Gyros & cold weather

[longdog67]

Hi to all & happy new year,

Took my blade 400 out for its second ever flight/battery today, Getting to grips with hovering ok, but I did notice the gyro/rudder was wandering about a bit & I kept having to re trim.
I think I read somewhere that the gyro needs to acclimatise to temperature &/or are affected by cold weather. Is this true?

[raptorheli2]

it is somewhat true but depends a HUGE amount on the gyro. without going into a huge list basically high end modern gyros are temp calibrated generally speaking. this means the makers have adjusted the gyros to handle diff temps.

even if you do let the heli acclimatise the moment power is applied to it the internal temps will shoot up anyway due to internal heat build up which just negated your acclimatisation anyway. the problem is the temp diff between ambient on that day to the internal temp once at working temp.

basically if your gyro is drifting because of temp changes then you could try acclimatising it. what you may have more success with is turn it on for a few mins and let it heat up then reboot as normal. the internal temp will hopefully be static enough to help avoid this problem occurring. some gyros in my own experience just drift when not happy with the temp no matter how you try to avoid it so a bit of pot luck involved here i guess depending on your gyro.

edit- drifting is not normally temp related but given the temps it could well be. you may have something starting to work loose and vibrating there, be wary of that since it is new. check EVERYTHING over.

cheers

[coptermanic]

Is it not normal to drop the gain in colder weather? And agreed, drift implies something else the gyro is having to cope with, setup wise.