For a long time, I have relied upon a regular, manual pitch gauge to set up my helicopters, such as a CopterX Pitch Gauge shown in Figure 1. Besides being rather inexpensive, the regular pitch gauge is convenient because it can be mounted directly onto the main blades of helicopters and then measurements can be immediately performed. Also, typically one gauge can be used with various sizes of helicopters, ranging in size from 250 all the way up to 800-sized helicopters. A drawback, however, is that the gauge must be eyeballed relative to a rod fastened to the rotor head of the helicopter. Certainly, the eyeballing part is where most of the measurement errors generally arise.

As many members of RCG will attest, the Soko Gauge does a great job of minimizing errors when leveling the swash plate and adjusting the blade pitch of collective pitch helicopters. I love my Soko Gauge because it eliminates any need for eyeballing the gauge relative to a rod fastened to the rotor head of the helicopter. One thing I didn't like about the Soko Gauge, however, is that a main blade must be removed from the helicopter and then a platform, included in the Soko Kit, must be installed into the blade grip in order to use the gauge. There are times when I want to do a quick check without having to mess around with removing and installing the blades. There must be a way, I thought, to combine the convenience of the regular pitch gauge with the accuracy of the Soko Gauge. While I did...Continue Reading