Looking for some help/advice

[Gibbo1974]

Hi all,

I have just bought a second hand trex700e FBL 3G with 3GX and want to tame it down a tad to suit my flying style (sports)

It seems to me an F3C setup will suit me better than the 3G setup.

Can anyone point me in the right direction on where to start?

I think want a lower head speed and have read that f3c dampers might help. (red ones on align UK???)

any advice welcome I don't want to get it wrong. :-o

Gib.

[trillian]

I've been a bit of an F3C enthusiast for a few years, starting with setting up flybarred helis for FAI flying and having now moved into FBL the last couple years.

What I'm finding works well for me (and this is with a Rave Ballistic so it's not Trex-specific). I am running at about 1650 for the aero stuff with Radix FAI 710s and just upped the pitch range to get back the punchy feel that I like. I think I've got about +/- 12.5 on it now. Hovering is currently about 1500 ish and if I go much lower I'm getting some nodding. The puzzling thing about the nodding in a hover is that if I switch the FBL gain completely off it does not nod no matter how low the headspeed. I'm using a Total-G FBL controller, which works really well in general, I'll try lower swash gain next time and see what happens.

Between 1600/1700 I'm getting similar performance to a .90 nitro, roughly speaking, it's certainly plenty capable of all the usual F3C moves. The advantage of the lower headspeed is much lower amps being drawn so better flight times and the option to use smaller packs.

On the Rave the tail holds very well at those headspeeds with 105 tails, this is another area where I'm not sure about the Trex as to the tail gearing and if it needs higher headspeeds or not. (another option if tail authority is a problem is running 690 mains and 110 tails).

The damper thing is something of a puzzler to me with FBL. On a flybarred machine I know exactly how it will react with various hardness of damping but with my various flybarless helis the only one that misbehaves at low headspeeds is the Rave and I know the dampers are not any harder than most of the others and in fact one of them has a rigid head with no dampers at all and it still doesn't nod. In general the harder the better with FBL but now that FBL helis are being flown in proper F3C competitions there is bound to be some expert knowledge out there about the effects of different dampers for hovering vs the aeros etc.