Drifting

[tnarg.retrac]

Hi guys

A newbie question for ya: I have my training gear on and I throttle up to where the heli is light on its skids/training gear. The heli starts sliding to the left and slightly backwards, I have checked the CG and it is a little off (to the left and back) which I will correct. But the question I have is that while the heli is sliding left, I give it some right cyclic to the point that the left side of the heli starts to lift. When it is doing this (lefting left skid when viewed from behind), it is still sliding left. What am I missing here?

Thanks for a great forum - it is *really* helpful to newbies like me.
Grant

[another_finn]

What am I missing here?
The push of the tail rotor. The helicopter needs to lean to the right to counter it - so even if your left skid is already in the air, you may still be drifting left. It will settle in a noticeable right tilt when you have the helicopter in a stationary hover. Nothing to worry about, just one more thing to learn when you're doing your first lift-offs and landings.

[mnwizard]

That's normal for a Belt. They all do it. Just put in a little right cyclic. As soon as you're up a couple of feet it's not a problem.

Some guys have tried tilting the swash a turn or 2 to the right, but I've found that to be more trouble than it's worth.

As long as it's a constant behavior and happens every time, you can anticipate it and compensate with a little cyclic.

The Belt even does it on my flight sim! :lol:

Ya beat me Mika, I was typing at the same time!

[tnarg.retrac]

Thanks - after my last crash, I figured I would follow Radd's advice but I cannot seem to get the heli to go in the direction I want when scooting across the floor. I guess I need to take the plunge so to speak and get it a few feet in the air. After my crash I have had to replace tail boom, blades, feathering, main and tail shafts. My worry is that it is not trimmed correctly so as soon as it leaves the ground, I worry that it will head off in a way that I cannot control it.

Besides setting the pitch, tracking, CG and eyeballing the swash, anything else I should check before letting it leave the ground?

Thanks again
Grant

[another_finn]

I would also check that the servo arms and bell cranks are as close to 90 degrees as you can get them, and the mixer arms in the head are level at zero pitch. The Belt CP setup (http://www.helifreak.com/showthread.php?t=68536) sticky has great pictures of how everything should be. Eliminating swashplate interactions goes a long way towards making the helicopter easier to fly.

Don't worry, there's no such thing as an uncontrollable drift as long as your servos and links are working correctly. Just forget there's such a thing as mid-stick, and hold it where it stays stable. Works much better than seeing where it heads off to and trying to get it back under control.

Oh, and since you changed the tail boom, you'll obviously need to check the belt tension and set up your tail again if you didn't already do it after the repairs.

[Ian 777]

That sounds a bit of silly advice from Rad's really, the heli is momentarily very unstable just before it lifts off . it respond totally differently in the air. I think you'll probably do much better lifting it right off the ground, thats how I did it, just hopping arround and landing everytime I started to get uncomfortable or when the heli tried to scoot off into the TV set:YeaBaby:. It only took a few days before i could hover tail in:)

All the best with it mate, they really are brilliant fun to fly and well worth the effort of learning. I was tearing round full throttle with mine today over a local football field and
I could hardly stop laughing with the pure joy of it:lol:........ untill the tail servo link disconeccted itself:mad:

Still thats all part of the the fun

[kianhon]

I would not lift it off just to hope the drift would go away because if you can't stop it from drifting, you probably don't have to skill to control it if you lift it off above your knee. A well balance Belt-CP will lean left towards back, of course when you get it to the air it will not do that much. But....you first have to learn how to stop it from drifting, then you give a little throttle and start hoping around. Finally when you get to control it to stay in a small area, then only you lift it off further.

Trust me, if you can't stop it from drifting, you don't want to lift it off above 2 feet. Always be patient and go slow, this way you can save yourself lots of $$ from crashing.