I have not touched a Blade 400 is a year or maybe two, but they used to supply a re-labeled Telebee gyro. This is what I call a "label sideways" gyro. Because on a helicopter tail, it points sideways.
Like this one:
http://www.ronlund.com/images/Blade%20400/gyro.jpg

IF that's your gyro, then you would want the label facing up or down, and the wires coming out the aft/forward end.
Then revese switch set as needed.

As far as the horns go, my general rule I apply with or without a gyro is to try to use the point on the horn of the control surface as well as the servo as far out as possible and get the travel from the surface I want while having the travel adjust on the TX set to 100%. That minizes the slop and flex effect of the rods on the control surface movement and gives you maximum servo resolution as well as torque. If the instructions for example said get 1" difflection and you had to set your travel adjust in the TX to 50%, you have now lost 1/2 of your servo resolution and torque. You get servo speed but that's negated by the loss of torque and all the slop you have to compensate for (fish tailing when setting trims).

I"ve already touched on slop at mycoolrc.
http://www.mycoolrc.com/gyro/optimizing.html

I have cheap gyro and dirt cheap servos in my Hawsky. They work, it's more stable with the gyro in the wind, but as mentioned in the optimizing page, it's not as stable w/ my 48" Extra that has ball links, digital servos, stiff surfaces etc.

Here's a poser for ya. I installed one of the gyros I have for elevator in another plane that uses a 2S Lipo. Will a 2S run a gyro of that size? Cause this one wouldn't work at all in that rig.

Russ

Hey Melnic. Which way does the gain plug go when I plug it into channel 5? Something you might add to your gyro pages is where and how the plugs go into the RX. I didn't find that on any of your pages.

Russ

Originally Posted by Russ The Flyer

Here's a poser for ya. I installed one of the gyros I have for elevator in another plane that uses a 2S Lipo. Will a 2S run a gyro of that size? Cause this one wouldn't work at all in that rig.

Russ

The battery should power an ESC with a BEC, it's the BEC that runs the RX, Gyro and servos. Gyro will suck some more power from the BEC, and it will make the servos work harder. If the BEC were marginal before the gyro, it may cause problems.

Originally Posted by Russ The Flyer

Hey Melnic. Which way does the gain plug go when I plug it into channel 5? Something you might add to your gyro pages is where and how the plugs go into the RX. I didn't find that on any of your pages.

Russ

That should be part of the gyro instructions. In the case of th Gy48V and many others that have a single wire going to the 3 pin connector for the gain, the wire faces the same direction as any of the White/yellow/orange signal wires of the RX. The RX manual should tell you which side of the connector is Signa, Power, Ground.

I can't necessarily show that on my website unless I list ever single gyro and every single RX out there. Knowing the end of your Rx and which are signal wires needs to be basic RC knowledge the flyer develops or other mistakes are going to happen.

Originally Posted by Melnic

That should be part of the gyro instructions. In the case of th Gy48V and many others that have a single wire going to the 3 pin connector for the gain, the wire faces the same direction as any of the White/yellow/orange signal wires of the RX. The RX manual should tell you which side of the connector is Signa, Power, Ground.

I can't necessarily show that on my website unless I list ever single gyro and every single RX out there. Knowing the end of your Rx and which are signal wires needs to be basic RC knowledge the flyer develops or other mistakes are going to happen.

I have several makes of RX's and the white, etc., wire always faces the opposite end, toward the casing. Even the cheap 25 Mhz AM RX's have it that way so far as I kinow.

Last night I reinstalled the gyro I was experimenting with. It was barely operation the gyro but I could hear faint sounds coming from the elevator gyro. But I couldn't see the elevator move. In HH mode the elevator doesn't work at all. In R mode the elevator works but not much on the gyro.

I've been looking for an excuse to put a bigger motor on that particular airplane so that will mean I'll have to have a larger ESC. Your explanation of the BEC makes sense as the ESC is tiny. Probably 10 or 15 amps at most.

Russ

For all the Enginnering types out there, this was in the Sept 17th issue of EE Times.
EETimes article on Gyro Growth

Although I'm happy with the performance and cost of the Invensense and other new MEMS low cost technologies out there, it's good to know Gyro growth is well, growing in other industries.

a couple of guys tried it last week at our field and the plane started to osilate up and down badly and the plane died. The person flying it was a very experienced pilot so i'm shure it was a set up/equipment issue not pilot error. He said it felt like the gyro was fighting him and over correcting his inputs ...to the bitter end.

Originally Posted by xrx1113

a couple of guys tried it last week at our field and the plane started to osilate up and down badly and the plane died. The person flying it was a very experienced pilot so i'm shure it was a set up/equipment issue not pilot error. He said it felt like the gyro was fighting him and over correcting his inputs ...to the bitter end.

He had the gain up too high. Did he read mycoolrc?

It's amazing how many people will buy this, throw it on the plane and think it will work by it's self. takes about a hour to read Melnics how to and watch a video. I'm no rocket scientist, but I followed directions and it works great.

This may sound ironic: One of the reasons people may be interested in gyros is due to the idea that a gyro provides less of a challenge to fly a plane. Being anti-challenge minded, naturally they will not be interested in setting up a gyro correctly if it takes too much patience/research/time (you name it).

I come from the "this could be fun" perspective, and as such just threw the gyro in and gave it a go.
I could now spend hours searching the how to videos and posts but to be Frank I would rather just ask....and experiment

Originally Posted by xrx1113

a couple of guys tried it last week at our field and the plane started to osilate up and down badly and the plane died. The person flying it was a very experienced pilot so i'm shure it was a set up/equipment issue not pilot error. He said it felt like the gyro was fighting him and over correcting his inputs ...to the bitter end.

Sounds like he maybe thought the gyro was in rate mode but was instead flying in HH mode?

I made the mistake (switch setup backwards) once where I thought I was in rate mode and was instead in HH. It felt like I would make a correction and the plane was over correcting. Flipped the switch and all was well again.

I've got an A3 rate only on all my planes. I don't understand why anyone wound put a 'head hold' gyro on a regular airplane.

DJ

Ok. My 3-axis came in today. But even tho' they mention it's great for airplanes and gliders They mainly tell you how to set it up for a helicopter. It came with 4 wires. One for the monitor and the other 3 for the gyro. The instructions are typical tech type. They don't show you in the manual how to plug what into where. Also one of the wires, the one that plugs into the Pit/Ele/Aux spot, is three individual single wire plugs all put together. One is marked the "Tail Gain", the next "Elevator" and the 3rd "Collective Pitch", whatever the heck that means. Below that plug is one marked Aileron with a 3 wire plug (with the wrong end) and the next is the Rudder plug. Plugs below that are marked, "CH2, CH2, CH1, and CH4", respectively. It shows that nothing is plugged into those last 4 plugs. All data in the manual is for helicopter with words that don't make sense to me.

They have a very elaborate instruction for setting up the TX and RX but for heli only. Nothing about airplanes or gliders with the exception of a couple of quickly mentioned spots.







I realize that putting this all together would make sense to a heli pilot but I don't know anything about heli terminology so I don't know how to cross reference to airplane. So my question would be

• 1. Do I use the heli plugin instruction?
  
  2. What about the other 4 plugs? What do I do with them?
  
  3. Where do I plug what into the servos?
• 
  
• 4. How did I get myself into this mess?

Russ