Seeing my helicopter at range...

[Raven Morpheus]

Hey all

Alongside some of the other things I've noted in threads I've made on here one of the problems I've had with the RC Micro Helis I have is seeing where the blade tips are in relation to things around them.

I'm fine so long as I can see the disc (I use blade MCPX blades which have a white pattern on the top and bottom) however once I can't see the blade disc I'm stuffed - I have no idea how close I am to things in front of the heli!

I apparently have 20/20 vision, but even at a distance of about 16-20ft I can't judge where the blades are in relation to scenery in front of the heli.

I've thought about adding LED's on the blade tips or adding one to act as a spot light that points dead ahead but I'm not sure they'd be visible in the day and adding them seems complicated (for me).

So, is there a way I can make the blades more visible when I can't see the entire disc so that I can better judge how close to things in front of the heli I am?

TIA

[600bob]

It sounds like you need a larger place to fly if your blades are that close to things!

[Imzzaudae]

I'd lightly sand the blades and then paint them white. Keep the paint light and balance the blades after painting.

You can see white blades! Black blades vanish.

[FlyBri3]

Try some orange or green blades!

[Felix the cat]

Nevermind the disc, watch the nose and fly the nose.

If you're so close to things you need a bigger place to fly.

[Creaky Cactus]

I used to fly with the tops of my blades painted orange. It worked well for me when I needed it.

[Raven Morpheus]

I got some KBDD white blades, the rotor disc is much more visible, just hope I don't break them, at £5 a pair it could get expensive, luckily I have 10 pairs of Blade MCPX blades that I bought for £1 a pair...

Doesn't help much with orientation if I can't see the tops/bottoms of the blades though.

Also difficult to see the nose, thus fly the nose, when it's pointing away from me. All I can see at 16-20ft (unless the heli is low or higher than my head (and I'm only 5'3") is the back end of the airframe+all the mech attached to it and the tail.

[Allan_84]

I had the same problems seeing where my mcpx BL is pointing, I got yellow main blades and green tail blades and painted the tailboom fluorescence bright orange, after that I normally dont have problems seeing the bird anymore.

[babyuh1]

I have a terrible time seeing these little birds without having brightly colored blades. The black and white ones are too hard to make out.

[Blade Scraper]

Originally Posted by babyuh1

I have a terrible time seeing these little birds without having brightly colored blades. The black and white ones are too hard to make out.

+1

I fly the disc instead of the nose (this was a switch I made when moving from FP to CP), and I find black blades are very difficult to track. For now, I err on the closer side with the 180 CFX that I've lost orientation on a couple times, as it can go from visible to almost invisible (for orientation) pretty fast.

I find colour is the best solution: bright loud colours that don't blend into the scenery around you. My personal favourite is bright orange, and it counts for me the most on both mains and tail blades.

Also a tip I read a while back in the main forum and which helped me save my 180 CFX during total orientation loss (twice): trust your hands, not your eyes. If you're doing a maneuver and lose orientation only to momentarily regain it - but not with the heli pointed where your 'hands' say it should be, ignore what you think you're seeing and follow through to complete it.

I'm not sure how well I'm explaining that. In the instance where I saw this posted, the pilot regained orientation but not where the heli should be pointed - he followed through on what he thought he was seeing anyway, even though his mind wasn't making sense of what he 'saw' and he crashed bad.

I came across that while experiencing the same thing at times in Phoenix, and was 'crashing' in the sim until I saw his post and applied it in the sim. Eventually this became ingrained, and when I found myself IRL in the same situation followed what had by then become intuitive. Two crashes averted on the 180 CFX that could have been bad ones.

I'm keeping it in closer now while waiting on orange blades, tail rotor, and tail booms. My skids are likewise orange, Clashes awful with the canopy (skids alone give me an idea of how ugly it'll look when the rest goes on), but visibility trumps aesthetics: not flying to win any beauty contest on how my heli looks (plus it looks better in one piece with the colour clash than it would in pieces).

And close is a relative thing: I don't fly like the pros on YouTube who do funnels with the heli passing a couple feet in front of their face. I always maintain some distance for 'fudge factor' in case of dumb thumbs or something outside my control (brownout, sudden distraction, etc).

I also use an 'offset' so that the tail rotor is never directly in front of my face, or if I'm flipping inverted, I'm not flipping directly toward myself.