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tealc · 06-30-2016, 10:03 PM

After 2 years of not being able to fly, I got out on Monday and put 2-3 flights on the Pantera. Man does the fiberglass canopy I got from JB spice up the old Pantera 50 in the air. I have the one that is yellow, orange, and green (it was chosen by my children and was not my favorite till I saw it in the sun light and flying around). The flights I did were nothing special as I was breaking in a new engine. It did feel good to smell nitro and hear the engine sound. Also put in several flights on the old EXI/Align 450pro. Boy did I have some rust. Took it easy as I just wanted to get the feeling back of flying the heli. I had no confidence in trying anything but simple flying and a few stall turns. Then the story changes.

On Wednesday, I headed to the field with my children to have a day of flying. We got to the field and my children discovered that we did not have the plug for the safe arm on the Flyzone Switch. So, the children were grounded as they can't fly helis. This takes me to the Pantera.

After a great day on Monday, I was looking forward to some flights on my favorite heli. Fueled the Pantera up and powered it up. Got the engine started and walked it to the field. I set the heli down and the engine died. It was a cold morning (55 degrees at 10:00) so I figured the engine just needed to warm up. Started it a second time and everything looked and sounded great. Spun the heli up and as soon as the CGY-750 gov took over the heli began to spin around on its skids. It felt like the gyro was no longer in AVCS and was now in Normal mode (rate). As I am no good at flying helis in rate mode, I shut the heli down and took it to the bench. That is when I noticed the gyro was showing a problem. The rudder servo would slowly go to the extreme throw of the servo very slowly. Recenter the pitch control arm on the tail and the rudder servo would again slowly move on its own to the extreme throw. I adjusted the gains up and down as my daughter Nano CPX would do the same thing if the gain was to low. This did not work.
After redoing the rudder servo set up several times, the frustration was growing

. My children my say that they could see stream coming from my ears. I have not had this gyro do this until I installed the new firmware version 2.0. Don't know if anyone else has been experiencing this problem.

I ended up just putting my Pantera away and flying both my 450's until the same problem showed up in the Align 450Pro V2 that has the a CGY-750 on it. I put several flights on the EXI/Align 450 and then spent some time teaching my children how to flying the Nano CPX. My son struggled and had no control of it. He wanted to give it a go even though I told him that it would be to much for him. He has only flown a 3 channel heli (which also caused a problem because the rudder of the 3 channel is on the wrong stick). My daughter had more success. I was so proud of her efforts after not touching that heli in 2 year and having 0 sim time. She managed to get the heli up into a hover and started working on keeping it hovering while counter the wind.

Even though the day did not start great, I would say we still all had fun.

On a side note, Monday just before I lifted the 450 into the air for one of its flights, I noticed something moving out of the corner of my eye. It was a big black and white horse walking across the runway with no else around. I unplugged the battery of the heli and turned my transmitter off and went after the horse, while telling my children (ages 4, 7, and 15) to go to the neighbors house to see if they had a horse get out.
I managed to get the horse and my children located the owner a few houses away. She was so grateful for our help that she gave them the horse rides and came back later with the horse and let them rider the horse again. As City of Portland children, those horse rides made their day. She also gave them permission to contact her the next time we come to the flying field and she would bring the horse over for more rides. Talk about making their day

.

wattflyer · 06-30-2016, 10:17 PM

Their are a lot of nice people around, all we have to do is open the alleyway.

flyingquisinart · 07-01-2016, 04:54 AM

That's a pretty cool story! I wish I knew more about that FBL unit but can't help there. Maybe it "lost" the settings somehow. I did manage to reverse my aileron setting on the transmitter and it kept tipping as I tried to spool up. To this day, I have no idea how it got reversed. Now I make sure to check swash direction on every flight.

jbeech · 07-01-2016, 11:57 AM

Is adjusting the rudder trim via the transmitter a no-no with that Futaba gyro? I wonder because with most gyros you make adjustments mechanically with the ball link instead of via the trim tab. Check that before assuming the gyro update is screwed up.

tealc · 07-01-2016, 08:19 PM

The suggestion is to set everything at 90 degrees. Which we know is normal. Then to fly and trim the rudder in rate mode or Normal. Land the bird and make mechanical adjustments and rest the trim to 0. I just read that this new version wants the end points running being 100-120%. Currently, I am at 88 and 84. So, I will pull the servo horn and remount the ball closer to the servo horn mounting screw. I will continue to make this adjustment till I get this end point adjustment at 100-120%. I hope this helps because I am on day 2 of not getting a call back from Futaba and this was after sitting on hold for 60min till their system kicked me to the call back option. Not to impressed with their customer service at this point.

tealc · 07-03-2016, 10:58 AM

I believe I have solved the problem and discovered another. I made mechanical adjustments to rudder horn and got my endpoint setting back above 100 in the CGY-750. This has fixed the problem. Would have been nice to have been told by Futaba to not drop the endpoints below 100. Right now it just feels good to have the gyro working right. Next step is to check it with the engine running.

The second problem is with the control arm on the rear tail case. The 2 little black knob (pins) that move the round thing (which slides on the tail shaft) that makes the tail grips move are not centered on the round black thing. So, I sanded one of the black knobs (pins) down until the binding was reduced. This helped to free up the movement. Maybe later I will replace them with JB's 3D guide pins. This is a new tail case and the round thing has never moved very freely. After free up the movement, the tail servo has stopped singing to me when I push full right rudder.

06-30-2016, 10:03 PM	#1 (permalink)
tealc Registered Users Join Date: Jun 2010	2 years After 2 years of not being able to fly, I got out on Monday and put 2-3 flights on the Pantera. Man does the fiberglass canopy I got from JB spice up the old Pantera 50 in the air. I have the one that is yellow, orange, and green (it was chosen by my children and was not my favorite till I saw it in the sun light and flying around). The flights I did were nothing special as I was breaking in a new engine. It did feel good to smell nitro and hear the engine sound. Also put in several flights on the old EXI/Align 450pro. Boy did I have some rust. Took it easy as I just wanted to get the feeling back of flying the heli. I had no confidence in trying anything but simple flying and a few stall turns. Then the story changes. On Wednesday, I headed to the field with my children to have a day of flying. We got to the field and my children discovered that we did not have the plug for the safe arm on the Flyzone Switch. So, the children were grounded as they can't fly helis. This takes me to the Pantera. After a great day on Monday, I was looking forward to some flights on my favorite heli. Fueled the Pantera up and powered it up. Got the engine started and walked it to the field. I set the heli down and the engine died. It was a cold morning (55 degrees at 10:00) so I figured the engine just needed to warm up. Started it a second time and everything looked and sounded great. Spun the heli up and as soon as the CGY-750 gov took over the heli began to spin around on its skids. It felt like the gyro was no longer in AVCS and was now in Normal mode (rate). As I am no good at flying helis in rate mode, I shut the heli down and took it to the bench. That is when I noticed the gyro was showing a problem. The rudder servo would slowly go to the extreme throw of the servo very slowly. Recenter the pitch control arm on the tail and the rudder servo would again slowly move on its own to the extreme throw. I adjusted the gains up and down as my daughter Nano CPX would do the same thing if the gain was to low. This did not work. After redoing the rudder servo set up several times, the frustration was growing. My children my say that they could see stream coming from my ears. I have not had this gyro do this until I installed the new firmware version 2.0. Don't know if anyone else has been experiencing this problem. I ended up just putting my Pantera away and flying both my 450's until the same problem showed up in the Align 450Pro V2 that has the a CGY-750 on it. I put several flights on the EXI/Align 450 and then spent some time teaching my children how to flying the Nano CPX. My son struggled and had no control of it. He wanted to give it a go even though I told him that it would be to much for him. He has only flown a 3 channel heli (which also caused a problem because the rudder of the 3 channel is on the wrong stick). My daughter had more success. I was so proud of her efforts after not touching that heli in 2 year and having 0 sim time. She managed to get the heli up into a hover and started working on keeping it hovering while counter the wind. Even though the day did not start great, I would say we still all had fun. On a side note, Monday just before I lifted the 450 into the air for one of its flights, I noticed something moving out of the corner of my eye. It was a big black and white horse walking across the runway with no else around. I unplugged the battery of the heli and turned my transmitter off and went after the horse, while telling my children (ages 4, 7, and 15) to go to the neighbors house to see if they had a horse get out. I managed to get the horse and my children located the owner a few houses away. She was so grateful for our help that she gave them the horse rides and came back later with the horse and let them rider the horse again. As City of Portland children, those horse rides made their day. She also gave them permission to contact her the next time we come to the flying field and she would bring the horse over for more rides. Talk about making their day. Last edited by tealc; 07-01-2016 at 01:33 AM..

07-01-2016, 04:54 AM	#3 (permalink)
flyingquisinart Registered Users Join Date: Mar 2006	That's a pretty cool story! I wish I knew more about that FBL unit but can't help there. Maybe it "lost" the settings somehow. I did manage to reverse my aileron setting on the transmitter and it kept tipping as I tried to spool up. To this day, I have no idea how it got reversed. Now I make sure to check swash direction on every flight. __________________ Matt Pantera P5 50 RNFBL, Blade 130X, mcpx, Gaui X5 FES

07-01-2016, 11:57 AM	#4 (permalink)
jbeech Registered Users Join Date: Jul 2005	Is adjusting the rudder trim via the transmitter a no-no with that Futaba gyro? I wonder because with most gyros you make adjustments mechanically with the ball link instead of via the trim tab. Check that before assuming the gyro update is screwed up. __________________ John Beech - GM (and janitor) www.promodeler.com 407-302-3361 AMA # 47381, IRCHA #745

07-01-2016, 08:19 PM	#5 (permalink)
tealc Registered Users Thread Starter Join Date: Jun 2010	The suggestion is to set everything at 90 degrees. Which we know is normal. Then to fly and trim the rudder in rate mode or Normal. Land the bird and make mechanical adjustments and rest the trim to 0. I just read that this new version wants the end points running being 100-120%. Currently, I am at 88 and 84. So, I will pull the servo horn and remount the ball closer to the servo horn mounting screw. I will continue to make this adjustment till I get this end point adjustment at 100-120%. I hope this helps because I am on day 2 of not getting a call back from Futaba and this was after sitting on hold for 60min till their system kicked me to the call back option. Not to impressed with their customer service at this point. Last edited by tealc; 07-03-2016 at 11:02 AM..

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06-30-2016, 10:17 PM	#2 (permalink)
wattflyer Registered Users Join Date: Feb 2011	Their are a lot of nice people around, all we have to do is open the alleyway.

07-03-2016, 10:58 AM	#6 (permalink)
tealc Registered Users Thread Starter Join Date: Jun 2010	I believe I have solved the problem and discovered another. I made mechanical adjustments to rudder horn and got my endpoint setting back above 100 in the CGY-750. This has fixed the problem. Would have been nice to have been told by Futaba to not drop the endpoints below 100. Right now it just feels good to have the gyro working right. Next step is to check it with the engine running. The second problem is with the control arm on the rear tail case. The 2 little black knob (pins) that move the round thing (which slides on the tail shaft) that makes the tail grips move are not centered on the round black thing. So, I sanded one of the black knobs (pins) down until the binding was reduced. This helped to free up the movement. Maybe later I will replace them with JB's 3D guide pins. This is a new tail case and the round thing has never moved very freely. After free up the movement, the tail servo has stopped singing to me when I push full right rudder.

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