My first Auto :)

[bolders]

For various reasons I have not had a great deal of flight time on my nitro and as all my electric helis are 500 or smaller I have not yet tried an auto.

Well I done my first one on Saturday although it was not planned.

I was in a hover about 50ft up when the engine cut (I ran out of fuel - as I said not had many flights on the nitro lol). I put in negative pitch to get it down as quick as possible in order to maintain as much head speed as I could as I was fairly low and had no forward speed. Got the positive pitch in to slow it down and it landed with a bit of a bump. I stripped the rear TT gears but it stayed upright and there was no other damage. So in my mind that is a success lol.

Went out again Sunday and yep you guessed it I ran out of fuel...again. However this time I was a bit higher up and in forward flight. I managed to get the heli closer to me this time and down in one piece. My mate was with me at the time so I have a witness lol :P and he also said it looked like a nicely controled landing .

Unfortunately no video but my mate did get a bit of video of me cutting the grass (about 6 -8 inches or so off the deck). Have to say im really liking the velo and starting to get a bit more comfortable with it. So all in all I had a great weekend.

[Randall]

Well done chap :-) I done my first auto few months back, always flown electric so never really needed to do one tbh,good feeling whenever you do somthing new. Never had to do one without being ready for it though.

[cjcj1949]

Sounds good. I find autos quite easy ( on the sim) but I've been trying recently by just cutting throttle and the heli seems to come down much faster than on the sim. Much the same seems true for anything inverted or anything new. There's such a gap between when things don't matter and when they do. My tx has a separate auto switch that allows me to cheat by setting a fixed throttle value that I can gradually reduce to zero.

[AcidDrink]

Must have been great feeling!

I did a couple of small ones last weekend (from about 2 meters, which was easy), still don't have the confidence to try a proper one, maybe in 2-3 weeks

Practising approaches till then.

[Steve]

It's always a good feeling when they are successful.

I was flying my fbl 90 last week and the engine suddenly started to scream. Being a YS, I was worried that the tank had lost pressure and it was running lean, so not wanting to have to pay out for a new engine, I just hit hold very fast and auto'd down. No harm done.

Walked over to it on the ground and the engine was still running and my nads were still chattering. I picked it up into a low hover and it did it again so I packed it up in the car to be looked at on the bench.

I think the engine was slipping in the fan hub - need to tighten up the engine nut on the shaft.

But nothing broken, so a successful rescue.

[PeteStewardson]

My first successful one too yesterday, feels great doesn't it?

I was only about 25ft up though so not as impressive, but it was my 450 so I'm quite proud I managed it when I had to, even if I'm scared to try them on purpose. lol

[Paulice]

Well done, one the second one, hard luck on the first.
It's something everyone should practice, more so with a nitro but also with electric it's good practice