First I/U

[GD5015]

First idle up flight tonite. What an attention getter. No soft start on the stock Tx, so when you hit the switch, you're there. It takes a lot of gumption not to hit throttle hold as soon as you hear the blades beating the air. Tail held good, The actual flight is not greatly different from idiot mode, but with the higher head speed, it was more stable in the air. I think I like it. I did still have the training gear on though. Guess I'm still at least half an idiot.

John

[Velislide]

I probably wouldnt mess with I/U a whole lot till the training gear is off, and you can maintain hovers without a second thought in normal mode. That way if you do crash, there will be far less damage. Once you can comfortably hover, take the training gear off, it will be 5x easier to hover and fly.

[GD5015]

Hovering"s not a problem. I can hover whole packs without issue, But my idea of hovering is tooling around. Tail in, but tooling around. The wind has been nonstop here for the past few weeks. Usually the only time I get to fly is after dark under the street light. But today it died for a bit and it seemed a waste not to do something different while I could see. I did notice that once I got the heli over my head, my orientation is all whacked. Haven't spent much time up there yet.

John

[Velislide]

I didnt have a chance to use training gear, but once you can take off, hover, and land tail in, I cant imagine needing the training gear after that. I learned to hover over the winter in about a 6' x 10' space in the basement, just took things slow. From what I've read, the training gear makes the SR way harder to fly, then it already is for someone starting out with a CP heli. I'd say its main purpose is to get a feel for the throttle, and make the transition from take off & landing as smooth as possible.

Spend some time just relearning to hover and land without the training gear, the more practice, the better. Taking the heli up high with training gear might be just asking for a crash, considering how unstable it can make the heli in the air.

[qcman]

I found a good step for me was getting the training gear off & putting blade 400 skids on it. Allows it to fly properly & is bigger to land on. IU is a good step IMHO. The SR is just too unresponsive in Normal mode if you need to power out of a bad situation.

In IU you can make it escape from things fairly quickly. IU was pretty scary at first but it is the only way I fly my CP helis now. Take it slow & be patient unlike I was & you won't smash it nearly as much as I did.

I usually take off in Normal & switch to IU once I'm up about 6' or so & keep it there til just before I land back in Normal.

Be careful if it gets right over top of you or just slightly behind you I had that happen twice when I was learning & one time I had to do a ninja somersault to avoid getting nailed... Lol

Cam

[LeatherHelmet]

I dont even hesitate anymore, spin her up, flip the switch,take off. Oh yes, scary as crap, not knowing what to expect first time on!

[Jumna]

Training gear was outta stock when I started, so I never tried it. I'm thinking if you're moving around you should chuck them, since it must cause some drag. As for IU, it is excellent in wind, just be very quick on TH if a crash is immanent. Maybe get a set of tougher skids on hand for when the stock one's break - I have the superskids 200long, which are in scale to stock except the skids are longer.

[GD5015]

Winds been keeping me out of the air during the daylight hours again. So relegated to hovering at nite under the street lamp. Will try with no training wheels next time I can fly in daylight. Need to set up on the DX7 soon as well.

John

[DKS_ONE]

Originally Posted by GD5015

First idle up flight tonite. What an attention getter. No soft start on the stock Tx, so when you hit the switch, you're there. It takes a lot of gumption not to hit throttle hold as soon as you hear the blades beating the air. Tail held good, The actual flight is not greatly different from idiot mode, but with the higher head speed, it was more stable in the air. I think I like it. I did still have the training gear on though. Guess I'm still at least half an idiot.

John

Actually, the ESC controls soft starts and there IS one on the stock SR ESC . But once you have the blades spinning, hitting I/U gives you instant full throttle (depending on how you have the left knob set and collective stick position). The soft start will work on initial spin up. Try it out, put T/H on, flip to I/U, go to mid stick and flick off T/H. It spins up in about 3-5 seconds, but not 0.5 seconds lol, saves main gears. This is what I'VE done, YMMV! Only as YOU are comfortable!

Originally Posted by Velislide

I probably wouldnt mess with I/U a whole lot till the training gear is off, and you can maintain hovers without a second thought in normal mode. That way if you do crash, there will be far less damage. Once you can comfortably hover, take the training gear off, it will be 5x easier to hover and fly.

Actually, I would take the time with the training gear on to get used to hovering with I/U, but that's just MO. That way you get used to all aspects of that throttle curve. I had 400 training gear on mine, had about 6" of "spring" to it so if you douse collective you have a little breathing room.

Originally Posted by LeatherHelmet

I dont even hesitate anymore, spin her up, flip the switch,take off. Oh yes, scary as crap, not knowing what to expect first time on!

Yup!!!

Originally Posted by GD5015

Winds been keeping me out of the air during the daylight hours again. So relegated to hovering at nite under the street lamp. Will try with no training wheels next time I can fly in daylight. Need to set up on the DX7 soon as well.

John

All the more reason to be getting I/U going! That extra head speed really helps with windy conditions. But don't push your luck either, learning to fly in wind is a great idea, but baby steps. Don't think I/U will carry this bird into 25mph winds lol, some breezy conditions or steady 5mph winds it can handle, but only as you feel comfortable. One day the winds won't be an issue for you because you'll have practiced it lots and/or you'll have a bigger bird that laughs at wind.

[jperkosk]

Originally Posted by DKS_ONE

But don't push your luck either, learning to fly in wind is a great idea, but baby steps. Don't think I/U will carry this bird into 25mph winds lol, some breezy conditions or steady 5mph winds it can handle, but only as you feel comfortable.

Don't underestimate the little bugger . This is the last video of my SR before I decided to sell it, this was precisely the flight where I realized I needed a heli with more balls. The flight was in gusty wind averaging about 30kph, on occasion it was difficult to fly the SR upwind, and there was a huge transitional lift change when turning up-and-down wind, you can see SR jumping up and down in turns. So yes, the I/U will take it quite far in wind resistance department

YouTube

YouTube

[LeatherHelmet]

Wow, great flying for that much wind!

[DKS_ONE]

Originally Posted by jperkosk

Don't underestimate the little bugger . This is the last video of my SR before I decided to sell it, this was precisely the flight where I realized I needed a heli with more balls. The flight was in gusty wind averaging about 30kph, on occasion it was difficult to fly the SR upwind, and there was a huge transitional lift change when turning up-and-down wind, you can see SR jumping up and down in turns. So yes, the I/U will take it quite far in wind resistance department

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL6gAPAhKGU

Don't get me wrong, once I acquired my junior woodchuck wind flyers badge, I took the little tyke out in some pretty stern winds myself. Put the mains on a 45 degree angle and making headway at a rate of about a couple meters every 5 seconds will have you turning downwind only to turn back about 5 seconds later cuz it's disappearing! Hahahaha, I hear ya on the wind, just some butt covering so that I didn't come of sounding like "Ya, take it out when the flags are straight out and cats are flying around, that'll get you some good training". Playing in the wind is fun, just know your limits and the limits of your heli by learning them a bit at a time. Once you can take on steady 5mph (8km/h) winds, take it out in 10mph (16km/h) winds. Anything beyond that is up for debate, I'm pretty sure I've done flights in sustained winds between 10-15 km/h before and was able to do it. Any more than that and it's not really flying anymore. All you're doing is trying to overcome the wind really. Gusts, ya, they'll give you some varying conditions, especially at those speeds, so you have to be creative for sure! Nice flight man

[GD5015]

That's impressive. When still flying planks, I would take my slow stik out and fly it backwards. Would actually fly in the direction the tail was pointing. Lot of fun, but nerve wracking. I'm a little more conservative with the SR due the crash cost. Though it's a lot less than the 450 waiting on me.

John

[jperkosk]

It's all relative, according to Einstein.

A month ago I had a tipover while trying to land nose-in my B400 in the wind (stupid, really ). It happend in I/U, of course, I was a bit slow hitting the TH so there was a half a second chicken dance on the tarmac. Not much damage at the first glance, but now I'm out of more than $80 (main and tail blades, main and feathering shafts, boom and 3 stripped cyclic servos - replaced them with the same SG90s as previously on BSR, PITA as I had to sand down the housing a bit) and my B400 still flies like cr@p, lot's of vibration in the tail. Probably the tail shaft got slightly bent as well. By comparison, the worst crash I had on BSR cost me under $50, and typical crash cost was about $30.

So this is how you come to relax about flying BSR in the wind

How do you get your guts to try lo land a 450 nose-in in the wind? Simple. I take off with a 600N in the same wind, do a couple of very careful circuits (30kph wind is noticeable, but nothing dangerous for a 600), do some nose-in hover, brown my underwear properly, land it and then B400 doesn't seem to be stressing me at all in the same wind...