Tandem Rescue Help

[JasonH1981]

I'm having trouble with a recently acquired MCX Tandem. As soon as I throttle up and lift off the ground the heli goes hard forward and I have to give my dx6i full reverse input in order to fly circles around my living room. I have replaced all 4 motors and rotor blades but no change in the forward drifting. Rebinding the heli to my tx didn't help either. Does anyone have any ideas of what I could try to fix this issue?

[Pfloyd]

Are your trims centered?

[JasonH1981]

Originally Posted by Pfloyd

Are your trims centered?

Yes, trims are centered, I tried countering the forward drift with trim as well but it didn't help.

[Pfloyd]

Sometimes you have to power up, wait about 10 secs and power down and insert battery again. That is a few of us had to do,

[JasonH1981]

Originally Posted by Pfloyd

Sometimes you have to power up, wait about 10 secs and power down and insert battery again. That is a few of us had to do,

Thanks for the help Pfloyd, I'll give it a shot when I get home.

[Ferret Dad]

Have one myself. They're a finiky heli some times but fun to fly. Mine was very slow on forward flight so I taped a dime just inside the bottom of the nose out of site. Worked wonders.

Mike

[JonJet]

Originally Posted by Ferret Dad

Have one myself. They're a finiky heli some times but fun to fly. Mine was very slow on forward flight so I taped a dime just inside the bottom of the nose out of site. Worked wonders.

Mike

+1 on the dime...washers work too

I've used various counter-weights...sometimes I'll cover a small nut in CA glue to harden the canopy nose

[JasonH1981]

Originally Posted by Ferret Dad

Have one myself. They're a finiky heli some times but fun to fly. Mine was very slow on forward flight so I taped a dime just inside the bottom of the nose out of site. Worked wonders.

Mike

Thanks for the tip, I think I'll try taping a dime to the rear. Everytime i pop in a battery to fix this issue another problem pops up. I started losing lift after about 15 seconds in the air with new motors and blades. When I spin the lower rear rotors by hand I can feel it binding in about the same position with a 360 degree rotation. Any ideas of what would cause this?

[Pfloyd]

He needs the weight on the tail, not the nose, It goes fwd by itself. Alsom you may need new blades if it was used!

Are you initializing it on a flat level surface?

[Pfloyd]

Hey Mike. How have you been?

[JasonH1981]

Originally Posted by Pfloyd

He needs the weight on the tail, not the nose, It goes fwd by itself. Alsom you may need new blades if it was used!

Are you initializing it on a flat level surface?

Thanks again Pfloyd, the heli is used, I bought it off another member on the forums. I already replaced all the blades with new ones that were included with the purchase. I'm using my coffee table to initialize the heli, I got 8 other micro helis that don't have any problems from the same table. I have done a fair amount of work and fine tuning on the rest of the fleet but the tandem is causing a lot of headaches. I love the look of it though so I won't throw in the towel yet. Thanks for all the help guys!

[Ferret Dad]

Been good Pfloyd, yourself? Had a good holiday and another b-day (Dec 31) so another year older but not sure about the wiser part, lol. The helis have been idle here lately. Been getting back to model cars again but just mentioned to the wife last night need to fly a few this week end.

Mike

[JasonH1981]

I had the tandem apart today to see if there was any slop or bent parts and there didn't seem to be any problems. I was starting to run out of ideas and was thinking that the problem was with the 5 in 1. When i was putting the heli back together I decided to put the rotors that were on the front of the heli to the rear and vice versa. Now the tandem drifts hard reverse on takeoff, just got to figure out which rotor(s) are the culprit.

[Pfloyd]

I said the rotors were bad. Change them all!

[JasonH1981]

Originally Posted by Pfloyd

I said the rotors were bad. Change them all!

They are all brand new rotors, either defective or something was probably sitting on them for awhile to bend them out of shape.

[Pfloyd]

They can flatten out a bit just sitting in the package on the shelf.

[brandn14]

Blade Tandem Rescue Helicopter Problem Fix
I’ve found the solution to the billions of problems posted about the tandem rescue helicopter online.

People complain about it yawing slow or some that either go forward ONLY or go backwards ONLY and cannot turn in any direction.

I tried for years and years to figure it out. I finally found the solution!

I, along with lots of folks, thought it was the 5-in-1 and that Blade Discontinued it because it’s faulty and they were trying to hide that. No! The 5-in-1 isn’t causing those failures.

Some thought, it was because the carbon fiber rods need to be twisted. No! That’s not it either - like in this video.

Some thought, if you only change the center of gravity then it’ll fix it. It won’t!

The ONLY solution to my surprise was discovered when I built the same model from ground up with parts I bought. I discovered by accident that the rear counter rotating rotors (the one closest to the two wheels in the back) have to do with this. The issue is with the TOP rotor (controlled by the motor with the white and black wires). IF your rotor blades are too straight, the Tandem Rescue will violently fly backwards when you power up. No amount of trimming or mixing will solve this although DR might help a bit it won't 'do you any good. In fact, you can’t fly forward without severely doing some CG work. Even then, it can barely turn left but turns right very very very slowly. Basically it's a flying lemon.

If the top rear rotor is too bent, your tandem rescue will fly forwards and you’ll have to pitch back severely, to get it leveled.

In fact, as you adjust trim in the air, you'll see your tandem try to level out but it still won't do any good as it still can't yaw or fly normally.

Furthermore, it doesn’t matter if your rotors are NEW because some new rotors will keep your bird to the ground (this happened to my red bull mcx with straight rotors out of the box and it happened to my tandem rescue as well– it didn’t fly until I bent them correctly). New and faulty rotors look the same to the eye. Any degree of difference multipled by the thousands of rpms will cause the tandem not to fly.

There is a fix!

I couldn’t believe how easy this was to fix and the whole time I thought it was the 5-in-1 board. I tried putting the new faulty set of rotors (it looks perfect to the eye and looks similar to all rotors that work well -I have 20/20 vision) on other tandem rescue I have and they also couldn’t fly. This let me know, I singled out the problem.

The best rotor to put on the hind top counter clockwise rotor are the new rotors that have the word “Blade” from the MCX2 line.
Basically, I fly with 3 sets of old rotors and 1 set of the new MCX2 "blade logo" rotor on the counter rotating top rear rotor. The added weight and stiffness keeps the quality in check. If you don’t believe me, try twisting that top rear counter rotating hind rotor at the very top severely and you’ll notice you can make a perfect flying tandem into one that either goes forward ALL the time, backwards ALL the time, and one that can’t yaw/turn for the love of god. The 4 year problem is finally solved!!!!!!!!!!!

It’s easy to figure out why this is the fix. If you throttle up slightly and move the pitch forward, you’ll notice that the top rear counter rotating blade spins faster than the front counter rotating blades in the front of the helicopter. In order for this helicopter to fly well, all the blades must work perfectly. Any deviation of degree of bending or twisting throws the helicopter too forward and or backwards which will make yawing impossible. It makes this helicopter so temperamental. People reported flying it well for two days or even two weeks, and all of a sudden the helicopter doesn’t do what they want. These people have either replaced the rear top counter rotating blades with new ones or damaged them. Again, buying new blades won’t work, unless you’re replacing it with the new MCX2 blades that are stiffer and difficult to get wrong for the rear top counter rotating set. The faulty blades/rotors look nothing like damaged goods. So, don’t sell that tandem just yet or return it because of the 5-in-1 (it isn’t the problem it’s purely MECHANICAL unbelievably). Fix that one set of rotors and you'll have your tandem back. Have fun flying!!!