It's not suppose to do this!

[aburgess27]

I am finally ready to try a tiny hover and what happens, the dam heli just keeps on spinning in circles at about barely a 1/.4 stick if that. I have the gy401 and I don't have a clue as to what I'm doing. I see people spool it up and hover in the living room, kitchen, etc. I just wanted to see the heli get anywhere from 1 to 6 inches off the ground for satisfaction after working on it all day( putting on all new servos, gyros, and esc. Any ideas?

[mr008]

find the reverse switch on the gyro , and move it to the opisit position , make sure the u are in heading hold mode when u plug in li-po and that should take care of the spinning problem

[mr2mkii]

I highly recommend you check out Sokal's vids on youtube for setting up the GY401...It's pretty obvious when that happens, that you forgot to reverse the servo setting.

[donahue3]

yeah check the rudder servo, and make sure the tail blades are spinning the correct way. The tail blades should spin counter clock wise from the right side of the heli and the main blades should spin clockwise. Make sure that the leading edge is facing the correct way. Also the Sokal videos are what you need to watch.

[aburgess27]

Thanks to both of you. I tried reversing the setting on the gyro and I am now able to stop the spinning from happening. I had reversed the gyro earlier before the hover test while I was still setting things up. I cant remember why I did it but there was some weird reasoning behind it. Regardless now the gyro is back in the original position just as it was when it came out the box. I still get a little kick to the side about 90* in the counter clockwise direction but this is just when I begin to give it any throttle. Once I get past that point it sits pretty steady until I try to get it in the air. Now just for a little background on me. I have flown on g4 for about a week and I'm nervous as hell as soon as I put the stick up to 1/4 the way with the real thing. I was just trying it right now but I am too scared to get it off the ground. As soon as I start to get it up a couple of inches or so I notice that it wants to creep backwards towards me. So immediately I drop the throttle. I have had the blade for about a week also and today was the first day that opened it up. Immediately I swapped out all the electronics to make my first flight (ever with any rc) a good one. Another reason that I'm so scared is because I'm working with like a 6x6 foot area of complete flat ground. Once those blades get to spinning so fast all I can think about is how much it's gonna cost when they hit something in this confined area that I'm in. I don't want to go to the street because some people might try to watch me and that will be even more pressure on me. So I think I will wait until the morning and go somewhere where I have a little more room to get it to hover. With it drifting back you all think that I can trim that part out?

[aburgess27]

Originally Posted by donahue3

yeah check the rudder servo, and make sure the tail blades are spinning the correct way. The tail blades should spin counter clock wise from the right side of the heli and the main blades should spin clockwise. Make sure that the leading edge is facing the correct way. Also the Sokal videos are what you need to watch.

I have been watching them and I love all the great things he has done for people like myself. I just haven't watched all of them yet!

[Jasmine2501]

Heli bliss will come soon enough!

First you have to do some very lame things though.

Get some training balls and use those (see photo) - they will help a lot on crooked landings, and will allow the heli to spin on the ground without tipping over.

Find a bigger area to fly. I am pretty good and would never consider hovering my Blade 400 in a 6x6 foot space. Just don't do it.

Probably the best place to go would be a club - everyone you meet there will have been at your position once before, and there will be no reason to be shy about crashing - everyone has done it. You also might find some help - someone to look at your heli and make sure it's flight-worthy and straightened out enough to fly without drifting all over the place.

Learn to launch a helicopter correctly - don't be a wimp, get it up in the air. You will need to push a bit forward and to the right to take off straight. If your simulator doesn't behave this way, then you either have the wrong sim, or you have the simulator trimmed wrong.

Do not think about how much anything will cost - think about flying, and only flying... everything else going on in your head is simply a distraction and will not help you fly any better.

Start with short hops - but get the helicopter away from the ground at least a foot or two. Get it up and set it down right away - with the training balls this should be fine. If you try to float around gingerly next to the ground, you're going to catch something and tip over. The ground is the only danger to your helicopter - stay away from it until you deliberately want to land it.

Get some training from a fellow pilot - they don't have to be a super-good pilot, just be willing to help.

Anything I missed? Any specific questions?

[aburgess27]

Originally Posted by Jasmine2501

Heli bliss will come soon enough!

First you have to do some very lame things though.

Get some training balls and use those (see photo) - they will help a lot on crooked landings, and will allow the heli to spin on the ground without tipping over.

Find a bigger area to fly. I am pretty good and would never consider hovering my Blade 400 in a 6x6 foot space. Just don't do it.

Probably the best place to go would be a club - everyone you meet there will have been at your position once before, and there will be no reason to be shy about crashing - everyone has done it. You also might find some help - someone to look at your heli and make sure it's flight-worthy and straightened out enough to fly without drifting all over the place.

Learn to launch a helicopter correctly - don't be a wimp, get it up in the air. You will need to push a bit forward and to the right to take off straight. If your simulator doesn't behave this way, then you either have the wrong sim, or you have the simulator trimmed wrong.

Do not think about how much anything will cost - think about flying, and only flying... everything else going on in your head is simply a distraction and will not help you fly any better.

Start with short hops - but get the helicopter away from the ground at least a foot or two. Get it up and set it down right away - with the training balls this should be fine. If you try to float around gingerly next to the ground, you're going to catch something and tip over. The ground is the only danger to your helicopter - stay away from it until you deliberately want to land it.

Get some training from a fellow pilot - they don't have to be a super-good pilot, just be willing to help.

Anything I missed? Any specific questions?

Thanks Jasmine for all of the kind words and great advice. I was just being hard headedwhen attempting to hover in such a small place. I was just asking for trouble. Well I have to confess, I just got back, I drove out to an empty parking lot at some old business buildings and broke her out. I had plenty of flat ground so I gave it shot. No one around I went for it. I got the heli in the air and didn't exactly hover in one spot but I was in the air. It felt good, but I was still nervoooooouuuuuus. I imagine that I was in the air for a total of 10seconds first and second time. Then it got pretty high, for me at least, I'd say about 12-15 feet so I brought it back down and barely landed it. I haven't seen the tail wag. I don't exactly know what to look for. I can picture it I guess. Well I need to go back to sokal's vids because I need to increase the gain on the gyro, I guess. I thought you are suppose to increase the gain just until you get the tail waggle and then back it down some. Also, I know it on the vids, but I need to get a better understanding of dual rates for each of the switches on the dx6i. Well thanks for all the comments guys and Jasmine.

[Jasmine2501]

You may never see tail wag regardless of the gain, for various reasons. If the servo arm is too short or the servo is too slow, you may not see wag, but you might have drift. Congrats on getting it off the ground!

[aburgess27]

Originally Posted by Jasmine2501

You may never see tail wag regardless of the gain, for various reasons. If the servo arm is too short or the servo is too slow, you may not see wag, but you might have drift. Congrats on getting it off the ground!

Oh o.k., I might not have the fastest servo but I thought that digital was faster than analog. I purchased a hs5065mg for the tail servo to go along with the 401 and the arm length is pretty close to the length of the original servo. I installed the new servo in the original servo's location and put the screw in at about the same height. All of this is so new to me, setting a throttle curve doesn't seem so hard but the pitch curve and then the -10 and +10 all of that is a little confusing to me. Thanks Jasmine.

[Jasmine2501]

Digital is not always faster, some analog servos are wicked fast, the two types just operate in a different way. Both types of servos receive updates from the receiver on a periodic basis. Analog servos only move when they receive an update, moving toward the position that the receiver said. Digital servos continue to move between updates - they store the position that the receiver said and they try to make it to that position before the next update. Analog servos lack that position storage capacity. Digital servos can also usually handle more updates per second, but that's not always the case - the stock Blade 400 servos are a digital type that operate on the slower update frequency, but they are still digital in terms of the way they move. To the pilot, this makes the digital servo feel more precise - but I'm not good enough to notice the small difference. I run HS55 servos on my cyclic and I think they are much better than the digital S75 servo, in spite of being analog servos.

[aburgess27]

I told you I didn't know anything about this stuff. But thanks to you and other in here I am sure learning fast. What I don't like right now is if I wanted to go and change some settings on the transmitter I wouldn't know why or what I'm doing. Dual rates, swash mix and all that foreign stuff to me is what I need to get a grip on. Just something as simple as adjusting the gain can present a challenge to me. Like I said it has been a week exactly that I have had the realflight g4 and the blade. I feel that I have come a long way from not knowing anything to barely knowing anything. Well all I can do is continue trying to figure this stuff out. I wont give up until I get it!

[Jasmine2501]

Yeah one of these days I'll do some videos explaining all that stuff. It is simple once you understand it, but getting everything clearly defined in your head is the hard part. Most people take a sort of random approach at learning helicopter setup, but what myself and others have learned is that a systematic approach at the whole helicopter will almost always result in good setup. Sokal's videos are great for learning this, as are the Finless Bob videos about the Trex 450 - it is pretty much the same, and the concepts apply to almost all helicopters.

Depending on the weather this weekend, I'll either be doing flying videos, or starting my series on how the helicopter works. I also have to go rescue my other car from the office though - it's been parked there for a while... I hate doing stuff like that - I have to take the bus because I can't drive two cars at once