Blade 400 tail creep

[yipper07]

Hi,
I have been flying my Blade 400 for about a year now with no real problems until recently.

For some reason the the tail has started creeping, when I first spool up the heli on a fully charged battery, the tail holds fine, however after about 1.5 to 2 minutes the nose of the heli starts to creep right (as you look at it hovering tail in). So I trim it out but then it creeps right again, more trim added, then more creeping right etc.

When I put rudder inputs while hovering the gyro seems to behave correctly (ie it will pirouette and stop the tail with no bounce) but in hover it will always creep.

The only thing I can think of is that it may be due to head speed dropping through weak batteries but I thought HH gyros worked with a range of head speeds so assume this is not the case.

For info, it is the stock gyro and tail servo and the gyro is in HH mode at 69% gain.

Other than that the heli still flies really well, any suggestions would be welcome.

Thanks

[nice,whatdoesitdo?]

ive heard that other people have had the gyro crap out at about flight 60-70, could possibly be its on the way out, maybe try another servo to confirm?

[dyin2fly]

mine used to do that all the time, try recentering your tail in rate mode, first check to make sure your boom hasn't slid out, throwing your servo off center, if that doesnt work, get a new gyro.

[Capt.Chip]

If you've suffered with the stock gyro this long I'm amazed, and you will be truly amazed by the performance upgrade of a Futaba GY401 or better yet a GY 520. Usually the POS stock 110 doesn't last this long!
If you think that the gyro is OK, try checking the tail over real good. On a decent gyro drift is an indication that the rate setting is too low. Drift can also be caused by bad tail bearings, friction of the belt drive system, worn tail rotor shaft or tail blade grips, etc., but mostly by a bad gyro.
Hope this leads to a resolution of your problem!

[yipper07]

Hi,

Thanks for the responses, I will check the things mentioned and report back on if they resolved it or not.
If it doesn't then I guess I am buying a new gyro. Does anyone know of a budget gyro and tail servo combination that works well. I would like the GY401 but at the moment I can't justify the cost?
Thanks

[Avidflyer]

I would take your tail linkage apart and look for some worn parts considering that you have some time on it. I had this issue and I took my slider apart, lubed it up real well and then totally re rigged my tail from the servo back and it cured the drift. I upgraded to the Blue Anodized Eflite tail blade grips ($12 bucks) which have far less slop in them and that tightened my tail up quite a bit too. Keep your eye on the used Electronics section on here. 401's pop up all the time. I bought mine and a good tail servo for $75 shipped. The 401 made my bird fly so much better I had to relearn to fly it only this time it only took about 1 day instead of weeks and weeks. Not having to fly the tail all the time makes it so much easier to progress with everything else.