Beginners and New to Heli's ... Read this FIRST

[heliTV]

Got the CX2 flying today - what a good buy - can just about manage a hover with the training gear in the living room... 4 battery charges and no crashes yet - I guess over-confidence will soon cause a nice crash...

Still having fun with Phoenix - one thing the chap in the LHS said was that some helis would be difficult (or impossible) to fly with the basic 4ch with the blade... Needs more than 4 channels mixed or something - could this be why the 3D helis are so difficult or just inexperienced piloting? I suspect the latter!!

Many thanks for the advice so far

[Boggy]

you can fly all the models with the cx2 controleer . phoenix will do the mixing for you. if you need extra channels just use keyboard commands. set them in the my controls menu.( the cx2controler is adequate but not perfect when you eventually upgrade to a dx6/7 faast etc you will see a difference, but you should be able to fly reasonably well with it)

[santini air]

A few questions

Hi all,

My first post on here and pretty much any other forum so if I've messed up somehow please don't flame me ( I think thats the term!)

Great guide Bubblefish, your words illustrate my first 3 months of copter flying perfectly.

I started out with a CX2, which as a complete beginner took me a while to suss out. I've learnt it pretty well now, mainly from hovering and minor manouvering in the living room and then in a small back garden. I've taken it out into wide open spaces since and am very confident with it. The step up was great once I got it out in the open, slight cross wind but everything kind of fell into place and I had it flying all over the place - even banked a couple of turns - it was cool

I recently could not resist the bigger Blade 400 - uh oh !
This thing is a beast compared - longest flight so far is 20 secs, 3ft high, dived nose first into the ground, new blades, new main shaft, new blade grips, new servo gears and so on. Big outlay on top of the 300 quid I paid !

Anyway I appreciate that practice makes perfect and a lot of time needs putting in which i'm prepared to do. I also appreciate that a simulator is an essential, which leads me to my first question :

I'm Mac based so can you or anyone recommend a good Mac sim (if there is one out there) ?

Also I'm experiencing 'random' lift off effects, I've read alot of guides on learning to fly the 400 and I understand the basics of ground effect and that the copter will tend to yaw right and drift left. However, during one session I'm experiencing random hopping and yawing (left and right). I end up compensating with trim but to a silly amount, which surely can't be right ?

I've levelled the swash and balanced everything but sometimes it just baffles me - each lift off is different so I'm kind of not getting anywhere. I'm not the best pilot but this is not all down to control errors :

2nd question : Any ideas on why this might happen ?

3rd question : I have still got the factory set up on my DX6i apart from lowering the expo to 90% on all. I've read that lowering head speed and increasing pitch is more 'hover friendly' which is what I want to achieve first of all - any tips on set up on the Tx for this ?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated - sorry for the essay but for those that read it - Hi and thanks

[Boggy]

there is a radio setup in the blade 400 section. you say you've lowered the expo to 90%?? that could be your problem you have actually made it more twitchy try +25%expo that may help

[Boggy]

http://www.rcheliaddict.co.uk/showthread.php?t=11183

http://www.rcheliaddict.co.uk/showthread.php?t=9329

here are a couple of links that may help

[santini air]

Thanks, my bad on the 90% got that the wrong way round - I've added 10% which has made it 110 - nice set up guides Boggy cheers. I'll try em out and post. Going to take the copter back in to my local shop tomorrow, on another look there does seem to be a servo/receiver issue. In TH mode the pitch servo is making random movements which seem to be triggered by input sometimes and sometimes not - weird ? I will update with the diagnosis - also will try to search out the B400 forum !

[stevie d]

i had the same problem with the servo, some one at the local indoor club just re-bound it for me and everything has been fine since (touch wood)!

[Pencil Pusher]

Beginner tips/ start with co-ax or cx2
good advice , maybe i should have read that betfore buying a esky hony bee
and a esky honey bee 2 with full upgrade
20 years in fixed wing hasnt helped me get the HB in anything like a hover
more like a wasp chasing the dog before it hits the ground,
so now ive turned to the King2
anyone help in How to set up to calm it down?

[cjcj1949]

Have you looked at the mcx. It's half the size of the cx2 and very stable. It is indoor only but can be flown in a living room. Being so small it survives crashes that would break a cx2 and can fly figure of eights in a normal living room. It's about £50 without a tx and will fly on the cx2 tx. With the mcx you can take as long as you like to control it in any orientatation.

[tazman]

I have been in the heli game for about a month and found the twin blade quite good, have moved up a step as have been told the bigger the heli the easier it is, so have purchased a twister Cp Gold and came with a transmitter, the problem is the settings they sent with it dont and cant match with the transmitter has anyone else had this problem or can anyone got any settings that I can use and then change to match myself

[heliTV]

Hi Tazman
Welcome to the forum.
It is true that for a given type of heli larger ones are more stable, but any single rotor heli won't have anything like the stability of a twin rotor contra-rotator.

I started with a Blade CX2 and have progressed (with a fair amount of trouble!) to a Blade 400. It is much more difficult. I would advise buying a simulator (Phoenix is well regarded here) and getting plenty of practice before venturing into the air with the CP..

Hope this helps

Graham

[cjcj1949]

As Graham says it won't be as stable. I think that's an understatement. The difference is like sitting on a chair or balancing on a chair with two legs. As soon as you take off you will need to control it. It will not sit there like a cx2. It's not difficult to hover but it usually takes a few months to find out how easy it is, and that's just tail in. Do get a sim before you try and fly it, FMS is free. Setup is difficult as well. You'll need low rates and possibly expo. They are all more difficult to fly if it's not trimmed right.

[tazman]

thankyou guys will look at both sims and compare

[Doddsy]

Hello there! I've spent the last 2 hours gleening as much from this thread as poss. Good on guzzlebubble for starting all this.

I noticed that this all started about a year ago and things have moved on a bit and this mCX is available.

What do people reckon to this, is the TX the same as on the CX2, and is it as beneficial for training purposes. I had some crappy 3 channel toy that my bro bought me from a gadet shop and now want to try somat proper. I'll be getting the phoneix so the tx will have to work with that.

Also could I just go striaght to a DX6/7 and buy the mCX without the tx?



Can we have some opinions on this please.

Also just round up on a few posts about the CP disaster, I take it the CP is generally a liability (more than the rest) as the tail motor burnout etc, the belt driven one is that any good?

[Doddsy]

what is the best online shop for new choppers at present?