I am ready to throw this thing in the garbage

[John Shipley]

Originally Posted by apper001

reversed gyro and tail is working
now onwards with mixer and gyro mix
am wondering though that horizon mcpx 2-1 works so much better than the sr mixer/esc...

Thats great!! Dialing in the mixing pot is not very easy. There are a lot of combinations that will work, but only a few that will keep the tail motor at the right temp. I dial it in by reducing the gain on the gyro to a low head lock or high rate mode. Then get into a hover and see which way the the nose is turning. If the nose is turning to the left, then you need more tail motor.....turn the pot clockwise. If it is turning to the right, the motor is too strong and you reduce by turning counter clockwise. Once the heli is not turning, then increase the the gyro gain untill you get some wag and then back off a little. Do a few pitch pumps to make sure the heli will go straight up without the nose turning......almost always to the left when the gyro is too low. Be sure to check the temp of the tail motor.....too hot and it will not last. By far the easiest way is too replace the stock gyro with the 401 clone......like in my thread.
As far as brushless setup's, I have tested quite a few of them and I am currently flying a cheaper version of my high performance Steve Neu motored rocket. If you decide to go with a bruhless tail, you need to decide how much performance you want and what you budget is. If you want a slower, learning type heli, that is one type of motor. I was looking for a machine I could do serious 3d with. My current setup is the CNC ice main motor and the Medusa 12mm 4000kv tail, futaba 401 gyro, thunderbird 9 amp tail esc, blade cp woody blades, gws 3030 push on prop, no flybar weights and a 35c battery. With this setup, you can do most 3d moves and it is easy to setup. One thing to keep in mind is that the new 300X is coming out soon and it is FBL. So, I would not spend a lot of $$ going with a BL tail........the stock tail and a 401 clone gyro will fly really well with a good TX..........J

[hierlevelz]

Anyone experience tilting to the left as the heli takes begins to hover. The first time I crashed the thing hovered to about 15 feet and then tilted (left aileron) and crashed without any stick input. Tried hovering again today and got up to about a foot off the ground and noticed that it wanted to tilt and or drift to the left.so I cut the throttle and averted disaster. Now it was a bit windy out and I had some training gear on for some added protection. The training gear also kept popping off for some strange reason.

[nbells]

Originally Posted by hierlevelz

Anyone experience tilting to the left as the heli takes begins to hover. The first time I crashed the thing hovered to about 15 feet and then tilted (left aileron) and crashed without any stick input. Tried hovering again today and got up to about a foot off the ground and noticed that it wanted to tilt and or drift to the left.so I cut the throttle and averted disaster. Now it was a bit windy out and I had some training gear on for some added protection. The training gear also kept popping off for some strange reason.

If you find the heli tilts and drifts to the left then try trimming out the model. If you have to put in a lot of trim then I would suggest you look at the level of your swash.

As for your training gear coming off ... use some zip ties.

nbells

[Jumna]

+1 Also, it just isn't like a coax or msr, and will drift some direction or another and need some stick input. It's like a marble on a ball, and not a marble in a bowl. Tho I'm imagining future heli's controlled by ipad where someone tells it to do "3D stuff" and waves their smartphone or wii remote around.....

[GSPI]

Originally Posted by MESummersII

I don't know GSPI. Unless your tail motor or ESC is going it doesn't make a ton of sense. The 2in1 mixer essentially is just adjusting how fast your tail motor spins constantly to keep the heli straight. The stock gyro just isn't good enough to control the heli 100%. So slowly adjusting up the ESC with the gyro off allows you to at least tune the bird close to keeping itself straight mechanically and then setting the gyro up to handle small adjustments for wind and such. Why it would change without touching anything...you got me.

Ok, just came in from outside tinkering, I made the adjustment and it took a while, I unplugged everything and replugged in everything in case I didn't have good connections after the crash from over a month ago, I readjusted the ESC the way you guys said and it actually worked (I don't know why but I didn't set anything up differently when it started to spin). I've left the training gear on for the time being to make sure it doesn't go whacky on me again. It seems to be working after two batteries worth of adjusting the esc and testing out the various gyro settings. Maybe I can get some more flights tonight!! Going to get dinner now and then I'll try making some more adjustments again on my TX since it's starting to work the way I thought it was!... be back...

[GSPI]

Got some good hovering in!! Thanks to MESummersII and John Shipley's notes, the tail is back in control. I should have stopped after the 4th pack but ended up having a blade strike into a picnic table and stripped one of the cyclic servos! Oh well, I'm happy with how it was working and that gives me the excuse to go get a new set of Extreme blades and of course a replacement servo!

After putting the SR away, I went and flew the mCPx for three packs in order to make sure I was still getting stick time and take away some crash jitters!!

Thanks again for your inputs! I'm not really sure why the heli started behaving that way when I hadn't changed anything but this heli definitely makes you learn how to troubleshoot!

[GSPI]

Here we go again... the SR started spinning again without any changes to what I did last week other than put on new blades and replaced the stripped gears in one servo!?

I think my tail rotor motor is smoked, maybe? It intermittently comes on and off now and for a while it was on full blast and the main motor died off. While there was some issues here, I decided to extend the boom and resolder the wires on the tail rotor motor (I even soldered it correctly and also made sure polarity is right) been checking everything I can think of... My ESC was acting funny in my opinion too which indicates a short of some sort from what I could tell when I was trying to adjust it. Might have to rewire the whole boom first to make sure that the factory wiring had not rub up against the metal and shorted somehow, I did notice how tight everything was from the factory setup which concerned me. I did notice in the SR Bible that there is a strong chance to strip wires in the tail boom so I'll fix that first to make sure it's right.... back to the LHS again.

...meh, maybe I didn't need to do anything else today.

[GSPI]

So I'm trying to remove the tail rotor motor and the hex bolts holding in the blade adapter stripped out. More parts to replace... Sheesh

Just going to get a whole new tail rotor assembly to work on... might be easier.

[olemil]

Just in case, valuerc sells the complete tail assembly for around $20. I just put one on my SR but if you buy one, make sure you check the blade adapter because mine was bent.

P.S. MIP thorpe 1.5mm hex driver is your best bang for your buck on hex screws, well worth the $14.

[Sneaglebob]

A good SR is a broken SR

[GSPI]

Originally Posted by Sneaglebob

A good SR is a broken SR

Truer words haven't been spoken!

[Jumna]

Originally Posted by Sneaglebob

A good SR is a broken SR

I hope that's not dramatic foreshadowing for the raptor......!

[LeatherHelmet]

get yourself a little baggie of extra set screws as well, replace at every removal, they are cheap,and extra insurance against stripped ones, and having to buy more parts than necessary....

[GSPI]

I've added the screws to my stock list over the past year but the problem I have is that these are the factory installed hex nuts and with any of the hex drivers that I have (Craftsmans, Rigid and Eklinds) they strip out. I was advised a long time ago that if and when the tail rotor motor goes out, you will have to purchase all the parts so that you can be able to put them together as the factory parts are torqued together so tightly that you will not be able to take things apart without stripping out the screws... so I go to the LHS and get all the replacement parts!

[Sneaglebob]

Originally Posted by Jumna

I hope that's not dramatic foreshadowing for the raptor......!

rofl i did my first short hops with my raptor 50 last saturday and I flew it for the first time on sunday. much easier to fly.