Spy Hawk Help

[illustrious]

hi,

I recently bought a Spy Hawk heli :? (95% same as Hummingbird) off ebay from a seller called "3tofly". The heli arrived after 5 days, which was good although the postage from Hong Kong was 30.

However, there was an unexpected extra payment of 26 8O when Parcel Force turned up on the doorstep. Not good. No mention at all during the sale.

The heli is ok. Perhaps I should have spent a few more to get a better one. I've hardly flown it and it's in bits now while I try to adjust it and make repairs. Luckily the parts (except main frame, skids and battery) are the same as the Hummingbird.

:!: Just a word of caution to prospective buyers of these Spy Hawks - there is an unexpected 26 charge and although RTF, it needs alot of work - not good when like me, you don't know how to setup a heli:!:

illustrious

[mo]

imported helli's

Hi.
A very sad story which does nothing to add to the sport of flying helli's.

I believe that illustrious might have been a bit unlucky on that extra payment, If what I was told is correct,the customs only check on so many imported packages that come into the country, and if yours is one of those then it is a bad luck story.
Also as I have found out for myself, the glut of indoor helli's that are around at the moment give many people the impression that it is easy to to sit one down in the middle of your living room, and in no time at all will be performing 3D round the lightshade.
The reality when they are left with an expensive pile of broken plastic and carbon fibre, must stop a lot of people from carrying on with the sport, thinking that they must be a bit behind the door in grey matter.
This could not be further from the truth, and as illustrious has rightfuly stated, it all comes down to that all important SETUP, and even more important flying space.
I can only advise that illustrious goes out and joins a local club for good help and advice,and then truly enjoys getting to conquer the flying of R/C Helicopters in the fresh air with no space problems. "GOOD LUCK".
Mo.

[illustrious]

Many thanks for the reply!

I have got massive space indoors at work to learn so I got that angle covered.

I wonder if anyone can help with a problem I'm having :?:

When applying throttle (fixed pitch) as the heli starts to lift, the tail moves around to the left (when looking down from the tail end) and does not stay still. Putting the yaw (left stick) hard over left slows the tail rotor and helps to stabilise it but surely I can't fly the thing yawing hard to stay level :?:
Is this something that stabilises as the heli gets further from the ground ( :?: ground effect :?: or do I need to play with the Gyro gain and setup screws 8O some more?

All help is greatly appreciated.

[Stuart]

The Gyro is the problem, have you got some pics yet ?

[illustrious]

Here is a pic of the gyro I have on my heli.
I know the GAIN adjusts the sensitivity but not sure exactly what this does - i.e. how it makes the heli behave.

I know the SETUP is ok cos when the heli is still the POWER LED lights both red and green at the same time. Tweaking the screw ensures this is the case. Moving the tail by hand changes the colour to either green or red singly - presumably to indicate that the gyro knows what is going on.

To the left of the GAIN adjuster shown in the pic is another screw, but under the casing, and I have no idea what this is.

[img]http://rcheliaddict.co.uk/modules/coppermine/albums/userpics/10304/pg-03%20gyro.jpg[/img]

hmmm :?: :?

[illustrious]

The heli honny bites the dust..

:(
Well, after spending countless hours adjusting my heli - balancing blades, levelling paddles, tweaking the gyro, balancing the whole damn thing I finally give up!
After trial flights in the huge reception hall at work I first managed to smash the tail rotor. So, with a new one fitted I tried again but to no avail. As the thing does nothing but have it's tail spin round and round to the left no matter what I do, the 2nd tail rotor took a minor bump and the motor gave up all together.
Finding a couple of scores to the tail motor wires I replaced the damaged sections and beautifully soldered them in place, taking care to double check the joints and that they were wired correctly - all was well.
Still not even a twitch from the motor. I give up on it!

After looking at other options (Hummingbird, Piccolo Collective Pro) all I see is "it won't fly very well without mods," "stock helis are useless," "adjust this, that, the other" and finally getting lost in all the technical stuff I have to hang up my Tx.

Fun while it lasted though! Goodnight all! :(

[mo]

HELP WITH INDOOR HELLI'S

Hi Illustrious.

Sorry to hear about the problems you are having with indoor Helli's, and your attempts mirror mine when I had a fling with them.
Are you sure that the gyro is working in the correct sense, you should be able to trim the tail enough to give yourself a stable lift off.
I wish that I could give you some good advice, but I never managed to get a good controlled flight out of one of the things owing to room restrictions, but am sure given the room you are flying in, I would have been successful.
DO NOT give up, just have a good sit down, grit your teeth, and vow the bugger will not beat you,I do not know your locallity but it is odds on that in the near future you will get the help you need if you persist with your helli, it will take time to conquer the thing, and success will not come overnight, but from your writings I can see you are a level headed chap and believe me YOU CAN DO IT.
Just keep on writing to this site about your experiences and I am sure the backup you require will be forthcoming.
I know the feeling to be battling on your own, and the pity is that if someone could set your helli up for you, your confidence in what you are trying would be boosted.
Just "KEEP TRYING" Illustrious' and keep people informed of what you are attempting, take it from me you will be sure of success,but remember that good things do not come cheap.

Mo.

[illustrious]

After a good nights sleep and reading your very influential post, I think may just give it another shot.
A new lease of life came in the form of a text message from a chum this morning who has bought a Piccolo Collective Pro on the spurr of the moment after I told him I had one.
Hence he may now become more of a "colleague" than a chum!

Many thanks for the support - it HAS helped!

illustrious :D

[Raptorite]

Hi Illustrious,

I had a similar problem a while back with a CP piccolo I had, and more recently when I was asked to setup and test fly someone else's hummingbird.

The problem you describe is not uncomon on these sorts of helis with separate motors for mains and tails.

What you will find is probably on the receiver there will be a "Mixing" adjustment, what this does is mixes or more accurately balances the power being sent to the tail motor with that being sent to the main motor.

This means if the balance is too low for the tail motor which is what sounds to be the case here, the tail blades wont physically turn fast enough to be able to cope with the power it needs to put out to couter act the torque of the main rotors.

The thing to do is find the "mixing" adjustment screw, turn it up a little, try it to see if the pirouette speed either speeds up or slows down.

If it speeds up then you need to adjust the mixing screw back to where it was and then turn it an equal amount in the opposite direction, then try it again. If on the other hand after you made the initial adjustment the pirouette rate slowed down, this means you are heading in the right direction, so just keep adjusting it very small amounts until it stops pirouetting.

Once you have this sorted its time to look at the gyro, the first thing to do here is turn the gain screw as far clockwise as it will go (high gain) then lift off into a hover, if the tail wags back and forth like some sort of excited dog then the gain is too high, so in very small amounts start turning the gain screw anti-clockwise until it no longer wags from side to side.

Once you have done this, you're pretty much there, the final test is to check to see if you need any revo mixing in the TX, if you have that facility on your TX, if not the mixer board on the RX will take care of that for you.

The way to test this is to raise the throttle steadily and progressively to see if the tail matches the increase in speed and ultimately torque of the main rotors, if the tail starts to pirouette slowly as you increase throttle and then stays still when you hold it at that height then its ok, its just a delay in the tail motor catching up with the main motor but if at that speed the tail continues to pirouette, you might need to add some revo, or fine tune the mixer on the RX to stop this.

Let me know how you get on, best of luck with it.

Cheers,

Pete.

[illustrious]

Many thanks for the advise, Raptorite.

I'll fetch it apart again and look for that screw. Just as soon as I've found out why the tail motor has stopped working FULL STOP.

in the meantime, what is revo?

Cheers :D

[Raptorite]

Hi Illustrious,

No problem, I saw your other post asking for help with the gws gyro, after reading stuarts reply I was hoping you had it sorted.

Revo mix, otherwise known as revolution mixing is the ability in the TX to be able to adjust the pitch of the tail rotors to give more or less thrust to counter act the changes in torque of the main rotors as they either generate more or less lift.

If you imagine that we are hovering about 3 foot off the ground with the tail facing us being held nice and tight without drifting or moving left or right, now imagine we increase the throttle, which on a collective pitch heli will also increase the pitch of the main rotors, doing this will increase the lift and ultimately drag on the main rotors, thus we also need to increase the throttle to give us the extra power we need to keep the main rotors spinning at the right speed.

The effect of doing this is to increase the torque being transmitted to the main rotors by the engine, what this means is that the thrust of the tail rotors will no longer be enough to hold the tail still, so we also need to increase the pitch or thrust of the tail rotors enough to maintain a nice straight hover.

So basically what revo mixing does is to match the thrust of the tail rotors with the changes in torque of the main rotors so that we can keep the heli pointing in the same direction with a nice steady tail.

I hope this is a clear enough description for you, as its not all that easy to describe.

Hope all goes well with the heli.

Cheers,

Pete.

[Stuart]

Keep us posted on how you get on, I'm sure if you stick in you'll get your rewards.