Hurricane 550 Maiden

[bbagle1]

Well my hurricane flew successfully yesterday. This is my first heli and I have never flown one so I had a fair bit of help with the setup from one of the best heli guys at my field. After tinkering with it for about an hour we had it ready to go. He maidened it for me and trimmed it out then I hovered around for a bit. Seems much more steady so far than the sim. Only thing I otice is the tail is hunting a bit. I think it may be from a loose tail belt though.

[mjdee14]

Congratulations !!!

You are now "Hooked" and will spend all the rest of your money on the obsession we call a hobby.

Since this is your first heli you might want to go into more detail sometime for other noobies on how you were able to accomplish being able to hover and bring the heli home in one piece...

I'm assuming the sim helped a lot...and getting expert help at a flying field with set up and trimming is invaluable.

Again, great to hear about the successfull maiden flight.

[bugdozer]

My new Hurricane 550 took it's maiden flight Saturday. All the parks and baseball fields were filled so I was only able to give it a quick wring-out flight in a small open area in our local park. Nice and stable and very quite, much quieter that my T-Rex. Used the new JR 770 3D gyro and 8900 tail servo. In reading past posts and an article in RC Heli, I though the set-up would take more work on the JR but that was not the case with me. Tail holds very well with no drift. Sweet :)

[concept1]

if your tail is hunting, it is most likely your gyro setup, the hurri pretty much requires a loose tail belt or you get the Hurri shake! if you hear a popping or a snapping sound then you are too loose, if not it's setup! make sure your endpoints are correct, did you adjust in non heading hold mode first? hover in nonHH and use your link to adjust to hover not your trim or subtrim, they both must be at 0 or it will hunt!

[istandalone]

i've actually found that either way you set up the gyro and tail (with a 401/9254) be it the linkage is adjusted to hold in rate mode or just centered the slider and leave it in HH both hold fine with no wag. but, this might be more due to the fact that i'm not a very good pilot, and am still at the ff and figure8 point. can hover pretty well in all orientations (right side up, no inverted yet) but nose in is not second nature quite yet- but i can hold it well.

i'm betting that once my skills ripen, the way i have it set up (which is cented link, HH doing all the work) will probly bite me in the ass. maybe the reason finless says to set it up in rate first is that the tail won't hold whilst doing hard 3d.

[ukgroucho]

hover in nonHH and use your link to adjust to hover not your trim or subtrim, they both must be at 0 or it will hunt!

I always set up using subtrim as per the 401 instructions and my 550 tail is fine. In fact it was very easy to set up - much less 'finicky' than a Trex 450.

[bugdozer]

The 401 on my t-Rex 450 is setup with everything centered and it works great. I experimented setting it up in rate mode but the 401 seems to be happier in HH with everything centered, 0 pitch on the tail.

I had read several places, when setting up the new JR G7703D, you had to set it up in rate mode first and then move over to HH otherwise you will have drift. When I set up my Hurricane, I set the bell crank arm perpendicular to the tail boom and this gave me few degrees of pitch on the tail blades. Either I got real lucky or the JR is not that picky any more but I never ran in rate mode and HH is solid with no drift. I only have a short test flight but next time out, I switch over to rate and see what happens.