Four days in the life of my 550

[Grok]

In anticipation of putting CGY750s in my future Fusion 50 and Velocity 50 I purchased a used Futaba 8FG. Thanks Sparky426. Last Thursday I began programming it for the Outrage 550. Friday morning I finished the programming and got the head all setup. Out to the field I went. Spooled her up and immediately felt the hairs on back stand up. She was tilting toward me... Weird... A little forward stick and now she's tilting toward me at a 45 degree angle. Gah! Quick hit throttle hold! Too late! She tips to the left and back. The main blades catch the pad. They both break in half. One flies away from me, the other flies right at me. My eyes bulge, but the half blade is unstable and flutters by me harmlessly to my left. I hear it whack my car. I was standing 20 feet away from the heli. I go out to inspect the heli and the damage is minimal. Here's a pic of the broken parts. You can just make out 2 of the 4 missing teeth in the main gear. The larger outer blade is the one that came at me.



Anyway, back home I have all the parts and decide this is a perfect time to swap out the Align DS620s and DS650 for the new Hyperion DS20X-SMDs and DS20X-GCD servos. A pic of the gutted 550,



and a pic with it's guts restored.



Saturday morning I worked some 3.5 hours getting the head right this time. Out at the field, I had one of my flying buddies look over my heli. Looked good to him except I needed to reverse the rudder servo in my radio. Crossed my fingers and took the heli out to the pad. Spooled her up. Good! No tipping. Brought her up into a hover. Wow! That's quite a tail wag. Brought her down and lowered the gain on the gyro. No effect. Lowered it some more. No effect. Kept at it until I'd lowered the gain to just 15%. No effect. Time to head home. Oh well, at least this time it's not in pieces. Back home I tried to hover it again in the backyard. Same problem and when I shut her down a big vibration. So I replaced the tail blades. Hovered it again and it looked great. Just an occasional twitch or two.

Sunday I get out to the field late, but as I go thru the radio one more time it occurs to me: Being new to the 8FG when I was adjusting the gyro gain on Saturday I was only adjusting the throttle hold gain! Dropping the gain from 50% to 30% in the other modes got rid of all the twitching. The rest of the day was uneventful and fun.

Monday lunch flying was uneventful until the last flight. One of the tail pitch arm's screws pops out. Round and round the tail goes. Throttle hold. I begin the auto, but the HS falls off very fast and my 550 hits hard. No big deal. Just the landing struts. She'll be back up before I head to bed.

Anyway, just thought I'd share.

Oh! Friday's incident was due to failing to reverse the swash AFR for the elevator. Funny, I looked at it a dozen times while I worked on it Friday. Looked good to me.

[3Dmuse]

Hmm, the Mavrikk blades don't have safety wires. From a safety point of view, that's not good.

[Grok]

That's how they make them light weight.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

[pctomlin]

Hey Grok,
Glad you got the new radio sorted and the 550 up and flying reliably. Have fun.

[Daddyo79]

Hey Grok,

Don't feel too bad... I bought a new 8fgh because I had the DX6i and needed a 7 channel. On one hand I like the programability of this radio, but on the other hand, if you don't have everything right it will BITE!

For example, being used to the Spectrum design of one setting for expo on a control, I had no idea I had to set expo for both directions on the 8fgh! Made for some scary flights till I figured that out... Then, like you, there was the whole gyro gain thing... I'm liking the radio now though.

[Grok]

I'm liking it too. The sad thing was I had that little voice whispering in my ear: "There's something wrong with your setup", all the way out to the field. Wish I had listened to it.

[Volcano]

The manual says to use loctite red on the tail parts.