Today, I got my Jet Ranger back up in the air. I worked most of last night and a bit this morning to repair it and only the cosmetics are left which I will do over the winter. For some unexplained reason, it flew like it has never done before and suddenly became something other than a dump truck compared to my AS350. It may have been a slowly disintegrating control lead or maybe a fresh lube job on the OWB but what a difference.

On to auto-rotation practice. Since it became very clear that a scale setup is not the best venue to use, I took up my Logo 500 and before even leaving the ground, I spooled it up, hit thottle hold, let it spin down, then hit throttle hold to clear it. Althoug it was a lot faster spooling back up than the scale helicopters, it was still too slow for in-air aborting of the autos. I may need to ask some of the top flyers how they practise autos and if they end up finishing the auto on the ground and don't bail out in mid-air. I am finally going to figure these out and it may be the end of the speed controller on the Logo if it can't be reset for quick spool-up as needed in auto-rotation bailouts. On a great note, the weather was the best it's been in a couple of weeks and I has wished I could have been out the entire day flying. Take care.

Don

Here is a slightly better flight then my earlier lazy eights. For most of the flight I tried to maintain a more scale speed. There were some passes that almost looked like the real deal flying by. I need to figure out how to adjust the gain or correction on the elevator/pitch because I've got a noticeable fore and aft oscillation when in forward flight.

Aerodyne Coast Guard Jayhawk (6 min 23 sec)

I saw this first on RR and left a little write-up there. I will also say it hear that the flight looks very good and yes, you did get it boggying along in a few places, but it looked fine. I mentioned that it was hard to see the issue but knowing it is there, you may find as I did, that I had the blades a bit too tight for slower rpm and once backed off just a bit more, the ocillation went away. I was flying a 700 at around 1800 rpm and it was bobbing up and down like a cork in a storm. Once backed off, it flew great. On that heli, I have a Skookum 720 with about 9 degrees of pitch, 6 degrees of cyclic, and 55% exponential on the cyclics. It is a joy to fly. Keep it up.

Don

Thanks Don, I'll be sure to pay close attention to my blade grip tension. I usually tighten them just enough to hold the blades in position when the heli is tilted on it's side. I think there are probably some other settings that I can tweak in the transmitter and on the 3GX to help reduce the oscillation. Jose said he had a similar issue until he reduced the swash travel. I assume he means adjusting it so that instead of having +10 / -10 degree of pitch adjusting to something like +10 / -5 degree of pitch. Since we are flying scale I guess it isn't critical to set up the heli with an equal amount of positive and negative pitch.

Np. What you need to do to reduce the swash movement for cyclic inputs is to either reduce your Dual Rate so that you are getting, let's say, 6 degrees of swash movement when you push the cyclic stick forward, backward, left, or right, or change it in the setup of your gyro (it is given that you are using some form of 3 axis gyro for this helicopter). It is not how much the blades change angle as you increase or decrease the throttle stick.

Separate, but related, is the pitch curve. You can easily change your maximum pitch, positive and negative, by altering your graph in the Pitch Curve portion of your radio setup. How you set your maximum pitch for full aerobatic flight, will normally be done in the gyro setup, like I do in my Skookum system. First, I set the maximum pitch, by the percentage of movement of all three servos, in the Swashplate tab of the computer setup program. That will give me as much as I would like, say up to 13 degrees, and from there I can use the Pitch Curve portion of my radio setup, to reduce the overall pitch I get when I move the stick up or down. Put your pitch gauge on the blades, set the throttle stick to maximum, and then adjust the pitch down from 100% until you reach your desired setting in the Pitch Curve menu. Hope this helps.

Don

Not to drag the thread back on topic, and I can't speak for all, but the reason I fly dead simple circuits is inexperience. For me it's plain lack of time. I can only imagine having even less time after a few hundred hours building and detailing a nice scale ship. It's no wonder they can't fly.

Also, on first read I though you had handed you Tx to this guy and let him take up your bird... I was about the throw out a solid 'get what you deserve' but I stand corrected (always read the whole thread). Sounds like your club has a good routine.

Last thought... back when I had a field to fly at, new recruits had the sky to themselves for the first flight and only their trainer/spotter out on the line. Always seemed like overkill, until...

Cheers,
Vince L.

We have the same policy at our club to try and give the very beginning flyer the sky to themselves and their instructor. Once they get a lot more proficient, the instructors will encourage other flyers up to give the learner some valueable sky sharing training. Most will stay on the ground for their own reasons (I have heard of a few mid-air's with learning pilots) and let them fly unencumbered.

I have found that spending too much time in a build is not good for keeping up flying skills. At one of our meetings, I (or one of the other fellows with similar thoughts) might suggest that those that spend huge amounts of time in the shop, should bring out one of their easier to fly aircraft with them, and fly it BEFORE taking the new model up in the air. It will do two things. 1: get their focus on flying and 2: calm them down just a bit before taking off that brand new scale plane or heli.

We have identified at least five to six guys that have that problem and this year, all of them have decked or destroyed at least two planes. Most of them were new giant scale planks. Go figure.

Don

I always take out my 450 for a few inverted hovers and several flips to try and get rid of the jitters before flying any of my larger or scale helis. Never really seems to help lol! but dose get my focus back.