Holy Mackeral the SR is pretty fast!

[Bladecpnitro]

I did my first high speed circuits today. The first time I tried doing a large circle to the left when coming back around nose in I got disorientated, hit a thick leafy branch and had the luckiest crash yet. The leafs stopped the Heli and let it drop 10 feet to the ground where it only bent the boom. I straitened it put in a new pack after inspecting it carefully took it back up and did a couple of slow left circles to work through my problem. That's 3 times my main rotor blades have survived a crash unblemished.

My SR in a slow left circle requires a lot of right cyclic to get around the turn because it wants to lean left which is where I was having trouble. Going right it requires a good bit of right cyclic to get around the circle because again it wants to lean to the left.

After I felt like I had worked through my problem I let it rip and man I had no idea this little dude would soar like this. I was doing 300ft circuits about 40 ft high I guess and I mean turning it on. Going left fast it doesn't require any cyclic to hold it on the circle most of the time. Going right fast it requires a little right cyclic.

The SR loves to go fast. This is the most fun I have had yet with it. I think there will be a place on my bench a long time for the SR.

[Bladecpnitro]

Should I adjust my roll trim to where I need to use left cyclic on a left slow turn instead of right. I have the trim set where it hovers pretty good but on a left slow circle needing so much right cyclic just doesn't seem right. It was windy yesterday which might be a factor. Helisim doesn't fly that way, it requires equal use of roll cyclic on left or right circles. Going to the left I need left, going to the right I need right cyclic.

It seems that just because it hovers decent doesn't mean its trimmed out right to fly circles. Anybody got any input on this?

[DKS_ONE]

There are forces at work in our helis that I still don't understand very well that are different from bird to bird. If it's hovering well with the trim settings you have, I wouldn't change much because that's the foundation, it should be good like that. I know that doing circles in one direction will give a different feel than the other direction. For all intents and purposes it sounds like your heli is reacting backwards to what I would expect. This has something to do with advancing and retreating blades, I'll try here... When you're going in a fast forward circle to the right, the advancing blade is on the left side (high/outside) of the heli and that side has, technically, more lift than the right side (retreating blade). I would expect it to want to "roll" into those turns moreso than left ones for that reason. The opposite would be true for fast forward left circles. Now, I'm no expert, so I'm sure there's some "force" at work that I'm leaving out that also has an effect, but I haven't learned THAT much about helis in general yet. When it comes to the SR, I can rebuild it, fly it like nuts and tell you a fair amount about operational characteristics. But when it comes to literal tendencies of helis in general, I'm still a noob learning quite a bit. Hopefully some physicist or something will drop some info on you too. Hope I've helped get the ball rolling at least :)

[Bladecpnitro]

The Heli new with the aileron trim centered will lift off and take off to the left before you do any adjusting on it. In fact I always use a little right cyclic just to take off strait up. I added a tad more right trim to the aileron channel and it doesn't seem to have effected hovering any and does a little better on left circles.


I think whats happening is the Heli has to lean to the left a little in a stable hover so the tail rotor doesn't gradually drag it to the right. When I turn left in a slow turn it takes off forward, leans to the left because its trimmed to counter the tail and would turn up knife edge with no cyclic adjustments.


I'm still wondering if the Heli should be trimmed to fly with equal cyclic in left or right fast turns or just trim it to hover and deal with it. I wonder how the Pro's trim theirs? Or maybe the best you can do is trim it to fly strait forward with no leaning left or right.

As unstable as the SR is it wouldn't be hard to be off a little on the trim adjustment because its never going to just sit there and hover no hands. Its a constant balancing act.

[DKS_ONE]

I'm pretty sure helis in general (whether it be by pros or otherwise ;)) are trimmed at hover to keep them from drifting dramatically in any direction. Surprised to hear you have some left cyclic trim to counter the tail :thinking Have you flipped the tail motor? I can only assume because otherwise the natural tendency would be for the tail to be pushing the heli left in the first place.

And indeed, the hands free hover is a thing for a stabilization system to acheive regardless of the heli. Bigger will stay put longer but will still require input, but the SR definitely needs MUCH more input :D

[Bladecpnitro]

I'm pretty sure helis in general (whether it be by pros or otherwise ;)) are trimmed at hover to keep them from drifting dramatically in any direction. Surprised to hear you have some left cyclic trim to counter the tail :thinking Have you flipped the tail motor? I can only assume because otherwise the natural tendency would be for the tail to be pushing the heli left in the first place.

And indeed, the hands free hover is a thing for a stabilization system to acheive regardless of the heli. Bigger will stay put longer but will still require input, but the SR definitely needs MUCH more input :D


I have right cyclic trim added to counter the tail but the heli always tilts to the left a little in a stable hover for some reason.

I'll keep tinkering with it. It just doesn't fly like the simulator. Everything is sort of balanced out on the sim you know, left and right roll and hovering. The wind may have something to do with the situation too, IDK I'll be ready to do some inverted practice soon I hope. The SR has slow cyclic operation though with the stock TX so It'll take a second to flip it over sideways.

I'm also practicing some one way stalls next will be stall turns.:rolling

[DKS_ONE]

Cool, inverted is fun, but take your time with it and get real familiar with it on your sim, that way the stick motions are a bit more engrained to memory. Sim helis are perfect helis, don't think that will ever be acheived, but can get as close as possible if real attentive with setup. But the SR is always gonna have it's "quirks" lol, keep it flyin' :thumbup:

[Bladecpnitro]

I can't decide which is going to be the easiest way to get inverted yet. I thought about going up prettty high and just sort of nose diving into complete loop a few times before I stop inverted.

[Jumna]

I like to pull the nose up, so the tail is facing away inverted. Go for up high.

[estarter]

I still remember the first inverted hovering, took advise from experience pilot to practice many loops, pause at the top a little bit longer every time and finally did it, did not crash at the first few time but many afterward. I didn't have SIM at that time and highly recommended to get one.

[Copter64]

Speaking of flying fast with the SR, is it just me or has anyone else noticed that the tail-motor is absolutely screaming when you are flying a fast circuit, especially at the segment when you are flying against the wind?
Today I was doing fast circuits (really just generally flying around back-and-forth for practice). Every time I made a turn that was into the wind, the tail rotor was absolutely screaming. But for the entire first battery pack of the day, I was doing good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a8Ct6Y-RS0
I thought I was doing really good flying fast in the wind... but pride goeth before a crash: on the next battery, I was making a banked turn and the tail flipped-around in an unexpected way (because of the wind?). I lost track of which way the helicopter was pointed and made the wrong corrections, then it ate dirt :face it was a hard crash because I was flying fast!

(stupid electric tail motor:arggg:, my next helicopter is going to have real tail-holding authority:thumbup:)