Question on Auto's

[pjbrazendale]

Am I right in thinking that to do an auto I need to be in idle up, hit throttle hold, give the heli negative pitch then back to positive pitch to control the landing? Want to try and get a technique on the sim along with some practice before trying it in real life.

Cheers

[Gate88]

Yes. You're basically using the weight of the falling model to get the negative pitch blades spinning then as you get near the ground you go to positive "Flare" and use the heads momentum to "catch" it and control the landing.

By all means practice on the sim but be warned that autos on the sim are nothing like real life.

[Downdraft]

By all means practice on the sim but be warned that autos on the sim are nothing like real life.

Agreed Guy, But a good tool to teach you what to expect apart from just how quick the model will fall out of the sky.

A good tip I always found when beggining to learn auto's was not to hit the hold switch until you have a reasonable amount of forward speed, although it can be done from the hover it is still harder to create forward motion from a stand stil and takes precious time.

[sacko]

Watch the Curtis Youngblood auto class if you can find it.

[Idleup95]

cant add much to what the others have said but tbh try not not to nose dive, try and keep the nose at just over 90 degrees for the smoothest approach and always do them into wind

thanks John

[pjbrazendale]

Cheers for the advice guys been having a play on the sim but finding it so much easier with a 600 or 700 size heli, 450 is near impossible!

[electricsceadu]

to start with on an auto with your model set the throttle to a high tick over that still drives the blades when hold is selected
as you get used to how the model comes down with a semi-powered auto reduce the amount of throttle
until you end up with the engine ticking over and not driving the blades for the auto
practice over a few weeks lowering the throttle little by little
and auto into wind


remember with the hold set to a high tick over do not start the heli with hold on

[Steve]

I have a specific pitch curve for throttle hold.

Engine goes to tickover. I never did the high tickover option when I learned autos, but I can see the point.

I normally fly about +/- 10.5 degrees collective pitch in my normal hacking about flight mode.

But in Throttle Hold I have -5 +12.5 with +5 hover at normal 2/3rds stick position.

The -5 means that as soon as pull the TT switch, I pull the collective all the way to the bottom till it hits the stops. I'm now descending nicely and controlling the helis approach on the cyclic and rudder only. The heli will descend faster if you point the nose down and slower if you pull back on the cyclic, so you can control the descent with the cyclic quite nicely while leaving the collective stuck at the bottom end point. Just bring in the collective for final touch down and blade slowing.

Once down to 5 feet or so, pull in the flair and rise the collective till the blades almost stop - that extra 2 degrees of collective pitch at the top end really helps you take energy out of the blades. If you're in a proper emergency auto and having to stick the heli down some distance away or onto rough ground or something, then the more you can slow the main blades before making contact, the more chance you have of saving the model.

It means I have setup the model on the bench with +/- 12.5 degrees collective right from the start, with the throttle hold mode in my mind right from day one. I then just use the pitch curves to get the required settings in the 'flying' flight modes, so maybe have +/- 90% on the curve to get +/- 10.5 degrees at the blades.

Edit: Just to add, once committed to and auto, I never bail out anymore. I did once with a 700 and the blades had slowed so much before I chickened out that when I re-engaged the engine the heli piroetted twice uncontrollably before the tail blades had enough authority to pull it back into line. Fortunately, I kept calm and waited for it to bite and no damage was done, but it surprised the hell out of me. From then on, once I go for an auto, it's going to end up on the ground one way or another, and that's that. Kinda puts the pressure on it to get it right.

[choppertastic]

The smack talk video on autos is pretty good to watch