Daily chat. Talk about about MX/X400s

[Raven_darkcloud]

On an outrunner the the lower outside spins. So if you hold the part that the screws go into the rest of it will turn with the shaft.

[Raven_darkcloud]

Had a good weekend. got some good flying in and on oops. Was trying out some 325 woodies and had my tail rotor strike the mains. Came down safe (auto) but lost one tail grip and pitch slider. Now I can get alumi. :twisted: But I got it flying nice. In total got 5 packs in this weekend.
any one else have good flying this weekend?

[kenpsych]

Originally Posted by Raven_darkcloud

any one else have good flying this weekend?

Rain, rain and more rain out on the east!

[helisforfun]

Originally Posted by Raven_darkcloud

Had a good weekend. got some good flying in and on oops. Was trying out some 325 woodies and had my tail rotor strike the mains. Came down safe (auto) but lost one tail grip and pitch slider. Now I can get alumi. :twisted: But I got it flying nice. In total got 5 packs in this weekend.
any one else have good flying this weekend?

Thanks for sharing just began ff finaly becoming more relaxed lots of practice on the sim begining to pay of 6 packs this weekend everything in one peice that was nice flying for me.

[Raven_darkcloud]

Kenpsyk:
Sorry to hear about the rain.
h4fun:
Thats good, also keep good track of what your programing is on paper. My bro in law was looking at the menu in my dx6 while I was programing his and hit reset. Took me a week to get back to good flight as I had not updated my paper copy of the programing.

Important note: Centripetal force can stretch wood, ie. wood blades get longer at high rpm. Take this into acount when fitting blades.

[kenpsych]

Here's a video I shot a couple of months ago. It's in the front yard, so Icould not do much with all the trees lingering around. I placed the camera on a folding table and flew in the background. Enjoy. Let me know if you can't see the video.

http://media.putfile.com/MX400Pro-in-the-front-yard

[StatiC]

Originally Posted by kenpsych

Let me know if you can't see the video.

youtube or google video works across more browsers and operating systems. I can't see it because putfile doesn't work with Linux . Any chance of posting it on youtube or google video?

[kenpsych]

Originally Posted by xStatiCa2

youtube or google video works across more browsers and operating systems. I can't see it because putfile doesn't work with Linux . Any chance of posting it on youtube or google video?

Try this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9Ih5dU4iko

[Raven_darkcloud]

Hay kenpsych that thing is running nice, and nice lift off.
I changed over to leading edge controlls on the tail to try to get eaven piro rates. If the wind dyes down I will let all of you know how well it flys. Keep in mind I have align grips on my tail.

[kenpsych]

Originally Posted by Raven_darkcloud

Hay kenpsych that thing is running nice, and nice lift off.
I changed over to leading edge controlls on the tail to try to get eaven piro rates. If the wind dyes down I will let all of you know how well it flys. Keep in mind I have align grips on my tail.

Thanks! What do you mean by "leading edge controls?" Any pics?

[Raven_darkcloud]

Originally Posted by kenpsych

What do you mean by "leading edge controls?" Any pics?

Leading edge controlls are when the balls are at the front of the blade (leading edge). Stock setup is haveing the balls at the back side of the blade (trailing edge).
My hopes are to gain more eaven piro rate and eaven end points.

[kenpsych]

It's difficult to see but I'll compare it to my setup.

[mx400]

I got a new mx400 and this is my first time s etting up my radio for a heli someone has always done it for me so i am going to need you all's help. My radio is a futaba 7 cap anyone have this radio? If so i would love to hear your setup it would be a great help. I will post pics soon. Thanks all

[kenpsych]

Originally Posted by kenpsych

It's difficult to see but I'll compare it to my setup.

OK, Raven now I see how you did it.

[Raven_darkcloud]

It dose fly good and eaven for piro but takes time to dial things bake in. I have ben and will be on varry little due to a bad case of adware on my system that wont go away eaven with a reformat. so as soon as that is fixed I will be back to normal posting and geting stuff back up.

[a320jockey]

Hello all,

first let me introduce myself. My name is Carlos Cordova, 39 and live in Quito, Ecuador. I bought my MX400 Pro at the LHS and after some months waiting for help from two experienced heli flyers I decided to take the plunge with my heli on my own. Before the MX I tried to fly a Blade CP without much success as I never managed to get it off the ground and hold it in a stable hover. Got some info about TX programming on RC Groups and later found HeliFreak which is way better in terms of info about our electric helis. Over the last weeks I have been practicing to get the feel of the heli and with around 20 flights so far I am now capable of keeping it on a decent hover about three to four feet over the ground; still have to practice but I am usually holding the heli within a six to ten feet square almost without trouble. I really love my MX-pro and found it to be a lot easier to learn to hover when compared to the Blade CP.

One thing I noticed however is that my heli has some trouble in keeping a level altitude on hover; my current settings for a Futaba 7CAP TX are as follows:

Throttle:---NORMAL---IDLEUP 1---IDLEUP 2
5:------------95-----------95-----------100
4:------------90-----------90-----------95
3:------------85-----------85-----------90
2:------------42.5---------90-----------95
1:------------0-------------95-----------100

Pitch:
5:------------100----------100----------100
4:------------75------------75-----------75
3:------------50------------50-----------50
2:------------40------------25-----------25
1:------------40------------0-------------0

I am currently only flying on Normal mode. The main blade pitch was confirmed at 8 degrees up and down at 100% endpoints on Ch 6 the transmitter, however at this setting the heli barely raised off the ground, I modified for 112% and it now hovers up to four feet off the ground with full left stick; this setting may correspond to 8.9 degrees up and down pitch. The heli floats up and down trying to hold altitude; I am flying in a closed garage with little wind which gets inside at times.

My question is, will I affect the stock motor and ESC if I continue to increase the endpoint travel to 120%? This will correspond to 9.6 degrees up and down pitch if my math is correct. Another option may be to modify the normal throttle curve to something similar to the Idle-up 2 curves on points 4 and 5, but I am not sure.

I am flying the heli almost stock, the only mod I made was to replace the original tail rotor blades with carbon ones, which eliminated all vibrations, the main rotor blades are stock. Our city altitude is 9300 ft ASL, maybe this is also influencing my heli's flight.

Many thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Carlos A. Cordova
QUITO - ECUADOR

[StatiC]

It sounds like you do not have enough pitch at your normal servo throw range. You should not need to set your servo extents further than 100 I would think. At least with my eCCPM upgrade I get -10 to +11 pitch range. How far is the collective servo ball from the center of the servo? I wonder if it is too close which is not giving you enough pitch. Hopefully someone that has a standard mechnical mixing setup will be able to verify that it is not too far in and if it needs to be put further out on the servo arm.

I have the CCPM setup so this will not be a direct comparison to the default mechanical mixing setup but hopefully it is still useful. My throttle curves and pitch for normal mode is listed below. What I noticed is that a pitch of 8 is not necessarily a pitch of 8 when wind gets under the wings and takes out the slop in the blade grips. In my mx400 pro there is some play in the head which translates into a few degrees of slop in my main blades.

To get a true pitch reading for hight stick I had to just slightly twist the blade in the direction that wind underneath the blade would cause it to go. For low stick I had to twist the opposite direction (For inverted). For mid stick I would twist the blade both directions and use the middle of the 2 measurements. I did this with just very lightly using my fingers to find where the blade starts getting any resistance to take up the slack/play in the blade. What I thought was a +10 pitch was really only a +8.5 pitch. It is possible you really only have 6 degrees of pitch at high collective stick position which with my experience wouldn't really get you off the ground with the default motor.

Throttle Normal: 0, 80, 100
Pitch Normal: 35, 55, 100 (-3, 2, 11)
(50 will work too but 55 calmed the collective sensitivity down wich made the heli less pitchy)

[a320jockey]

Hello all,

It seems that I do have a pitch tray problem as I checked yesterday that part and it stops at a point even as I continue to dial in more endpoint so I will check first that area.

Anyway I am considering now to replace the motor and speed control in order to use the larger 325 mm Helimax carbon blades which I already have around. I bought some Align parts last week because the LHS does not stock any Helimax parts except for the standard crash kit and 275 mm wood blades. The new parts are a longer tail boom, and the 430L outrunner motor and BL-35G speed control which come with the TRex 450 SE. However I did not buy the longer tail drive belt because there were two lenghts available. Also, is it possible to use the Align TRex tail drive belt with the MX-400 i.e. are the belt's tooth spacings the same for both the Align and Helimax belts? What about batteries? I am presently using TP-2100 15C 3S1P batteries and their equivalent versions from E-Flite (blue ones) and would of course want to continue to use them.

A friend of mine who is one of the best heli pilots in our city told me that with the new power / blade setup the MX-400 will really improve as the standard setup does not work well considering our city's altitude of 9300 feet above sea level which means thinner air. He considers that the MX really has a lot of limitations here with the original power setup and that this may be the explanation for the difficulty it presently has in keeping a constant altitude on hover.

Hope anyone can give me some light about the Align tail drive belt.

Happy flying to all,

Carlos A. Cordova
QUITO - ECUADOR

[StatiC]

The trex belts will work fine. That is what I am using. Not sure the length though. I just used what they had available locally and don't remember the model or tooth count. I would use whatever the stock length of the trex 450 XL uses(which has the longer boom too).

Going to the 430L and 325 blades makes a BIG difference. That is where I am now. I had to reduce pitch from +11 to +9 because it was too powerful for me. Even now with +9 pitch max it has a very fast climb rate.

Keep in mind you will need to change out the Align 325 blade spacers with some from the helimax wood blades and trim some of the blade off where the end goes into the grip where it will bind with the feathering shaft nut.

Make sure you get a few Align pinions for the 430L (3.17 shaft) because the pinions for the helimax motor are for a smaller shaft. I am using an 11 tooth pinion but want to go down to a 10 in the future because it is a bit too fast it seems to me.

[Raven_darkcloud]

Sorry for being gone so long. just got my system fixed after bad spyware. Will be geting uploads going again after I can conferm the video files are clean.