Mini Titan (ESC) problem???

[connoleg]

I have a problem with my Titan if after 5 or 6 mins of hover flying and have landed. As I thottle up the heli will shoot up in the air even tho I'm about 1/4-1/2 stick and should be just lifting off. Each time its happened I throttle back to try keep the heli from gaining to much altitude, but the heli just plummets to the floor, generally busting the skids. Prior to each of these incidents (crashes) the heli has been flying fine.

I wonder if I have a problem with the ESC?

Any advice / experiences would be helpful please

cheers
Gary

[EricW]

Hi,
Have you programmed the ESC, or just used it out of the box?
And do you spin the blades/ start flying in normal mode or switch to idle-1?

The reason I ask is this,
I just tried landing in normal mode coming from Idle-1 (will never try it again btw!!)
And the heli shoot up in the sky :lol:, I switched to idle-1 again and brought it down successfully :arggg:
When you use a pitch curve like -3 +5 +10 in normal mode.
And you have the governor function enabled on your ESC it could be that the governor tries to reach a certain RPM and meanwhile overrides the 0-100 throttle curve in normal mode.
So you descent with let's say 2600 Rpm and 2 degr of pitch, and the you switch to +8 degr. of pitch with the same amount of Rpm, so a logical reaction of the heli is to shoot up.

Not sure but maybe this is somewhat similar to what you are experiencing during start-up?

So when using the governor mode I'm going to switch to idle-1 on the ground to take off, and land using idle-1 and throttle hold.

I haven't tried to use the ESC without the governor so i don't know how it works with "regular" settings something like:

normal mode: pitchcurve -3 +5 +10 degr.(pitchgauge) / throttlecurve 0-25-50-75-100
idle-1 mode: pitchcurve 0-25-50-75-100 (-10 - 0 - +10 degr.) / throttlecurve 100-85-70-85-100

Guess I and alot of others (especially beginners) are struggling with the (factory)settings of the ESC and Pitch and throttle curves.

Maybe Someone (experienced) who flies without the governor enabled can report their findings on the stock ESC and their best settings.

Another experience i had with my Walkera heli and a FM/ppm receiver is a glitch probably resulting in a failsafemode that made the heli shoot up (wrong settings of course but hey I'm a NooB), once it reacted again i was in full pitch down and had crashed the gear ,mainframes, shaft, etc. in a blink.
This was a hard lesson, bought a Mini Titan and a PCM receiver, payed much attention to my wiring on the Titan, and i never pulled the throttle down hard again after that.

Eric

[connoleg]

The ESC is standard factory settings as far as I can tell. I do notice that sometimes it bleeps at power up and other times not. I am flying in normal mode on the tx the whole time and I dont have any idle-up 1 or 2 config on the tx

As far as pitch / throttle curves I have them set as per the manual for a beginner.

Gary

[EricW]

To be honest I'm not sure what is wrong in this case.
I'm not experienced enough myself to give a straight away answer, so i hope someone else can join and give some answers.

I'm not sure how much experience you have with heli's, but if your just starting out i suggest you watch all general setup-videos made by Finless(Bob) this helped me a lot to get a little understanding of the mechanics.
http://www.helifreak.com/viewtopic.php?t=12455

I do know from my own experience that when my battery is used for 5 minutes it's almost empty (set my timer to 5 minutes of flight).
And i had some cases where my headspeed decreased because of that and caused the heli to gain altitude, especially when the wind catches it at the same time.
It can even jump up a couple of meters.
The first reaction is throttle down and also negative pitch, in your case -2 degr. if you built the heli using the manual.
So what you do is applying negative pitch and you completely shut off the motor.
making the heli fall down, gravity + negativepitched autorotate.
I hope you have a pitch gauge (essential) to check the bladepitch at low-mid and highstick, so your sure you have the proper settings.
And try to avoid the stickdown reaction you have, when the heli does something you don't expect it's better imo to focus on the cyclicstick (right stick) and try to keep it level while it climbs and see if you can get it under control again.

I now fly away in Idle-1 mode because i think it's much easier with the higher headspeed to control the heli, also in windy conditions.
And it's the same as i fly the helimodels in a Sim (phoenixRc), also very essential to make many flighthours on a sim imo.
The stickdown reaction will be even more deadly in idle up mode though :).

Hope this helped.

Eric

[MikeWz]

It doesn't sound to me like it's a problem with the esc so much as something with a pitch/radio set-up. If it happens again, take note as to whether or not the motor changes RPMs when it shouldn't. If that's the case, then it's probably the ESC. If not, It's probably radio related.

This happens when you land and then take-off again? Does it involve swapping batteries and going up again or no? I don't know much about the TT esc, but when I had an align ESC it would do the same thing to me. It would beep sometimes and not others. It wound up being a faulty ESC, but it was just a motor cut, not shooting up in the air.

As far as pitch/throttle set-ups go. Hovering pitch should be the same in both Norm and Idle up (in most cases). If it's at 3/4 stick (which is about where it should be), it should be the same in Idle-up. That way you can take off in normal mode and get into a hover. Once in hover and making sure everything is functioning properly, you can flip the switch to Idle and not have the heli jerk on you (make sure that if you used trims it carried over to idle also, because not all radios do that). It should be the same when landing as well. If not autoing, you can just revert to a hover and flip down to normal mode and it shouldn't change the birds altitude.