newb blade 400 questions..

[nyc_863]

Well I don't know if the blade 400 is going to attract new people to the hobby to any significant extent but at least it got me: The attraction of getting a re-usable controller along with a RTF model with not-awful components was too hard to resist.

But I've got a few questions..

1. My 400 blades track perfectly out of the box but I get some significant body vibration at low revs that smooths out as you push the throttle up to 50% (where they still are not producing any lift). Is this vibration normal or something I should be looking at addressing? the low rpm vibration shakes the chopper such that the tail wiggles a good 4 or 5cm..

2. How do I verify idle-up pitch? with the throttle cut, I can check the non idle-up pitch ok, but if I want to check idle-up pitch and make sure it is -11 to +11 it seems impossible: flipping between idle-up and non idle-up _with throttle cut_ does not change the pitch no matter where the throttle is. Idle-up is working judging from the acceleration of the blades to high speed when I switch to it, but obviously with the blades spinning I have no idea if the pitch is set right :(

by the way I already found out the official 12v plug-pack is hard to find and the e-flite plugpack a shop will show you is only 1.5a which is insufficient. So I settled on a cig lighter adapter from radio shack and a portable car start charger.. Kind of annoying to open a RTF box and find out that your first step is impossible unless you have a clean 12 volts on bare wires available from something!

Last question. Has anyone got the DX6i to work with a sim yet? I'm reading conflicting info. It has the trainer socket, but does that automatically output PCM? there is no mention of this in the manual. Before I spend on a sim with a cable and dongle I'd like to know if the 6i is a non-starter for that.

[int2str]

1. My 400 blades track perfectly out of the box but I get some significant body vibration at low revs that smooths out as you push the throttle up to 50% (where they still are not producing any lift). Is this vibration normal or something I should be looking at addressing? the low rpm vibration shakes the chopper such that the tail wiggles a good 4 or 5cm..

Complete stab in the dark here:
Maybe your blade grips are too tight and hold your blades too rigidly. Loosen the blade grips a little and straighten out your blades by hand before spooling up.

2. How do I verify idle-up pitch? with the throttle cut, I can check the non idle-up pitch ok, but if I want to check idle-up pitch and make sure it is -11 to +11 it seems impossible: flipping between idle-up and non idle-up _with throttle cut_ does not change the pitch no matter where the throttle is. Idle-up is working judging from the acceleration of the blades to high speed when I switch to it, but obviously with the blades spinning I have no idea if the pitch is set right :(

With throttle hold on (maybe even disconnect the motor from the ESC just to be sure) your should be able to check the pitch in normal and idle-up without any problems. If the pitch doesn't change when your throttle stick is at the bottom and you switch from normal to idle-up, then your pitch curves are most likely not set up correctly. Check your pitch curves on the DX6i.

Last question. Has anyone got the DX6i to work with a sim yet? I'm reading conflicting info. It has the trainer socket, but does that automatically output PCM? there is no mention of this in the manual. Before I spend on a sim with a cable and dongle I'd like to know if the 6i is a non-starter for that.

Yes. I have the DX6i working perfectly with RealFlight G4. The throttle and pitch curves work as well as the normal/idle-up switching as well as throttle hold.

I do no have any other sim to comment on.

[topquark41396]

Not sure this will be helpful, but here goes... (newbie responding to newbie)

1) I have this too. I thought it was normal. After I get replacements parts (I crashed tonight), I'll be sure to loosen the blade grips. Of course, I may have other sources of vibration now...

3) I've gotten the DX6i to work with Realflight G3.5, but only with six channels. It's kinda weird, and I had to play with the channel mappings in the sim. Int2str, do you have any details on your setup with G4?

[JimLerch]

1. My 400 blades track perfectly out of the box but I get some significant body vibration at low revs that smooths out as you push the throttle up to 50% (where they still are not producing any lift). Is this vibration normal or something I should be looking at addressing? the low rpm vibration shakes the chopper such that the tail wiggles a good 4 or 5cm..


If your blade grips are not execsivvly tight, it would indicate an out of balance blade. Watch this video:
http://video.helifreak.com/?subpath=finless/trex450&filename=blade_balancing101.wmv

Then watch all the remaining videos on this page :)

http://www.helifreak.com/showthread.php?t=11373

2. How do I verify idle-up pitch? with the throttle cut, I can check the non idle-up pitch ok, but if I want to check idle-up pitch and make sure it is -11 to +11 it seems impossible: flipping between idle-up and non idle-up _with throttle cut_ does not change the pitch no matter where the throttle is. Idle-up is working judging from the acceleration of the blades to high speed when I switch to it, but obviously with the blades spinning I have no idea if the pitch is set right :(#1 Disconnect the wires to the three phase motor !!!!!!!! Alternativly, an even better idea is to get a receiver battery pack, and temporarily plug it into the "bat" connector on the receiver and leave the flight battery disconnected. What you don't want to do is accidentally spin up the main rotor when your not expecting it to spin up!!! (been there, done that, shed blood and tears)

#2 Connect flight battery and blade pitch indicator

#3 Put transmitter in idle-up mode and move collective to ends of travel and check blade pitch.

The transmitter has three Throttle and Pitch curves depending on 2 separate switches.

The three modes are
#1 Norm mode
#2 Stunt mode
#3 Throttle cut mode (which over-rides all other modes)

What your seeing is, with throttle cut ON, you only measuring the throttle cut pitch curve, which is identical to norm mode pitch curve (as long as you haven't changed it).
by the way I already found out the official 12v plug-pack is hard to find and the e-flite plugpack a shop will show you is only 1.5a which is insufficient. So I settled on a cig lighter adapter from radio shack and a portable car start charger.. Kind of annoying to open a RTF box and find out that your first step is impossible unless you have a clean 12 volts on bare wires available from something!


Last question. Has anyone got the DX6i to work with a sim yet? I'm reading conflicting info. It has the trainer socket, but does that automatically output PCM? there is no mention of this in the manual. Before I spend on a sim with a cable and dongle I'd like to know if the 6i is a non-starter for that.
I have a buddy with a DX7 connected via a MileHighWings USB adapter, and it works fine. I expect the DX6i to work with it as well, but I'll know this weekend when I stop by his place.

[nyc_863]

thanks, this pretty much answers the questions I have so far!

[BKF]

by the way I already found out the official 12v plug-pack is hard to find and the e-flite plugpack a shop will show you is only 1.5a which is insufficient. So I settled on a cig lighter adapter from radio shack and a portable car start charger.. Kind of annoying to open a RTF box and find out that your first step is impossible unless you have a clean 12 volts on bare wires available from something!


I think the assumption is you're going to take your car to the park where you're going to fly... And the charger is set up to hook to your car battery. Or it could be strictly money... they didn't want to include it, since they wanted to keep the price point near $500 after sales tax.

However, similar to what you did I got myself a portable, solar powered car charger. It's from Costco, and has a couple AC outlets and a DC lighter socket. A lighter plug adapter from Radio Shack with the + and - terminals on it can then connect to the charger. Since the portable car charger has a pretty large battery in it, it can be used to recharge the LiPo batteries through the balance charger a few times before it needs recharging... And the one I have will recharge itself with the solar cell, until I can get it to an AC outlet to recharge it. I think it's a lot better than spending money on an AC adapter.