The smooth tailed heli

[jrohland]

I had my gyro fall off the other day at the flying field. Luckily, I noticed it was loose and was quickly landing when it fell off.

I mounted it back with the only double-sided sticky foam tape I had.

Amongst other problems I has having, the tail was acting very strange. It would tick around clockwise. I would move it back and, it would tick around again. I wondered if vibration was the problem. I stacked up 2 pieces of foam tape and tested it. It was better but, not completely smooth. This started me wondering how much vibration was affecting the gyro.

I build up a very good vibration isolation mount like this: 1 layer of dense double-sided sticky tape. 1 layer of a very thin, low density foam which is used to put between layers of glass for shipping. Another layer of sticky tape. Another layer of low density foam and, a last layer of sticky tape. See the photos below.

This mount really smoothed out my tail. No more strange twitching or, oscillations. In fact, I was able to turn down the gyro gain to 25. This made my piro rate so fast it scared me. I turned it back up to 40 until I get used to the much faster tail.

Now the problem. With the gyro on this new mount, it was up much higher. I felt it was too close to the flybar paddles. To solve that, I moved the gyro mount plate closer to the main mast. This moved it away from the paddles and, got it closer to the center of rotation. Again, see the photos.

The mod was pretty easy. I used a high-speed hobby tool with a cutting wheel to level the top of the carbon upper frame under the gyro shelf and, drilled 2 new holes for the front tabs of the aluminum gyro shelf. See the attached photos.

jrohland

[DebianDog]

I would bust out a zip tie!!! That is a ASSLOAD of tape. I have had everything from T-Rexes to gassers and NEVER found a need to use THAT amount of tape.

You need to find the cause of the vibration. It is an electric helicopter for petes sake you should have NO vibrations.

I think it's a pretyt cool idea, you could have also used this foam mount on the bottom of the boom. a ziptie might be a great idea

[wacojoe]

I agree with the Debiandog lose the layers of tape and use a zip tie.
by leveling the the frame and moving the gyro closer to the CG
was most likely the best fix.

[Raven_darkcloud]

Put it inside the frame. Gyros on the tail get trashed. I got mine in the frame just under the tail drive system and got 88% gain and one solid tail.