Safety question - Arming Sequence

[Taxus812]

Im am getting ready to fly my first electric heli and wanted to pick you brains on safety.

Up to now I was all nitro. I had a whole different set of procedures (for example I check the collective direction before I started the motor). Plus I had a clutch that if I held my hand on the rotor would slip.

As far as I can see with the electric bird once you connect the battery your only a few seconds before a accidental stick movement can ruin the whole day.

How do you connect the battery, put on the canopy and get the bird ready for flight, safely?

What are your launch procedures?

[ahahn]

First you need to understand your ESC, and how it behaves to both arming, and also to loss of throttle signal.

Most ESC's only arm when they see a low throttle signal from the receiver. My CC ESC also requires that some RC-like signal is coming from the receiver.

I have my CC ESC's setup so that TH, although it will cut the throttle, isn't low enough to arm the ESC.

So my routine is to have TH on after turning on the transmitter. That way the ESC doesn't arm. If by some chance I forget to have TH on when powering up the heli, it will arm, if I am in "Normal", since this is set to a constant arming "0" curve (I run a governor on my CC ESC). If so it is on zero throttle so the motor won't turn. Since normal is a flat zero, hitting the collective stick won't change the throttle for me. If for some reason I was in I1, then since that was non-zero, the ESC wouldn't arm. I have to go to Normal for that to occur.

If I turn off my transmitter first, by mistake, my failsafe is setup to hold the last throttle signal. If the motot was off on the bench, then it stays off. If it was on, then it stays on, but to be honest, I am not sure why I would turn off the transmitter with the motor spinning.

All in all, I feel pretty safe with this setup.

[RedOctobyr]

Can I ask a dumb question? What are you referring to with the ESC arming, vs the throttle simply being off? I just have a cheap Turnigy ESC, maybe mine is different, but mine seems to start up normally (deliberately not using the term arming) unless I power up at full throttle and it goes into programming mode.

[tracks]

Hey Red,

I believe he is telling you to consider safety first...start up with TH on....you can program your ESC with this..

Be it a cheap one or not...you must tell your heli how to react..

these folks know what they are tellin ya......been there,done that..

[RedOctobyr]

Believe me, I try to keep that in mind. TX on first, off last, check TH is on before plugging in. But I have been unable to set my low throttle position w the ESC. I need to give a few clicks of negative throttle trim to keep the motor off. So if I shut off the TX or it fails a range check, the motor turns ("slowly"). And the one time I left the TX off during bench testing, it started to spool up. Yikes.

[pabbas]

Have you follow the Turnigy ESC instruction on Throttle Range settings.

Originally Posted by RedOctobyr

Believe me, I try to keep that in mind. TX on first, off last, check TH is on before plugging in. But I have been unable to set my low throttle position w the ESC. I need to give a few clicks of negative throttle trim to keep the motor off. So if I shut off the TX or it fails a range check, the motor turns ("slowly"). And the one time I left the TX off during bench testing, it started to spool up. Yikes.

[RedOctobyr]

I've tried at least. It is a Turnigy dlux 55A. HK support gave me a procedure for teaching low throttle, which works until I unplug it, then it forgets again. The beep sequences in the manual have no bearing on the beeps it actually makes, either, which makes the rest of programming tougher

[Daddy]

You asked about battery and canopy. I like the Align canopy for this reason, I put the canopy on and feed the battery and esc plug out the bottom hole. I plug them in and am away from the heli before arming is complete. I also preflight all controls after this.

Ken