Help with Transition to Collective Heli

[Chieftan69]

I've been on a 120SR for a while and fly that thing with full confidence. Good control and I am comfortable with orientation.

I am trying to move on to collective birds and flew a TRex 450 for a while. But now I bought a 130X because I don't have the time to fix a big bird (kids). What I experience while flying is what I would consider barely keeping it in control. The heli seems to "slide" all over the place, mainly aileron, perhaps because I'm fearful of over correcting and putting it in the dirt. But again, it's barely in control and rarely makes it to the ground by landing.

What exercises can I do to improve this? I really want to fly collective as I am bored with the 120SR (fixed pitch). At this point, I really feel like I would be happy with just sport flying. That's what I really want to do.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

edit: I did experience the same thing while flying the 450 as well.

[Bob O]

Sounds like you need to reduce the cyclic rates and maybe increase Expo. This will make it less responsive, but you will still have to "fly" it.

Sent via phone

[gstoneberg]

Also you might want to consider doing some of your training on a simulator. It's much slower training with a CP heli than a Sim. Check the "From tail in....." sticky for a great simulator based training approach for CP.

George - Taranis, 450x, 130x, mcpx-bl

[kodack10]

1. Do NOT fly your 450 until you can safely handle the 130 100% of the time in all conditions. The 450 can kill you, a neighbor, or destroy property. It is not a toy and should not be used un-supervised by a novice. Only under the instruction of an instructor who has set the heli up to be docile.

2. Set the 130x lo rates to 80%, and 25% Expo. If you still find it too sensitive, reduce your travel points to 80%. Note that travel is for each direction. IE ELEV 80% might just be left, if you hit right ELEV might jump back to 100%, you must set it to 80% for both directions for all controls, pitch,rudder, aeil, elev, etc.

The 130x is going to be a handful because everything it does, it's going to do fast. You will make better progress doing a mixture of simulator and real heli. The 130 is fairly robust but it requires a lot of maintenance and tuning skills to keep it flying well. You might consider the NanoCPX if you want a truly bomb proof, safe, indoor/outdoor, new flyer heli. IT can teach you everything up to 3d including inverted hovering, funnels, etc.

[ArchmageAU]

120SR to 130x is a big jump. 130x to 450 is a smaller one. In my opinion, you have been sensible to go 120SR to a collective micro instead of the 450 (cheaper/less dangerous).

Have a look at From tail-in to all 8s and funnels in 6 months , it will help is getting control (by using sim to practice).

I went micro FP (like the 120SR) to nano to 130x to 550 (Gaui X5). Could fly the 130x all day without crashing (both upright and inverted) before going X5. In over 100 X5 flights only time the blades have touched other than air is an autorotation tipover (total damage $5). "From tail-in ..." is how I did it (step by step).