J-MICHAEL

I don't think he sleeps............. And if he does............... You know what he's dreaming about...... Electrical stuff....... [8D]

evdreamer

Jeff,

It would be nice if I didn't need to sleep, so I could work on my projects more.

Nick

rotarydoc

Guys,

I wish I has studied more when I was Nick's age...but I was learning...out on the streets racing...LMAO...learning how to make cars go faster...

I guess it didn't turn out too bad...I making a pretty good living at it...just wish I enjoyed it like I used to...[&o]

Keep up the great work Nick...

Glenn

Aframomum

My Feedback: (10)

Hi guys,

jreue,
Even though Jeff's idea is great (little at a time) you may want to just remove them intact just in case you ever want to sell the heli down the road, you'll have a full size pair of training gear to go with it. But definitely go for it just to satifsfy your curiosity, at least once. For me, I wasn't ready and once I started forward and backward flight back on went the training wheels for awhile.

Glenn,
Thinking this weekend could be the big one huh?! That's great news to hear.

Left work early yesterday morning and finally got to fly! Had a blast with the CPP2 doing flips, rolls, and loops - even tried a sloppy stall turn/piro but really need to practice a bit on the sim before attempting again. Flew the rex450 for one battery but didn't like the sound the belt was making so decided to finish the day before I pushed my luck too many times. You know its an omen when the last post you read before going flying was about breaking belts and spiral of death threads. Luckily I went with my better judgement b/c upon inspection the belt was quite loose due to a few stripped boom block screws from my last crash. Going to get some long screws that will go all the way through and secure it with nuts and just do away with the crappy 1mm screws in there now. All in all though, a good day.

Mark

rotarydoc

Hey guys,

jreue,

Good luck with your first flights without the training gear, or the shorter training gear, whichever you choose...as Mark pointed out, you can always put them back on if you think you are in over your head...it'll be a bit scary at first, for sure...[X(]

Mark,

Thanks for the well wishes, I hope it's not as windy over the weekend as it is today, or it'll be a no-go, for sure...got some 16 MPH wind here today, with higher gusts...yuck!

Glad you caught that loose belt before it turned into disaster...for sure..I lost the tail on the stock B400 due to a bad gyro a while back...and it's good that I was pretty low..still had a fair amount of damage though...and I know Jeff just had that tail grip let go...it's pretty ugly when you lose the tail entirely in mid flight...[X(]

Not much new here, I guess I'll charge some packs, in case the weather is as nice as they are saying, it's supposed to be in the mid to high 60's for this weekend, but not sure about the wind yet...

Glenn

evdreamer

Mark,

It is always a good idea not to fly when you suspect something is wrong with the heli. It will save a lot in repair costs. I lost tail control quite a bit in various helicopters and it isn't easy to control and bring the heli down safely.

Glenn,

Hope you get good weather for the weekend. I plan on going in the morning tomorrow, so hopefully there won't be that many people. I got the tail gears replaced in the Velocity and just need to replace the crown gear later today.

Nick

rotarydoc

Nick,

Glad you got your parts...and hope the rest of the rebuild goes well...

I would love to get out and fly some, we'll see how my weather pans out...looks like Monday is good as well, so maybe I can get some in then too...

You mean you are actually going to get up early and go flying in the MORNING?? [X(] LOL

I don't know how JPEE and Jeff get out there at the crack of dawn (literally) and fly...I just would not be awake enough yet...I'd do better night flying...lol...

Glenn

jroo

well....hell....

Just got back from the park. Not so good news.

First of all, it was a little breazy. I'm not a good just of how many knots, I can't even guess. So I started with my trusty Eflite 1800mAh battery which holds a dead, no hands, hover. It was not happening today. Immediately, even before take off, I was getting extreme tail-left action, enough to yank the heli 45 degrees before i even left the ground. I found it suspicious but reattempted take off again. Even off the ground the heli was wanting to do a full right turn. I set it down. Looking at the rudder, it was full pitch with no stick input. I fought with it a bit, attempting to hover, hoping it would work its way out, and it never did. I had to give constant left stick input.

I set it down, and took off the canopy. I unplugged the battery and then plugged it back in, think the gyro would 'reset'. It did in fact. The rudder was right where it was suppose to be. The wind died down, so i hovered a bit. It was actually doing ok for a bit. I landed for some reason or another, and picked the heli up and rotated it a different position and took off. Again, I was back to fighting the rudder.

I was about to pack up and go home. I should have, but I thought I'd give it one more shot. I should have listened to my subconscious.

Well i started hovering and she got about 30 yards in front of me, sideways. I attempted to land, and, crash. I landed, sideways, blades in the ground...

Throttle hold and off to see the damage.

I got:
a completely destroyed set of main rotor blades
a flybar that I could now use as a coat hanger; it's now bent in the perfect shape
a few teeth on the main gear that are not stripped, just mashed in a bit
an air conditioning hole in the main canopy

Other than that, from first inspection, it looks ok.

This is my first 'official' crash i'd say. It's just lame that it seems because of mechanical difficulties.

What the heck is going on with this gyro? It's got to be the gyro right?

Am I doing something wrong in my pre-flight setup? I setup my heli on the tail gate of my truck. Lets say the heli was facing west. I plugged in the battery here and put on the canopy. Now the gyro is saying 'I'm suppose to be pointing west'. Now I pick up the heli, and walk out to the middle of the park. I set it down facing north. As far as the gyro is concerned, it wants to immediately get back to West right? Should I not be doing this? Should I have walked into the field, and then plugged in the battery so the gyro is initialized to pointing North?

The reason I ask this is because, remember, like I said, when i replugged in the battery, the rudder was dead center again.

Thanks guys!

J-MICHAEL

That's easy........... Just don't go to bed and stay up all night.... And maybe waste some time on G4 until morning rolls around... You'll be still good and awake, and ready to fly ! LMAO..... Ask me how I know.....


Jreue ~

I've never had a B-400, so I'am not familiar with the gyro's that come with them. But for you asking how the HH stays locked in a certain position, what you can do is when you set it down, or wanting to center the tail servo while its in HH mode, just wiggle your left rudder stick really quick back and forth a few times and it will be centered in its new locked heading. Some even have there 'gear' switch set for rate mode, and will just flick that on centering the tail servo and then flicking it back to re-engage heading hold mode.

Sorry about the crash though.... Yikes... So your first 'real' dirt nap eh...?? ! No worries, just brush off the ol' knees and get back up... There will be more of them coming, some worse than others. Sometimes its also good to always let your gyro get use to the temps its going to be flying in. Meaning, if you go from your air-conditioned car, to then the hot outside Texas temps to let the gyro get accustomed to the new temperature diffs. Some gyro's require this especially the cheaper Piezo types. I still do this even with my GY401's also... Some will do funny stuff if you don't practice this method. The original CPP's and CX2's are ones that will...

Another thing, is that sometimes your belt tension could change during temp diffs. Your belt could be tighter or looser in a cold environment, where then in a warmer, hotter environment it could be totally different also. So since I fly mainly in cold temps right now, I adjust my belt in my cooler garage so the belt is fit for that temperature that I do most my flying. Same for my cnc blade grips that are the Microheli's softer cnc... My main blade tension can change and will be either to loose or to tight depending on the temps, because of the expanding and contracting that can happen with cnc sometimes. Like your aluminum booms can also do on some heli's also, which can loosen a belt.

This is one beauty then of having a torque tube system like my Trex 500 ESP has, or Glenn's new Trex 450 Pro has, or Nick's Trex 600 ESP... The tension is always the same...

Just a few thoughts...


~ Jeff

evdreamer

Glenn,

I plan on flying around 9-10, so I can avoid the sun with the west facing field. I couldn't fly as early as Jeff and JPEE do unless I want to fly while sleeping. It probably wouldn't be that hard to fly in my sleep.

Jreue,

Sorry about the crash. Look at Jeff's or my 450 canopies and they will show some battle scars too.

Jeff,

TT's all the way.

Nick

JPEE

Glenn,
We are up everyday seven days a week at 5:00 a.m. Man that’s the best part of the day. Heck man when your dead your going for the long sleep no need to waste time doing that now LOL.

Nick, man at your age you should be able to fly at 6:00 a.m. with one eye open and the other still asleep.

Jreue,
First I am sorry about the crash, don’t’ beat yourself up over this, you’ll crash a lot more time too.
Importantly you hit the nail on the head. I have as well as others have all at one time or another and more than once mind you NOT listened to our “little inner voice�. Man you need to live by the voice, it is right every time. Call it your inner voice, call it your gut…LISTEN to it.
Jeff covered a lot of the reasons the rudder will change on you and everything he said is RIGHT ON. I have three 400s and have no idea what your talking about heading it north and all that stuff you wrote. BUT I can tell you that once you plug in the pack and lt the ESC go through its stages DON’T touch the heli. That cycle must go on undisturbed and that’s where the gyro is setting itself. As Jeff suggested, if you want to check your gyro and tail center in the TX take your gyro adjustment down to 40 in position 1 but leave the the 0 position at 63 or so wherever your at now. Once you plug in the pack and the heli cycle in then flip the surface mount toggle top left that says gyro back towards you and that will/should center the tail servo. Once you see that centered then switch back the toggle and your ready to rock and roll. Another test you can on in either HH or Rate mode after the heli has cycled in via the ESC is to swish the tail back and forth on the table top and you should hear the servo moving trying to catch up with your movements.
I was flying my 400 with a 401 a week ago and the just wasn’t responding well and I should have landed. NO I kept flying and in the next minute I lost all tail control and down she came. I now have a 400 that needs a new frame, the 401 gyro has a hold knocked into the side from the flybar? A new flybar, boom, a new canopy, blades, and I don’t know what all. IN this hobby and with helis especially...... this IS NOT abnormal for a heli to go nuts or fail.

Good luck with the rebuild. Glenn and I are the 400 owners here should you need any support.
JPEE

jroo

Thanks for the advice guys.

JPEE,
You mentioned that I should not touch the heli after i plug in the battery. I never do. My normal routine is:
1) Place the heli on a flat surface
2) Plug in the battery
3) hands off
4) wait until I hear the arming alarm; the 2 beeps
5) attach the canopy
6) pick up the heli and walk to where I want to take off from.

Now concerning the North, West thing I was talking about earlier that some got confused about.... I just wanted to know if it's ok to plug in the battery, let the gyro setup, and then pick up the heli and move it to a different spot in the park; most likely where the heli is facing another direction entirely than when the gyro was initialize.
That make any sense at al? I swear there are some things that are just impossible to explain properly...hehe

I'll check out my gyro settings in a bit here. Thanks alot for the advice. The gyro itself and settings have been kind of magic to me thus far and you guys sure helped in clearing it up.

I'll post some pics here in a bit of the damage.

J-MICHAEL

Yeah that's fine, I do it all the time in fact. And that's why when the heli is in HH mode you can vigorously toggle your left rudder stick back and forth a few times to get the gyro to "re-position" the tail servo for its new heading while its on the ground. Or like JPEE, said, move the tail back and forth a few times. Same thing and either way will work. Just faster doing it with the rudder stick...

J-MICHAEL

So am I the only one who fly's in the rain or what................ ?? ! Oh wait.... That's right, I remember Glenn doing it once with the T450 Pro....

jroo

That is AWESOME.

I can't wait to get to that level.

jroo

Damage thus far...

May have a bent feathering shaft in there too.

evdreamer

Jeff,

I flew my Velocity in the rain. Did you stay inverted?

Nick

J-MICHAEL

You will..... Trust me there. I'am only at a sport flying stage with just loops, stall turns, flips, and rolls. Most sloppy also as far as the aerobatic stuff... Me, Glenn and JPEE, are pretty much all at the same level. Nick is WAY up there as far as his skills go. And to give you an idea, me and Nick have been flying for about the same amount of time. About the same time I got my Trex 450, he got his Belt CP heli, and I remember him roaming around RCU as I was also back when we were fresh green meat.

What will get you advanced more quickly, is dedication, stick time, and willing to push your limits just as Nick has proven. Where I'am pretty much a weekend flyer, and taking things slower shows then. I've only wrecked my T-450 5 times in almost 2 years of owning it. The Trex 500 in 1 year, just once. So I'am a slower and more conservative type flyer I guess you could say. Nick just went for it and all its glory, and it paid off for him if you watch his videos on You-Tube. Simply amazing, and he shows total control. A good simulator will also help get you there faster also, and save in your crashes. That's something I need to do more of on G4 for sure... Just gets boring kinda for me ! I like the real thing I guess, but I need to snap out of that sense, if I want to achieve more with these heli's.


Nick ~

No, the inverted still shot was just flipping the heli over from a barrel roll. The rotor disc kinda gives that away from its tilted forward stance... Yeah, I wish it held inverted for a bit ! It was a sloppy roll among that... Nothing to write home about that's for sure... (LMAO)...


~ Jeff

J-MICHAEL

From the looks of your 2nd picture, and seeing the grips angled like that, I'd say for sure its bent...

jroo

Busted elevator servo.... Gonna have to get some MG ones...

jroo

Just finished looking over the gyro settings. As a reminder, I bought this heli used, of ebay. Its my first CP heli and the transmitter was a little daunting at first with all the switches and all. I noticed that the Gyro flip switch on the trasmitter flipped side-to-side rather than up and down. I tightened it. Well after 30 minutes of wondering why the heck my standard rate and heading lock modes were switched, I figured it out. When i tightened the switch, 0 became 1 and 1 became 0. :/

Anyway, got that all straightened out. My 0 is now 64 and my 1 is now 40. I've tested the 're-centering' of the rudder by flipping this switch and it works great.

Once again, can't thank you guys enough. You 5-6 guys are really keeping me on track. It's nice to have a community like this where you can get more or less, immediate response/help when you need it!

One more thing before I hit the sack....

These plastic wrap wooden blades are really getting on my nerves. Someone once recommended a wooden set, I think by align, that are commonly used by the Blade 400 pilots, that are around $15 if I'm not mistake. They are painted rather than this plastic wrap bs. Anyone know which ones I'm talking about. I'd like to order a set. If you have any other blade recommendations, I'd surely like those as well.

jroo

Found the ones that were recommended to me

http://www.helidirect.com/align-325m...801-p-1104.hdx

evdreamer

Jreue,

Good to hear all of us are able to give you what we know.

JPEE got some carbon fiber Hobby City blades and seems to like those. If I remember right they were around $5-10. You will need to get/make some shims for it and I think JPEE said he had to balance them too.

Nick

J-MICHAEL

I've always heard that the Align 325mm woodies were a good cheaper type blade. My Trex 450 SA came with a set, but they were warped from the beginning. A few days after signing up to RCU I was learning on the original nasty horrible CP-Pro's. My first crash learning to try and hover that thing was Sept 18, of 2007... Just 2 years ago... I learned using CF blades. Even with the CPP, back then I didn't use woodies... I've never liked them, but they do help prevent other stuff from breaking as the woodies provide a nice relief point. But even with the CPP, I took it slow, and only had crashed that thing only a handful of times. Mainly because a few months later (Dec of 07') I got the Trex 450, and then the doors really opened for me.

I still have that same set of CF blades for the CPP that I flew back then... And even another set for the 2nd CPP I have still to this day. As you can see in my video of the CPP and my very first video ever made back in Sept of 07, I was flying with the CF blades, and even that shorter training gear I was talking about that I cut off an inch at a time ! LOL... I wasn't worried about cutting the T-gear, simply because I won't ever sell any of my heli's as even if you have an ultimate set-up, your not going to get squat for resale anyway... So I just keep them all.

In two years time, I think I've tried the woodies maybe twice. If you scroll through all my vids, on You-Tube, Vimeo or Exposure Room, you won't see them on my heli's. Those that know me know I hate Woody blades and Deans connectors ! Of course, hold on.... I did fly with them on my Logo 10, but those are a 500mm blade and they were much different than the smaller woodies in my mind, as far as flex and tracking and warping issues go. And that was just recently as I had acquired the Logo then with them on.

When I got the Trex 450, it was so stable, that I started with that then without the training gear, and I thought I was in heaven ! Then in Cali when I was there for a year, I took 5 months off from RCU and the hobby, but then got back into it and started getting ready for forward flight. This is then when I removed the flybar weights, and went for it doing basic flying forward, and my first circles over a mountaintop at my dads property with steep ravines on 3 sides with a few hundred feet of dropped elevation. I had no choice to make no mistakes and rush things for sure ! And now I'am where I'am today...

So if your learning, the woodies are the way to go, but CF blades aren't all that bad also if your taking it slow in your learning curve. In two years time I've wrecked 2 sets of the CF blades for the 450, and 1 set of CF blades for the 500.... So just a thought...


Here was my first video, and my first crash with the CP-Pro Sept 18th 2007 :


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VKWAFv4cqM

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VKWAFv4cqM[/youtube]


And then my first hover outside with the Trex 450... The Trex is such a stable platform compared to the original CP-Pro's ! This was 3 months later on December 18, 2007 :


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWEOd-EQkKg

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWEOd-EQkKg[/youtube]


Still have that fiberglass canopy on today in fact..... Gyro settings were off, as I look at it today, tail servo on the wrong side of the boom, running also a wrong size tail servo, this was the standard size HUGE Futaba 9254 servo that the LHS guys recomended even... (idiots), so thank goodness for the forums to lead my way into the right direction ! And someday, you'll be helping out someone yourself. Its the evolution of things.....

Aframomum

My Feedback: (10)

Hi guys,

Jreue,
Sorry to hear about your misfortune, hopefully you have found the issue with your gyro. Xheli.com has a pair of 325 CF blades [link=http://www.xheli.com/60p-pro-3251.html]Here[/link] that I am currently trying out and am liking a lot. For the price they offer they are a good intro into CF blades. I have tried a pair of ThunderPower CF blades at $38 a pair and would have to say that I'll probably stay with the Xheli brand.

Good still shot of the invert position Jeff, the rotor disc does have that downward angle but still looks awesome!

I really need to make up some nifty hat-cam so I can start getting some pics up here to share with ya'll.

Got my batteries sitting in my locker while at work since its a chilly 38F outside right now, but still going flying when I get off work in a few hours. Just have to remember to bundle up out there. Nothing really to do for my fingers though, kinda need that sensitivity on the sticks. Any of you hard-core winter flyers wear gloves? If so, what kind?

Gotta run now, work is piling up. For you all nighters on the sim, enjoy!

Mark