential damage. Always adjust one trim setting at a time to prevent confusion.

Follow these steps to trim your drone:

1. Take note of which direction your drone tends to drift to by having your drone hover in place. You can’t do this step if the conditions are at all windy, as the wind is likely to be the cause of drifting in a non-GPS drone. 
2. Land your drone. Trim in the opposite direction towards which drone was drifting. To land your drone safely, pull down on the throttle, and your drone will descend at a controlled rate. Then pull the throttle fully down to land the drone on the ground. 
3. If your drone is spinning to the left or right, adjust the yaw trim. It’s less likely that you will need to trim the yaw because the yaw gyro is usually accurate and is more dependent on keeping the drone steady during initialization.
4. If your drone tends to drift forward or backward while in flight, adjust the pitch trim.
5. If the drone drifts to the left or right, adjust the roll trim.
6. Repeat this process until your drone can hover in place properly.
7. With some drones, you can also turn on the auto trim function. Take the two sticks and pull them down to the bottom left-hand corners and hold them there. The lights on the drone will start to flash. Now you have restored your drone to its factory settings, and you are ready to fly again.
8. You can do these steps for each drone but always look at the manual that came with your drone for any model-specific instructions on how to use the trim buttons.

Hopefully now you will know what to do next time your drone starts drifting and tilting, and be able to solve it without panicking.

What Is Yaw Trim On a Drone? #

When flying a drone, stability and control are much more complex than in other vehicles. Drones and other aircraft can freely move in three different dimensions: roll, pitch, and yaw. We’re going to focus on yaw here for a bit, so let’s see what it is and how it works.

Yaw is rotation around the vertical axis, or in other words, the direction the front of your drone is facing when rotating light or left. Yaw is useful when you want to capture panning shots with your drone’s camera or change its orientation. It does not help much when it comes to mobility, but it is a good way to adjust where you want your drone’s head to be pointed.

Torque and the reactive torque make yaw work. Torque is the spinning force that spins the propeller or causes rotation. When a propeller spins, it produces force. It means that the motor is rotating in a certain direction (for example left) and is generating torque directed in the same direction. 

The reactive torque is rotating in the opposite direction. When one reactive torque or a vector of force is higher than another one, the whole quad starts to rotate in a particular direction. It is all a matter of the combination of the propellers and their speed.

If you notice that your drone is spinning in one direction when in the air, when you haven’t pushed on the yaw stick, you can use the yaw trim to fix that. The yaw trim button is located under the throttle trim button on your controller. It is common to use because calibration can usually fix the drifting issue. 

There could be something off just a little bit and that is likely because something is wrong with the propellers or how the motors are spinning. It is not necessarily a major problem, but those are just little anomalies that you can fix with your yaw trim button. Yaw trim will balance the left and right spin of a drone.