Hello All,
I have just upgraded one of my R/C heli's and yes I do build them from scratch, no pre-built kits for me.
Watch the video below to see what we at the club enjoy doing, no boring figure of 8 flying for us.
Yes I have a lot of hobbies, as I'm not aloud to spend all of my time on computers, Joanne has banned me. Apart from snooker, cycling (I build my own lightweight bikes from scratch), rebuilding cars and repairing TV's, I also have an absolute love for flying 450 and 500 sized R/C heli's, I prefer 450.
I'm just about to upgrade my old heli Head Lock Gyro (HLG) for a new HLG by Align, an HLG helps when it come to locking the nose of the heli in one direction, it basically stops the tail from drifting sidewards when flying.
I've just finished balancing and aligning my heli blades on my older heli, they were quite far out, next I'll swap over my HLG. I currently have 3 fully working heli's, 1 x DX6i transmitter and 1 x DX7 transmitter, 1 x ESC (Electronic Speed Control) programmer and lots of extra spare parts. I only really need 1 transmitter as I can program and store multiple R/C aircraft's into one transmitter, each with separate trim settings which can take ages to setup per heli correctly.
I have a club competition this weekend so I decided to use this older heli (which is my favourite heli). Currently this heli does not have any carbon blades installed, once I'm happy with the way it flies, I'll put a set of carbon blades on it for competition.
I've just balanced (weighed) a pair of new blades. Blades should always balanced, it helps to keep the heli hovering and flying smoothly without shakes, at 5000 RPM heli's can shake themselves to bits if the main blades are not balanced and trimmed up correctly. To balance 2 blades, I first weigh all my blades and I put them in pairs (blades that are closely matched in weight). When it comes to balancing the blades, I place a set of closely matched blades on a 'T' shaped swing blade balance, to balance the blades you just add clear tape under the lighter blade until they are perfectly level. Once placed on the R/C heli you then have to use a rotor blade pitch gauge to make sure that the centre position on the transmitter (the pitch control) does in fact mean that the blades are 100% perfectly level (no pitch on the blades) as this is necessary for 3D upside down flying. You can either adjust the pitch using the trim levels on the transmitter or you can adjust the pitch by adjusting the headset screws then trim them on the transmitter.
Balanced none carbon 325mm blade:
Main rotor headset:
Tail hub set with metal tail rotor, none carbon 62mm blades and a vertical carbon tail fin:
A closer look at the main chassis with the headset installed:
Chassis with all parts fitted:
The yellow thing at the bottom as a brushless Electronic Speed Controller (ESC)
Tail boom with brace bars (tail strut bars) and horizontal carbon tail fin:
450 Heli with its fibre glass canopy on:
One of my heli's in its case:
Below is a video of 3D flying and this is the sort of thing that we will be doing in competition this weekend. Okay in this video you are actually watching the world champion Alan Szabo Jr, but you will get the gist of what 3D heli flying is all about.
The first 3D trick that I ever did in real life at the field is called the 'Tick Tock', Alan does the 'Tick Tock' in the video below at 0.48 seconds, watch it as it's a real cool 3D trick. I had spend hours and hours and hours practising the manoeuvre on the simulator before actually trying it in real life, to my complete and utter surprise I got the 'Tick Tock' sussed (completed) at about my 6th or 7th attempt.
Try doing this with a drone
I have a friend who races drones manually in small local competitions (in sports halls). I flew his drone manually within minutes of trying it at my very first attempt, no I didn't crash it. My friend on the other hand couldn't even hover my heli on my flight simulator through my laptop (connected to my TV) using my DX7 transmitter. Yes you need to use a real R/C transmitter for Phoenix R/C Simulator. The simulator has separate trim settings to try to match each one of my heli's, each one of my heli's flies completely differently to the others. I would not let him lose on my real heli's simply because it's seriously dangerous and it took me 1 day just to learn how to hover it facing forward with crash stabilisers about 2 feet in the air, let alone facing backwards (controls are obviously reversed) and then flying and hovering upside down is just not easy at all, it takes years to be any good at it.
I've been flying heli's for about 10 years now, and I'm extremely good at it, but I've also spent thousand of hours refining my hand eye co-ordination skills on the simulator too. It's great when my friends come over and they try the simulator, they basically spend an hour crashing and getting nowhere lol...
If you are going to get into flying R/C helis (or even planes), then you should get Phoenix RC simulator first (whilst you still can), it will save you hundreds of £, $, €, Y, R etc in repair bills, BTW planes are a lot easier to fly. Sadly the makers have gone bump but they are allowing anybody to download the software for free, I paid £80 for my copy. Sadly they had a silly unsustainable business model, purchase it once and get a life time of free 3D model aircraft updates. Oddly enough their sales apparently dropped by 97% 18 months ago and now they have sadly gone under, they are still the industry leading flight simulator RC software though.
The bad thing about these R/C heli's is that they can be extremely dangerous when flying 3D (or just flying normally full stop).
There used to be on YouTube (if it's still on there) a video that showed somebody losing control of a heli and the main rotor blade hit a mans calf muscle, the heli blades were still spinning at around 4000 RPM when the heli hit the man, the blade cut straight through to his jeans into his leg bone, it looked horrible. The R/C heli pilot stupidly tried to save his heli, I would have just cut the heli power and tried to hover it to the ground, if that failed I would have no choice but to dumped it straight into the ground. I can always rebuild the heli in a few hours as I have enough spare parts to build at least 3 more fully working heli's, plus lots more extra parts, I would not have tried to keep control of it and crash it into a person.
My scary moment:
I once had a tail rotor failure when hovering only about 12 inches from the ground, luckily I had managed to land the heli without any damage (the tail just spun out of control), but unluckily the failed tail blade headed straight towards me and hit my index finger breaking my nail (it was painful, I actually went dizzy for a few seconds and my chest went tight), my nail fell off a few weeks later. Guess what ladies and gentlemen, I no longer hover my heli's with the tail perfectly inline with me. The scary thought is that a few inches higher and it would have been my throat or even my eyes (even though I wear glasses) might have been the target. These were brand new tails rotor blades that failed, really annoyed me.
Enjoy...
I have just upgraded one of my R/C heli's and yes I do build them from scratch, no pre-built kits for me.
Watch the video below to see what we at the club enjoy doing, no boring figure of 8 flying for us.
Yes I have a lot of hobbies, as I'm not aloud to spend all of my time on computers, Joanne has banned me. Apart from snooker, cycling (I build my own lightweight bikes from scratch), rebuilding cars and repairing TV's, I also have an absolute love for flying 450 and 500 sized R/C heli's, I prefer 450.
I'm just about to upgrade my old heli Head Lock Gyro (HLG) for a new HLG by Align, an HLG helps when it come to locking the nose of the heli in one direction, it basically stops the tail from drifting sidewards when flying.
I've just finished balancing and aligning my heli blades on my older heli, they were quite far out, next I'll swap over my HLG. I currently have 3 fully working heli's, 1 x DX6i transmitter and 1 x DX7 transmitter, 1 x ESC (Electronic Speed Control) programmer and lots of extra spare parts. I only really need 1 transmitter as I can program and store multiple R/C aircraft's into one transmitter, each with separate trim settings which can take ages to setup per heli correctly.
I have a club competition this weekend so I decided to use this older heli (which is my favourite heli). Currently this heli does not have any carbon blades installed, once I'm happy with the way it flies, I'll put a set of carbon blades on it for competition.
I've just balanced (weighed) a pair of new blades. Blades should always balanced, it helps to keep the heli hovering and flying smoothly without shakes, at 5000 RPM heli's can shake themselves to bits if the main blades are not balanced and trimmed up correctly. To balance 2 blades, I first weigh all my blades and I put them in pairs (blades that are closely matched in weight). When it comes to balancing the blades, I place a set of closely matched blades on a 'T' shaped swing blade balance, to balance the blades you just add clear tape under the lighter blade until they are perfectly level. Once placed on the R/C heli you then have to use a rotor blade pitch gauge to make sure that the centre position on the transmitter (the pitch control) does in fact mean that the blades are 100% perfectly level (no pitch on the blades) as this is necessary for 3D upside down flying. You can either adjust the pitch using the trim levels on the transmitter or you can adjust the pitch by adjusting the headset screws then trim them on the transmitter.
Balanced none carbon 325mm blade:
Main rotor headset:
Tail hub set with metal tail rotor, none carbon 62mm blades and a vertical carbon tail fin:
A closer look at the main chassis with the headset installed:
Chassis with all parts fitted:
The yellow thing at the bottom as a brushless Electronic Speed Controller (ESC)
Tail boom with brace bars (tail strut bars) and horizontal carbon tail fin:
450 Heli with its fibre glass canopy on:
One of my heli's in its case:
Below is a video of 3D flying and this is the sort of thing that we will be doing in competition this weekend. Okay in this video you are actually watching the world champion Alan Szabo Jr, but you will get the gist of what 3D heli flying is all about.
The first 3D trick that I ever did in real life at the field is called the 'Tick Tock', Alan does the 'Tick Tock' in the video below at 0.48 seconds, watch it as it's a real cool 3D trick. I had spend hours and hours and hours practising the manoeuvre on the simulator before actually trying it in real life, to my complete and utter surprise I got the 'Tick Tock' sussed (completed) at about my 6th or 7th attempt.
Try doing this with a drone
I have a friend who races drones manually in small local competitions (in sports halls). I flew his drone manually within minutes of trying it at my very first attempt, no I didn't crash it. My friend on the other hand couldn't even hover my heli on my flight simulator through my laptop (connected to my TV) using my DX7 transmitter. Yes you need to use a real R/C transmitter for Phoenix R/C Simulator. The simulator has separate trim settings to try to match each one of my heli's, each one of my heli's flies completely differently to the others. I would not let him lose on my real heli's simply because it's seriously dangerous and it took me 1 day just to learn how to hover it facing forward with crash stabilisers about 2 feet in the air, let alone facing backwards (controls are obviously reversed) and then flying and hovering upside down is just not easy at all, it takes years to be any good at it.
I've been flying heli's for about 10 years now, and I'm extremely good at it, but I've also spent thousand of hours refining my hand eye co-ordination skills on the simulator too. It's great when my friends come over and they try the simulator, they basically spend an hour crashing and getting nowhere lol...
If you are going to get into flying R/C helis (or even planes), then you should get Phoenix RC simulator first (whilst you still can), it will save you hundreds of £, $, €, Y, R etc in repair bills, BTW planes are a lot easier to fly. Sadly the makers have gone bump but they are allowing anybody to download the software for free, I paid £80 for my copy. Sadly they had a silly unsustainable business model, purchase it once and get a life time of free 3D model aircraft updates. Oddly enough their sales apparently dropped by 97% 18 months ago and now they have sadly gone under, they are still the industry leading flight simulator RC software though.
The bad thing about these R/C heli's is that they can be extremely dangerous when flying 3D (or just flying normally full stop).
There used to be on YouTube (if it's still on there) a video that showed somebody losing control of a heli and the main rotor blade hit a mans calf muscle, the heli blades were still spinning at around 4000 RPM when the heli hit the man, the blade cut straight through to his jeans into his leg bone, it looked horrible. The R/C heli pilot stupidly tried to save his heli, I would have just cut the heli power and tried to hover it to the ground, if that failed I would have no choice but to dumped it straight into the ground. I can always rebuild the heli in a few hours as I have enough spare parts to build at least 3 more fully working heli's, plus lots more extra parts, I would not have tried to keep control of it and crash it into a person.
My scary moment:
I once had a tail rotor failure when hovering only about 12 inches from the ground, luckily I had managed to land the heli without any damage (the tail just spun out of control), but unluckily the failed tail blade headed straight towards me and hit my index finger breaking my nail (it was painful, I actually went dizzy for a few seconds and my chest went tight), my nail fell off a few weeks later. Guess what ladies and gentlemen, I no longer hover my heli's with the tail perfectly inline with me. The scary thought is that a few inches higher and it would have been my throat or even my eyes (even though I wear glasses) might have been the target. These were brand new tails rotor blades that failed, really annoyed me.
Enjoy...
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