Setup advice for abit of a noob

[mrmaynarduk]

Hello all! ☺

I would like some advice on setting up my blade 450 and blade 500 for begginer use.. i had attemped to fly rc helis dome years ago but then i had to quit.. im now trying to get back in the game and would like to know the best settings to setup my blade 450 and 500 for begginer use.. i have quite a few hours on the flight sim now and feel im ready to give it ago for real.. i used to have an old shuttle size 30 back in the day.. i beleive its possible to setup the helis so thay are less reactive? Well less responsive? I just want to soften the controls up realy.. im not looking to get into 3d..my future aim eould be to build a scale bird.. im running the dx6i tx so if anyone could point me in the direction on which settings to consentrate on that would be fantastic! I have googled it but the amount of different settings that can be changed is quite overwhelming i must say 😑

Any help much appreciated 😀

[waveydavey]

Hi and welcome. The easiest thing to do is reduce the rates for aileron and elevator, add some expo so the heli doesn't feel as twitchy and see how you go. Any 450 is going to feel twitchy though. You might feel better with slightly less pitch too, so say -4 to 10, something like that. One man's medicine is another ones poison though when it comes to setup and feel, it's how you want it to feel that is more important. Are both flybarless?

[mrmaynarduk]

Hi and welcome. The easiest thing to do is reduce the rates for aileron and elevator, add some expo so the heli doesn't feel as twitchy and see how you go. Any 450 is going to feel twitchy though. You might feel better with slightly less pitch too, so say -4 to 10, something like that. One man's medicine is another ones poison though when it comes to setup and feel, it's how you want it to feel that is more important. Are both flybarless?

Thanks for your reply.. when you say about adjusting the pitch do you mean adjusting the pitch curve on the tx?

[waveydavey]

Essentially yes. Are both Heli’s flybarless, IE no fly bar

[mrmaynarduk]

Essentially yes. Are both Heli’s flybarless, IE no fly bar

No thay are both flybar ☺

[waveydavey]

Okay, adjust pitch curve to give you the required pitch. Bottom a bit less as above -4 will do for a start

[mrmaynarduk]

Okay, adjust pitch curve to give you the required pitch. Bottom a bit less as above -4 will do for a start

Sorry but i still do not understand what im actually meant to be adjusting here? And by the -4 ect i get lost at that point lol..

[waveydavey]

The bottom and top points in your pitch curve sets your max or min pitch. So for example if you've set -10 to 10 (degrees) across your end point range (100 to -100 in your Tx) you've got a straight line. Then if you change your first point to say 25% then you would have around -2.5 degrees at low stick. Does that make sense? If it does then you can alter point 2 to smooth out the change, so lift it to say 33, roughly half way between 25 and 50 (your mid point), I think the DX6 allows expo on the curve so it should smooth between the points.

[mrmaynarduk]

Umm ok.. im still not quite following what im actually meant to be adjusting here sorry... i think i seriously need to try figure out what settings i should be adjusting as there are soo many different settings on this tx i can change its crazy lol.. im not dumb i just find it hard to understand what settings to consentrate on as there are soo many.. i have watched a few videos on how to setup on youtube but im still struggling.. can anyone recomend a decent video to watch that can help explain what certain srttings do? When you say about expo and pitch and throttle curves ect my brain just goes dead �� ive even read the tx manual and the blade operation manual many times but its getying my head around everything.. its certainly over whelming to say the least.. my tx has a millons settings but i just dont understand which ones i need to look at and the ones i dont realy need to worey about.. ☺

[DaveJones]

Put you heli on a level bench and disconnect the motor so it won't spool up and hurt you.

Turn on your radio and power up your heli

Stick your pitch gauge on one of the main blades, and rotate the blades so there are 90 degrees to the boom

Move the collective stick all the way up and you will read your max positive pitch (probably around 10-12 degrees)

Move the collective stick all the way down and you will read your max negative pitch

Next look in your radio, you should have a setting called pitch curve, you can adjust various points in this curve. On a Spektrum radio moving the collective up and down moves a line on the pitch curve for reference. The default setting is usually a 45 degree straight line with 0 output when the collective is at the bottom, 50 when the collective is in the middle and 100 at the top.

To reduce the amount of negative pitch you have simple increase the value of the bottom stick to say 25. You should be able to see the effect with your pitch gauge, if you got -10 before, you might now only get -7

Your pitch curve probably has 5 or more adjustable points, if you increase the bottom one to 25, then increasing the second one to say 35 allows you to shape the pitch curve so you get an even change in pitch as you move the stick.

Increasing the max negative pitch to say -4 makes the heli less sensitive on the collective and lessens the chances of you screwing it into the floor when you get in trouble and instinctively bottom out the collective (which is not a good practise, height is your friend when you get in trouble, then throttle hold).

Personally I have always kept zero degrees of stick at mid collective stick position so I have a consistent reference point for my fingers. You will need some negative pitch available to you so don't be tempted to remove -ve altogether. Also watch out for the pitch curve associated with throttle hold, match it to the pitch curve you fly most of the time or you risk suddenly having a load of negative pitch as soon as you hit throttle hold which is never fun.

Most important thing though, disconnect the motor before playing with a live heli on the bench, it hurts if you spool up a live one in the living room :-)

[Sheldrake]

Hi where are you? Lincolnshire is pretty big! From your responses it really sounds as if you could do with some help?
There are lots of people around and Dave Jones who replied earlier regularly flys at BMFA Buckminster he or others would soon have you sorted😊

Good luck with it because it really is a most rewarding hobby once you get going😇

[nkma]

Hello all! ☺

I would like some advice on setting up my blade 450 and blade 500 for begginer use.. i had attemped to fly rc helis dome years ago but then i had to quit.. im now trying to get back in the game and would like to know the best settings to setup my blade 450 and 500 for begginer use.. i have quite a few hours on the flight sim now and feel im ready to give it ago for real.. i used to have an old shuttle size 30 back in the day.. i beleive its possible to setup the helis so thay are less reactive? Well less responsive? I just want to soften the controls up realy.. im not looking to get into 3d..my future aim eould be to build a scale bird.. im running the dx6i tx so if anyone could point me in the direction on which settings to consentrate on that would be fantastic! I have googled it but the amount of different settings that can be changed is quite overwhelming i must say 

Any help much appreciated 

No thay are both flybar ☺

The whole concept of setting up the radio for a flybar heli is quite different than for a flybarless heli.

With flybar the radio mixes pitch, aileron and elevator stick positions to servo positions for the three swash servos.
Most of this is in "swash mix" described on page 123-124 in the DX6i manual.

Here is a video on how to do it:

/Bo

PS. You often see the abbreviation CCPM. CCPM is short for "Cyclic-Collective-Pitch-Mixing".

PS 2. For some FBL controllers, e.g. the early Align 3G and 3GX, the idea was that the radio setup was as if the heli had a flybar. Most FBL controllers want AIL, ELE and pitch as separate inputs, quite different from what a flybar heli wants.

[waveydavey]

DaveJones, better than I could have put. Nice description, it's easy to forget the assumption that others know what you're talking about

[Mike Sanders]

When I started I bought this e book. It enabled me to set up my first helicopter on my own. https://www.rchelicopterfun.com/swashplate-setup.html

There may be other guides and I know there is a lot on forums and you tube. It is all capable of being mastered.

[mrmaynarduk]

20180103_075331.jpg

This is what ive managed to set the 450 up with.. took awhile to figure out how to adjust the pitch and throttle curves but now ive worked most of it out i can now get a better picture of what im adjusting and what does what.. if i wanted to soften the sensitivity of the throttle/pitch stick up would i adjust it in the pitch and throttle curve srtting on the tx? Or do i need to do it with other settings?