training gear

[anyw]

first can i thank you all for getting me this far, the help i am recieving from here is fantastic so i want to say thanks to you all and especially the guys behind the scenes who keep it running
right enough snivelling
following on from my thread the other day i was advised to make some training balls out of carbon rods and pingpong balls so that is my job this afternoon, hopefully all being well will get it done and do some flying later. i have got the rods and the balls and used tiegrips to tie them to the undercarriage now the set i have for the blade comes in 4 pieces of carbon with a joiner in the middle. what i need to know is hw important is the joiner, can i just use 2 long cabon rods and tie them in the middle or should i get a joiner( which angles slightly down). hope i haven't confused anyone apart from myself

[Dan1982]

just tie them in the middle. it should be fine. the set i brought for my blade ages ago were 2 long carbon rods with a small bit of syclone tubing in the middle rather than a tie.

[anyw]

thanks

[BaRoN30s]

i find that a hoop works better than the balls you only get the 4 corners with the balls on but with the hoop you get 360 deg & easier to see for levelness whilst in the air..

only cost a quid from the local quid shop in town.. it was a small bat & soft ball i just took the handle off it.

[unwind-protect]

The thing about balls, especially on the larger helis, is you can get the heli light on the skids (er, balls...) and then it will slide about, half supported by the ground effect cushion and half supported by the balls (especially if you do form them into a shallow pyramid, letting you experience the feeling balancing the heli in a hover. For whatever reason this seemed to work less well on 450's (although my training gear was pants!)

All a hoop does is make the landing gear larger, making it less likely to tip over on landing. I imagine it's also more likely to get caught on the ground than a hoop.