Up Up and Away!!

[tywest]

Well... I ditched the training gear a few days ago and am able to take off and land pretty good with my Copterx 450 se V2. I have been practicing hovering and general beginner stuff. I have been putting the gear back on for the nose in hover practice.

Well today I started without gear for my tail in hovering practice. All was good until I noticed the helicopter was getting higher, higher, and higher.. Just when I was laying off the throttle another gust of wind would push it up higher. It wasnt all that windy either maybe 5 mph or so.

Finally it was up there pretty far.. I would estimate 50-75 feet at least. This is way beyond my comfort zone of like 15 ft. Well for the life of me I could not get it to descend. It would almost stahl out when I throttled back and I almost lost it a few times only to regain control and have it climb higher. My radio was set up in normal mode where I have it set up that the blades still have 1-2% positive pitch. I had heard this was good for beginners so you dont pile the thing into the ground for hovering practice. I didnt switch into "stunt" mode. I have that set up with 0% at mid stick and about 12% at each end poss and neg.

Is pitch my problem? or is it the flying thats the problem. When that happens do I need to think of it more as a plane and down cyclic and then just fly it lower or should it be able to descend in the same general area??

Needless to say I kinda freaked out and she crashed into a field. I had all the replacement parts except the ball link arms.. Time to wait for more parts to arrive from china.

[Adventurer]

Well, you know you could have saved it in stunt mode , just messing wth ya,

Keeping a positive only pitch curve is only useful while you're learning to hover @ less than 12 inches with sticks on. With that set-up, closing the throttle when the heli tilts allows the heli to balloon down onto the sticks which levels things out. But once you remove the sticks, you loose that effect. So you should be reasonably comfortable that you can keep it level before you do.

Now that you're getting a bit higher, wind becomes a risk as you have found-out. Even-though your heli is stationary relative to the ground, a 5 MPH wind gives your heli a 5 MPH airspeed, and a new kind of lift, translational lift, appears. You've seen the results. BTW translational lift also helps you learn to use your cyclic, just hover in mildly gusty conditions and every gust causes your heli to balloon upwards, giving you lots of practice.

My advice is change your pitch curve now to go to negative 5 degrees @ low stick. Also make sure that you still have enough head-speed as well, so that you still have control when you use that negative pitch. I use a flatish throttle curve 0-65-70-75-80 so I have 65% throttle and about -1 degree @ one quarter stick.

You just have to train yourself not to slam the throttle down when you get into trouble, cause you will slam the heli onto the ground.

These curves also give you the ability to spool up in wind with negative pitch to glue your heli to the ground.

[Bee_random]

Not so long ago I was in the same place the higher I got, the stronger the wind carrying me away.

IMHO two things have made all the difference...
1. Practice slow piro's then turns. You can lose a lot of altitude with turns and keep control in the process.
2. Practice steep dives and flaring out. To avoid climbing back up, reduce collective in the flare and increase a little after to hold a steady altitude.
When you can do this in all (upright) orientations, you're set.

[Pigskin]

You should be able to ascend and descend in a hover. You need a little negative pitch to play with in normal mode for this situation.

I have my normal pitch curve set up like this: 40% 45% 50% 75% 100%
My normal throttle curve is around 0% 40% 60% 70% 80%

Mechanically I have full 12 degrees of pitch both ways.

So at mid stick I'm at 0 degrees and anything below I'm slightly negative, with plenty enough power to bring it down.

Slow piros? Steep dives and flaring out? I suggest they are a bit advanced if you are only just out of training gear.

[BaconRaygun]

+1 on the neg pitch in normal mode. Personally I don’t use a normal mode anymore but I did for a while, my pitch range was -4 to +10 with 0 at mid stick... and at the time a throttle curve of 0 70 80 80 90, this gave me enough control/tail authority when descending with wind.

You would be surprised what a stiff wind could do... when exiting a steep stall turn in a 15mph wind you will be almost down at a quarter stick in straight and level flight until your airspeed bleeds off.

Look at it this way, unlike airplanes a helicopter is 'flying' while it's still on the ground. Because it achieves lift by spinning its own wing and making its own airspeed, any additional airspeed turns into extra lift in a sense (transitional lift)... when you have a 5mph wind the air speed over the leading blade is 5mph higher, this increases total lift and makes the heli balloon in wind (requiring less pitch).

I personally recommend to keep your throttle curve close or the same as it is at mid stick through your negative pitch range. You can still have 0 at low stick but from 1/4 up I would keep it close (if not the same) as it is at mid stick. The reason being tail authority while descending with wind... low HS will make the tail crazy and mushy, which just makes it harder on you while you learn.

As for what to practice... keep doing what you are doing.... once you are cumfy with tail in then start altering the angle a bit. Meaning, hover tail in but have the heli off to one side, then do the same over to the other. Right about here I would also start slowly walking with the heli and making some small turns, this will start to get you to understand what you need to do with cyclic during slow flight. And last but not least, start slowly going into side in hover, turn the heli maybe 45 degrees for a few seconds then go back... keep doing this till it becomes comfortable then take a step further.

Piro hover is important but it may be early... but if you have a sim that's something to work on in the sim for sure.

Good luck

[banditpowdercoat]

You NEED to have some negtive pitch just for that reason!!! Easiest to run same pitch as Stunt mode. You will soon be running in stunt mode anyways, beive me

[Rªzª]

just run with your bottom stick a few degrees negative. just enough to be able to force it down if needed.

[tywest]

Sorry for the delay but I had to wait for replacement parts.

Well today and yesterday I was out flying and it feels like a different helicopter. I have negative pitch and upped the throttle curve a bit..

I feel I am light years ahead of where I was by just making these small adjustments. I will post a video shortly.

I also need more batteries.. 2 lipos just go way too quick.. How many batteries on average does one need?

Thanks again

[tywest]

CopterX 450 1 (3 min 15 sec)

[Adventurer]

Originally Posted by tywest

Sorry for the delay but I had to wait for replacement parts.

I also need more batteries.. 2 lipos just go way too quick.. How many batteries on average does one need?

Nice to see that you can progress again.

As far as batteries are concerned, it depends a lot on your needs and charging set-up It takes roughly 1 hour to fully charge a battery @ 1C, which is a safe charge rate for most any LIPO. There are batteries around nowadays that will happily charge @ 2C, which will take a little over 30 minutes, it depends on your budget. There are some that are rated at up to 6C charge rates, but they are horrendously expensive (never mind the charger), and there have been reports that routinely charging them at these rate reduces their useful life dramatically. So if you're a "change-batteries-and-go-again" kinda guy, then you would need about 4 batteries that can charge @ 2C with a 4 way charger. That should give you continuous all day flying, if you walk back to the charger after every flight and put that battery on charge. That's 20 minutes flying time plus 10 minutes walk/port potty time in a 30 minute cycle.

I fly on a budget, so I have a 50 Watt charger, a Paraboard, and 6 batteries. So I get 45 minutes back-to-back flying, then a 2 hour charge break.

Keep an eye on this thread.
https://www.helifreak.com/showthread.php?t=324761

[daveapplemotors]

My BL250 Align motor would burn up after two or more batteries. It is impressively hot after one pack. I cool that motor while I fly another 250 helicopter. I have cooler motors in the other two but I still like them to cool well between packs, too.

I have 3 @ 250 helis, 9 Lipos & 3 @ 2C chargers. A normal session is pure flying, dealing with battery, canopy and charger. Nothing else for an 1.5 to 2 hours. Only with diligence can I fly out all my packs. Then I get a break - like for a meal or worse, repairs. I think maybe I could use one more pack or charger. I don't need to eat while the sun is up and I don't crash so much anyway.