Blade 400 3D - Airborne without crashing!

[dam74]

This morning I finished off setting up the Blade 400 3D after putting in some new parts and then found that one of the ball links was cracked on the collective rods (not sure correct name) that go from the swashplate to the bell-hiller mixer arms on the blade grips. I ended up putting it on the servo that has two rods, thought it was safter to put it there cracked as it had another rod and I wouldn't be overly stressing it with what I was doing.

Drove down to the local park. Took out the box of gear and the heli and went off to setup. Got it all setup with training gear. Switched on TX switched to the model I wanted to use. Plugged in battery on heli with motor disconnected. Went to test the servos and nothing happened. So bound it up and remembered the all important thing this time......REMOVE THE BIND PLUG. Powered it all down and started up again and the servos worked this time. Time to plug in the motor. ESC and gyro initialised. Time to try this baby out.

Anyway ramped up the throttle and managed to get it airborne quite a few times. One time I got it up to about 12-15ft and it does feel a lot more easier to control then at 1ft off the ground (ground effect). Had one hard landing where I saw it starting to tilt over so I decided to just throttle/collective down quickly before the new blades hit the dirt.

So for me it was a good day, airborne without crashing and causing lots of damage. It does need a bit of tweaking as I don't think it's 100% right. Hopefully Dan and Gav will able to help me there in that department if it's not fixed by the 9th.

One thing I did note and you guys will be able to help on this is that when I was getting to around 50% throttle/collective and just beyond to the point of lift the tailboom was vibrating like mad sort of like a dogs tail when they get over excited

Would this be down to a slack belt? Or would be down to the tail boom not adequately secured in the helicopter housing? Any help on this would be appreciated.

[xygax]

Was the booom wagging up and down or side to side...???

Up and down is uasally not enough head speed

Side to side is uasally too much gain on the gyro...

Steve

[dam74]

I'm pretty sure it was side to side and seemed to settle a bit once airborne. As I said this was just pre-lift as the weight was taken off the training gear.

[Mart61]

Yeah - sounds like gyro gain too high to me.

[Gav]

Nice one - glad you got some air time with the Blade! I am sure Dan will be able to help you out on the 9th if you still have waggy dog tail effect (as he knows the blade 400 inside and out). Did you try the other dudes suggestion and try turning down the gain? If you got a GY401 make sure the delay pot is set to zero (just a thought).

[Tombo242]

Congratulations Darry and some good advice to follow from the team.

Hope you have many more safe landings.

[Boggy]

nice one well done Darryl

[Grant85]

Nice one on your sucessful flight today A note on the tail wagging; If it's a fast side to side wag then the gyro gain is too high but if it's a slow wag with bigger sweeps to the left and right then the gyro may well be set too low.HTH.
Cheers Grant.

[Dan1982]

Glad you managed to bring your blade home undamaged. My esc packed up in flight, luckily it was over my garden when it decided to pack up, it crash landed undamaged on top of the chicken pen.

[dam74]

Well the rate of wag seems fairly high in my opinion sort of consistant with the ramp up of the main rotors. It's definately not high frequency wag probably if I'd like to guess about 60-120 times a minute, I'd say 1-2 wag per second.

I never got around to adjusting the gain as I wasn't sure what the cause of it was as I'm new to this game so didn't want to adjust the gain and just left it as is from box.
I'll try lowering it and see how that does.
Gav, the gyro is the default/factory gyro I doubt I'll replace the gyro just yet in the Blade until I've become relatively confident in flying it.

[Holst]

Im pleased to hear that you have managed a few hovers without crashing
The hardest part of heli flying is now over and you can keep practicing longer hovers untill you can keep in hovering for an entire battery

Does it wag in the air or just on the ground?

If its ok in the air then it might just be some vibration that dissapears when you reach a decent headspeed.

If its in the air you just need to drop the gain by a few % and test fly it, if the wag is still there keep dropping the gain untill its gone.

Dont forget to change that link as soon as you get a chance.
I would also carefully check all the others to make sure they are ok.

A crash due to mechanical faliure is much more annoying than one caused by the pilot.

[dam74]

Cheers holst, I haven't noticed anything other than a few wags when going from lowest to about 10% speed so at ramp up speed. Then the next set of wags start to appear at lifting speed. After that I don't tend to notice it when airborne. It does drift a bit and wondered if the wagging noticed when on the ground has become some other sort of problem eg. drift, rotation etc.

I really could do with a second set of eyes as when airborne I'm pretty much focused on the body orientation and trying to keep it flat with the ground.

I haven't really maintained a perfect hover as yet as it drifts about a fairbit and so after take off it has drifted away from me for about 10-15m. After that I drop it to the ground, lose throttle and hold it. Bring it back to same taek off point and start again.

[Grant85]

Darryl,Sometimes it can be easy to mistake a wagging tail for one that is just vibrating from something that is bent as I found out myself on my Blade 400.On closer inspection the tail rotor shaft was slightly bent,It doesn't take alot for the tiniest bend to make the tail vibrate as it spins at such a high RPM.Hope this helps.
Cheers Grant.

[Holst]

Cheers holst, I haven't noticed anything other than a few wags when going from lowest to about 10% speed so at ramp up speed. Then the next set of wags start to appear at lifting speed. After that I don't tend to notice it when airborne. It does drift a bit and wondered if the wagging noticed when on the ground has become some other sort of problem eg. drift, rotation etc.

I really could do with a second set of eyes as when airborne I'm pretty much focused on the body orientation and trying to keep it flat with the ground.

I haven't really maintained a perfect hover as yet as it drifts about a fairbit and so after take off it has drifted away from me for about 10-15m. After that I drop it to the ground, lose throttle and hold it. Bring it back to same taek off point and start again.

You would probably notice if the tail was wagging around due to the gain being too high.

Helis often vibrate a bit when your spooling up but they should settle down once you are close to takeoff speed. The blades have to get into ballance and any slack in the feathering shaft and head has to be taken up.
You can also get harmonic vibrations at certain speeds but these should dissapear when everything is spinning fast.

How are you running your throttle curve?

If you keep practicing like this you will soon get the hang of hovering and landing. Try and pay attention to how long you have been flying as its quite easy to overdischange a battery if you are take off and landing with a gap inbetween.
If you have a timer on your transmitter try and remember to start it when you take off and stop it when you land. If you have a DX6i you can stop the timer with one press of the button and then restart it from the same point with the next one.

[dam74]

As I said it seems to disappear once lifted off but I could do with a second set of eyes focusing on it. At the moment flight times around around 30-60sec. Everything else in between is a ramp up and shutdown as I'm constantly checking surroundings and if dog walkers get too close I shutdown. I will start to use the timer but at the moment I'm counting off myself., Once I start getting proper flights I will time it.