How do you guys do your trim flights. ?

[crf69]

Go!

[Eury]

I have a Vcontrol. On a calm day I take off and let it move around on its own until it's sitting still. Then I land and turn off auto trim. Just like the documentation says. Off its headed somewhere I don't like I move it back with the sticks and let go again.

If it's WAY out, the auto trim won't bring it to level trim in my experience. On one of my helis I decided to try it and it just wouldn't work. However, if I just eyeball the awash to level and then auto trim it works great.

[Larry227]

I get my swash bang on during setup and usually never do a trim flight. I found in the past when I did do one it usually made things worse as far as getting it to hands off hover.

[LaDon]

Yep once we got the soko tool that ended all trim flights. You can get the swash level enough it don't need one

[TheBum]

There are two main factors that affect trim: swash level and fore-aft CG. If both are spot-on, a trim flight gains you nothing.

[Eury]

But what the Soko won't do is correct for CG being off. The trim flight will make a Heli that is a bit off balance fly perfectly.

[LaDon]

No the soko won't but if you set your Heli up correctly your cg won't be off either. Trim flight doesn't fix that either. It may mask it some but won't fix it. Nothing fixes a poorly set up Heli other than doing it right

[Eury]

True, it won't "fix" it in the sense that the CG will still be off. However, it will make it fly much better. I'd wager that 90% of the people out there would not notice the difference between a Heli with the CG a bit off and a trim flight done and something setup perfectly. Most people don't fly beyond a sport flyer level. I'm sure Ryan would see the difference, me, not so much.

Note that I'm talking about a minor drift here, not some huge out of balance situation.

[TheBum]

Originally Posted by LaDon

No the soko won't but if you set your Heli up correctly your cg won't be off either.

With some helis, you don't have much of a choice on CG except experimenting with packs until you find one that weighs just the right amount, plus or minus what little adjustment you have. Then you potentially run into the issue of the pack being too small for the amount of flight time you want.

[jsbach#1]

I thought a perfectly level swash and you're gonna get a tiny bit of drift, that its actually ever so slightly tilted one way to not drift whatsoever.

[Kevin Dalrymple]

RCHN talked about this with the Neo. They said to do a flight with the optimizers on and do the flips and rolls in each direction. They sit the optimizers off. They do a trim flight on a super calm day. Take you hands off and wait till the Heli is stable, don't land or move the controls. Look at the rim numbers on Vcontrol and remember them. Land ouch the numbers in the trim flight screen. Then fly like normal.

This made a difference on my N7. I love the way it flies.

[Russell Skinner]

Originally Posted by Kevin Dalrymple

RCHN talked about this with the Neo. They said to do a flight with the optimizers on and do the flips and rolls in each direction. They sit the optimizers off. They do a trim flight on a super calm day. Take you hands off and wait till the Heli is stable, don't land or move the controls. Look at the rim numbers on Vcontrol and remember them. Land ouch the numbers in the trim flight screen. Then fly like normal.

This made a difference on my N7. I love the way it flies.

Can you recall what episode number this is?

[TheBum]

Mikado even says that you don't have to do a trim flight if your mechanical setup is accurate and CG is correct.

Quoted from http://www.vstabi.info/en/node/1892:

During a trim flight, VBar performs all necessary trims of the helicopter automatically (elevator, aileron, tail). A trim flight is not necessary if the servo linkages are installed mechanically correct, the swash plate is leveled, and the center of gravity is set properly.

[alexd1]

I do a trim flight on all my helis. With vbar control take off and let it sit until stable and then you can turn it off while still in the air and continue flying.

[Kevin Dalrymple]

I believe it is episode 195 or 196. It is when the the guys are talking about what they did that week.

[Russell Skinner]

Originally Posted by Kevin Dalrymple

I believe it is episode 195 or 196. It is when the the guys are talking about what they did that week.

Thanks, I'll check them out.