Tinker Time...

[bcane98]

OK I have been reading around and I figure it's time I start to look at thing a little closer since I feel really comfortable flying my BCX around the house. I notice the tail waggs a little bit. I read up a post or two and it stated the gain might be too high. Now I am not sure if there is a gain on my BCX, but I figure the little dial above the propo is the gain.

I turn the dial counter clockwise and check the chopper... The wag I had seems to be disappearing. So I turn a little more and a little more and well it pretty much is non existent now. So I wanna see how far I am from the 0 mark. If there was a number on it I am pretty sure I would be at .5... hmmmm.. lets go the other way...

So I crank up the gain this time. I check how far clockwise I can go and the put it at about 75% gain. Again I assume I am adding gain since the other way the wag was dissappearing.

WOW!!! :badair: The helicopter is very responsive to yaw. Holy Moly... I push the throttle to give it more juice and this thing wants pirouette to the right. Thank god I am only about 2-3 feet off the ground. I quickly bring it down to reset the power thinking it is possibly system issues. I do this reset about 3 times just to make sure. Still wants to pirouette when I give it more than 20% throttle.

So my questions would be:

Does the BCX have a gain?
Does more gain cause the chopper to be more responsive when turning?
Anyone got a link for a n00b to understand the gyro?

I did a search on here for GYRO AND GAIN and received a boat load of results. I watched Bob's video on the 401.. which was informing and confusing all in one, but hey I am new and I am learning :arggg:

Great site.. Great People.. Thanks for helping this n00b...

Rick

[Jermo]

Does the BCX have a gain? Yes and a proportional control. The gyro on the BCX is not a heading hold gyro so don't expect it to hold solid. More on this in a sec.

Does more gain cause the chopper to be more responsive when turning? Gain controls how much the gyro will adjust to movement.

Anyone got a link for a n00b to understand the gyro? I'll see if I can find something. The easy way to thing of a gyro is that they feel movment and counter that movement. When you want to move in that axis you tell the gyro and it tells the control surfaces to move.

The blade CX is not a high quality heli. It's a fun coxial design that will help you learn orientation and control. One of the major design flaws is the way the reciever (RX) was designed. Heat buildup in the RX causes the gyro to drift. You'll notice that you continually have to recalibrate the gyro (page 7 of your manual IIRC) to keep the tail stable and that as you fly the tail gets loose where you have to trim for it or use rudder stick to hold it.
There are modifications for the BCX that help work around this issue. One of the major mods is to take the RX case off the RX and cut massive cooling holes in it. Then cut cooling holes in the Canopy. I can attest that this works. One of the projects I have is to move the motor control circuit off the 4 in 1 board to an external heatsink. Not sure when I'll have time for this.

Regardless, have fun with it, read and learn all you can.
Jermo