HC3-SX on 450 Sport FBL- Can you check my settings?

[Montana]

I finally pulled the trigger and converted one of my Sports to FBL with the HC3-SX. I was previously flying this heli with the HC3-SX and a flybar. I spent the day doing the mechanical conversion and setup. The collective range is +/-12 deg and the cyclic is +/-10 deg, all the servos move the right direction, and the swash responds properly to tilts on the helis' axis. The tail controls in the right direction. I spooled it up in the basement until it was light on the skids- looks and sounds good, no vibrations. There was one terrifying moment when it started to tip to the right but I managed to pull it down before the blades struck the floor. I'm hoping someone will look at my settings and let me know if they are correct before I put any air under this bird.

My tail servo is Futaba S9257 and cyclics are HS-5065MGs. I have a set of Edge FBL blades but I think I will put 325 Pro woodies on for the maiden. My throttle curve is currently 0-80-80-85-90 and my pitch is 42-46-50-75-100. The TX is a DX8. Tail gyro gain is set with the GEAR channel. I have it set to 0: -50%, 1:0%, 2: +50%. The Aux 2 switch controls the Rigid gain. I also have that set to 0:-50%, 1:0%, 2:+50%. I am quite concerned about these initial settings. My flying style is very basic, mostly drifting around.

Are there any other things I should set or check before I fly besides the normal preflight checks? Ultimately I want to use SL but as I understand it it needs to be tuned for basic flight before I can set up horizon mode.

[heli21]

Looks fairly good. As far as the tipping motion, just make sure that your swash plate is level at Mid stick and that you have the unit mounting orientation correct. When they say front or back they are not talking about weather the unit is mounted on the front or the back of the machine. They are talking about which way the "socket" or plugs are facing.

Those settings look good, Make sure you have your head gyro gain lowered down in your transmitter for the first lift off, you want to slowly work it up until it starts to bobble, then lower it down until it stops. This allows you to get the highest gain possible. The Extreme also allows you to adjust the AIL and ELEV seperatly using the "Rigid Sensor Gain" in the "Rigid" page. To look for bobbling using the I find that the best way is to give "sharp" or rapid stick movements, if your gain is too high it will bobble after giving the stick command.

As far as Radio settings go, just make sure your channel assingment matches that of the HC on page "RC", also make sure you are in 90* mode and that you have setup the diagnose page: Using reverse to set correct bar direction, then using sub trim to center bars, then using travel adjust to make each bar go to the line before the end.

Good luck! :) Just take it slow if you are cautioned, but everything should go fine.

Rob
Helicommand Flight Team

[Montana]

I think what happened with the tipping was that when I got light on the skids the heli started scooting to the left, so I gave some right aileron and overcompensated.

Thank you for the careful consideration of my settings. I will super-double-check all the things you mentioned. There doesn't seem to be 450 settings pre-sets on the Helicommand website, which was surprising.

I have a Helicommand HC-3A on my other Sport, and that one flies like a dream. The HC3-SX by comparison was much more touchy. Hopefully I can tame my HC3-SX now! Do you have any suggestions to make the unit more docile in Rigid mode for a pilot of modest skills and expectations?

[heli21]

One other quick thing: I will assume that you will need a few points of Elevator Filter. If you simply hover your mouse over the parameter, it will tell you what it does. This is very helpful when tuning your machine.

I would suggest lowering your Rigid Gain Sensor values on page "Rigid" down to 13 or 14.

If you would like to slow the overall speed down "Roll/Flip Rate" then use the agility parameter. If you would like to make the unit less aggressive around center stick then use the initial response value.

Rob
Helicommand Flight Team

[Montana]

I took your suggestions- by setting "scale" presets it put the sensor gains where you said, and I added 3 to the elevator filter. I set my tail and head gains on the transmitter to 15-30-45 so I could experiment with a few different values, and took off with both set to 30. Lifted off fine, tail held, heli was controllable. Started flipping the head gain switch to try higher and lower gains. Switching the gain didn't have as much of an effect as I expected, and everything was going fine until... I moved the hold switch instead of the AUX switch.

So I guess I'm grounded for a week until I get some parts...:arggg:

[Montana]

The wind FINALLY died down enough to fly today. Oh boy am I a flybarless and HC3-SX believer! My 450 Sport has never flown better. For anyone else holding out, if I can do it anyone can.

[Joachim HC]

Sorry about your crash that day, but now all seems fine.

One more little info: to tame the heli a bit around centre, of course it is allowed to use expo in the Tx too. But, to mention that clearly, all what Rob stated was 100% perfect, nothing else to add :noteworthy

Regarding your tipping, this may have been one of these typical FBL effects when you are not really out of ground effect or even still touching the ground with parts of the skids.

Joachim

[Stickey]

With any FBL controller, you have to get up and off the ground or else the controller will get very odd control loop feedback. The interaction with the ground will make it over-compensate and potentially have a tip-over.

The answer is to simply just get off the ground once it gets light. A foot is fine, but you just have to get up.

Sorry about your crash that day, but now all seems fine.

One more little info: to tame the heli a bit around centre, of course it is allowed to use expo in the Tx too. But, to mention that clearly, all what Rob stated was 100% perfect, nothing else to add :noteworthy

Regarding your tipping, this may have been one of these typical FBL effects when you are not really out of ground effect or even still touching the ground with parts of the skids.

Joachim

[heli21]

With any FBL controller, you have to get up and off the ground or else the controller will get very odd control loop feedback. The interaction with the ground will make it over-compensate and potentially have a tip-over.

The answer is to simply just get off the ground once it gets light. A foot is fine, but you just have to get up.


This is a good thought to keep in mind but once you become familiar with the unit and how it acts on the ground it is not an issue at all. I am so confident with my Helicommand units I will kneel down and set down my transmitter and pull out my tach... all well the machine is fully spooled up on the ground. I have even picked one side of my Fusion off the ground and rotated around the skid that is still on the ground,There is not any tendency to tip over at all. What you need to remember though is that the unit acts like you are in the air so if you are not careful it is easy to tip it over by giving too much cyclic stick, but this tendency is not there if you are not moving the sticks.

Rob

[Joachim HC]

+1

That's the feedback especially scalers give us: they state that they can lift off really slow and scale, not running into any issues at all. And these guys are really slow-off-takers (a bit germlish for sure) :)

Joachim

[Fairview]

I have just converted mine from the flybar on to being flybarless, and I started with the head gain at 50 in my radio JR9303. I changed the setting all the way up to 100 and I couldn't tell any difference. However, I didn't do anything other than give sharp inputs while hovering. Am I doing something wrong or can you run 100% gain on the head or will it give me a big surprise when flying around with the gain that high.

[heli21]

You want to find the bobble, try raising the Rigid Sensor Gains for both AIL and ELEV in the Rigid page. This is common depending on how aggressive/how much pitch your machine is setup with.

Rob
Helicommand Flight Team

[Fairview]

Ok, I am starting out like Montana using the scale presets. I think my ail & ele gains are 13 each. I moved the aggressiveness to 7, the initial quickness to 4 with 3 on the elevator filter. When I put the head on I was getting 14deg of pitch which I tamed down to 11 through the TX, but on cyclics I am getting 10 deg. That is why I turned down the aggressiveness and quickness because I have so much pitch. On a side note does it matter if my washout arms are not level at 0 deg. pitch?

[Joachim HC]

When I put the head on I was getting 14deg of pitch which I tamed down to 11 through the TX, but on cyclics I am getting 10 deg. That is why I turned down the aggressiveness and quickness because I have so much pitch.

You should not use your Tx to set the angle of attack, but the servo travel in the Mixer page of the software! Set the signals to full travel in the Diagnose page, than adjust travel in Mixer page. That's the way to go.
After that you can tame down the heli's behaviour by using Expo and DualRate, but not earlier.

Joachim

[Fairview]

You should not use your Tx to set the angle of attack, but the servo travel in the Mixer page of the software! Set the signals to full travel in the Diagnose page, than adjust travel in Mixer page. That's the way to go.
After that you can tame down the heli's behaviour by using Expo and DualRate, but not earlier.

What is the difference between using the Mixer page to adjust the amount of pitch compared to using the pitch curve in the radio to adjust the collective pitch range? I did set the signals to full travel in the diagnose page. The 0 degrees pitch was set using the servo center in the software, and only used the pitch curve in the radio to adjust for full positive and negative pitch. I don't use any expo or dualrate to tame the heli's behaviour. I left the 10 degrees of cyclic pitch(ail & ele) and tamed it down with the agility and reponse tabs in the rigid section. My reasoning for doing this is when I use the bailout function the helicommand will have full use of all the travel and will not be limited by the settings in the radio. Only the settings in the unit will limit the amount of throw when in rescue mode. Maybe my understanding of the unit is wrong.

[Joachim HC]

No, I think your understanding is fairly good :)

The reason to do all the setup in the software, not in the Tx, is simple: the system itself does know about any settings in the Tx. So when it needs to interact, it needs to know what the max travels are.
After all this is set, and I believe from your explanation that you did so, you can use your TX's settings to adjust the flight feeling to your needs. But the HC will still know what his possibilities are.

So, in the end all sounds as if you did everything correct. Maybe I misunderstood something above. Sorry in case.

Joachim

[Montana]

Here are some pics of my HC3-SX installed inside my T-Rex 450 Sport Frame. The controller does not touch the frame.