Tracking issues with blade pitch

[rdrunr11]

I am fairly new to flying heli's (6 mos) but I own a Blade 400 and a TREX 600. I have been flying inverted on the Blade 400 for about 1 month and for about 2 weeks on the TREX.

The question that I have is this:

I used a pitch guage to pitch the blades on the 400 and set everything to "normal specs" being -3, 0, and +11 degree in normal mode and -11, 0, +11 in idle up. After pitching the blades, I noticed my tracking was a bit off so as I went to adjust the tracking, I discovered a problem (or at least I think it is). The linkage that I used to adjust the pitch of the blades is the same linkage that is used to track the blades and if I adjust one of them (say tracking) it throws off the pitch. Vice versa, if I adjust the pitch, it throws off the tracking. Am I looking at this the wrong way? The heli flies pretty good (normal and inverted) as is but I am a perfectionist and I want it "just right". What's a fellow heli nut supposed to do!!

Ralph

[neilg.]

i am a true newbie, and seems to me you have to find a happy medium between both.


good question :thumbup:

[Ozz58]

Tracking is more important, it really shouldn't change your pitch setting that much. Get your pitch correct, then track and adjust your blades. If you check the pitch again, it shouldn't of changed much. If you don't like how it flys, I.E. hover is at lower headspeed, remember what blade you changed undo the change and track the other blade in. Hope this helps, again TRACKING over pitch Guage.

[widower]

I agree. Tracking over pitch. The tracking can be thought of as dynamic pitch. Ideally, with good blades, setting pitch will provide good tracking. But with blades that are not uniform, one blade will provide greater lift than the other.

An example is when I got my second set of woodies and checked the pitch, all looked good. But I ended up having to make a large adjustment to get them to track. I figured, hey, it still flys (I was still learning hover at the time). A few weeks later, I was looking at the heli from a distance, and noticed one of the blades had a twist in it. So its lift was quite different than the straight blade. I've since gone to non-wood blades and tracking has been right on in comparison to pitch.

[jmmccain]

If one alternately adjusts one blade up and the other down, overall pitch shouldn't change. With a two blade head anyway...