Paul's Flight Log

[pvolcko]

So finally got some flights recorded.

First up flights from Sunday, April 26th. Both Visionaire and the TRex 700.

https://youtu.be/bVen-3EUZc8

This is flight 8 and 9 with this plane (any plane, I'm a plane noob). Finally got the trim worked out and it is flying great now. Need to work on landings more, though in my defense there was a wicked wind that day.


https://youtu.be/Ocza4oLlXic

And the venerable TRex 700 that I bought off Gaba a couple years back. I'm flying Cyclone main blades and align tail blades. The Cyclones have swept tips on them which do... ? All I know is they keep it in the air have have a pretty crisp response. And at pitch the swept tips may be causing more drag than normal because I'm finding I need to adjust governor gain and tail precomp settings to get the tail to hold in hard collective maneuvers.

I'm rusty as hell. My left thumb was like jello. Even tried pinching during some flights on Tuesday and it didn't help the twitching. I need to get more flights with the helis to get my confidence back and start progressing again.

I'e started going auto-rotations to close out my flights. Not little 6 ft autos, 50+ ft ones. With the 700 and 550 it is pretty easy, but with the Gob 500... well I've only landed one auto on that heli without incurring some damage. Usually skids only, but the last one I tried with it resulted in one set of stripped servo gears, skids, and a tail blade. I need to practice more with it at height and doing some bailouts about 15-20 ft up to make sure I've got a good glide path and negative collective position so the headspeed stays up.

I plan to do a lot of flying this season so hopefully there should be a bunch of video coming!

[Tony]

Nice flying Paul, I do like that plane.... Your autos looked pretty cool with the 700.

[cml001]

Great flights bruh!

[pvolcko]

Flew again today. Ended up stripping the main gear on my 550x. Like shredded it. In mid air.

I was testing a new tail gain setting and did a high collective, large clockwise ail loop. On the down sweep it went bad.

Luckily there was just enough teeth left to keep the rotor turning. Got it down and inspected. Had no idea why it happened. Gear mesh was perfect. Then I saw it... The pinion was riding too low. I touched it and it slid around. Set screw came unset. Curved part of pinion ate into the top of gear and then under load the narrower remaining gear face couldn't keep up.

Easy repair at least.

Sadly I also discovered I only have one good battery for this heli at this point. I'm starting to see why nitro is attractive. Replacing packs sucks.

[Tony]

Good news is you got it down in one piece I guess Paul. Was the set screw not locktited in? Surprised that came loose... Do you think nitro is more economical that electric considering all the engine parts and costs?

[cml001]

Get u a N5C... Ull love it I promise!.. Good save!

[DamhDearg]

Nice flying Paul! I hate flying in wind. The half piros are getting solid.
I know what you mean about the plane messing you up, that's what I was worried about too.

[pvolcko]

It was LTd in but I hadn't touched it in a while so maybe over a couple years of oiling the lower bearing the oil seeped in and broke it loose? Not sure. Just hoping that the loose set screw didn't wear a groove around the motor shaft.

[pvolcko]

Oh, and as far as nitro vs battery on cost... I really don't know. Just me musing seeing as I have to buy about $500 in batteries this season, that I know about so far.

[Graham Lawrie]

Nice flying Paul:) unlucky with the gear:(

[Tony]

That's a lot of bucks on batteries....wow...

[pvolcko]

Yeah. I stretched a couple out last season a bit longer than I should have, so now I'm getting a double whammy this season.

Put a bunch of flights on the TRex 700 and the Visionaire today. Had a blast.

Plane flying is starting to come together pretty well. Flipping and rolling and looping etc. without issue. Starting to try hovering and harriers (on purpose). Landing is a breeze, powered or dead stick.

700 flights went well too. Need to do some more governor tuning. Still getting some tail kick on hard collective and/or cyclic maneuvers. Also have an odd problem with spool up. It is getting to about 50% RPMs and it's like it hits a wall. Have to cajole it into spinning up the rest of the way with some collective manipulation. It's as if holding slightly negative pitch causes it to not spool up all the way, but giving it zero or slightly positive pitch will make it spool up the rest. Very odd issue.

Putting in a lot of auto-rotations. About feeling comfortable enough to try a roll during the auto. Soon. Also want to start playing around with the speed of approach and flaring to see if I can spin up a lot of headspeed, like they've been talking about on RCHN lately. I won't be doing any crazy low flips or anything yet. Just want to see if I can figure out how to spin it up and control things a bit better. Will try it at altitude to start, so I have room to bailout or auto down if needed.

[Tony]

Good to hear your having fun flying Paul, sounds like your going to get very ambitious this year with your manoeuvres... Look forward to seeing some vids

[pvolcko]

Well after a bunch of successful autos I screwed up two tonight and broke both my TRex 700 and Gob 700. Stripped gears on the elevator servo in the TRex. Broke a DFC link on the Gob. Maybe more once I give them a cleaning and going over. Both were tip overs after already landing. Not sure what was going on tonight. Went to full negative once landed to plant them into the ground but seems they must have been slightly off and ended up tipping a bit and catching main blades.

So now I have repairs on my gob 500 and 700, 550X and the TRex 700. All out of big ones to fly. So repair night coming either tonight or tomorrow or both.

[cml001]

Man... That bits!

[Tony]

That is crap news Paul, I feel for ya mate....

[pvolcko]

So doing some repair work today. Got the Gob 700's dfc link fixed up. Getting the spare canopy set to go too (keeping the old cracked up/repaired one as a spare).

I also worked on the Gob 500. That one had a servo that was locked up. Took it apart and found several teeth stripped and bent on some gears to spent a bunch of time putting in a new gear set. I love the BK servos, but the minis are a pain in the butt to replace the gear sets on. Eventually managed to get it all back together again and... The thing don't work. It will hold center a kind of. It is goodish in one direction. Goodish because ti seems to "skip" a little bit and then hold good. But if you move the arm in the other direction it has no hold at all. The arm sometimes returns to position slowly. So either the motor or the control circuit got fried i think. That I managed to get some grease in the potentiometer. Either way, it will go into the spare parts bag and have a new one on order. Out of stock at both heli direct and amain, so doing my first purchase from RotaryWingRC.

The bk servo mini size cyclics that I have, have black cases. I could only find blue cased minis now, though. Hopefully they're the same ones, just different case color. Thinking Bert wanted to standardize on blue for his cyclics and use black for brushless? Hope so at least.

So that leaves the TRex 700 (tail blades and stripped elevator servo, need to check this one over fully though) and Blade 550X (stripped out main gear in flight due to pinion coming loose).

And still have that Gob 570 Kit to put together. Oy....

[Tony]

Lots of repairs there going on Paul, but sounds like great progress... As you know we do like to see pics whenever possible..... Hint....

[cml001]

SQUIRREL!

[pvolcko]

Looking for a CO2 canister for this pellet gun...

Pictures of grease covered fingers and servo gears, huh? If that's what does it for ya. I'll probably try taking that servo apart again and see if I can get it to behave properly. Will take a quick vid of the behavior before I do.