Are you a beginner RC airplane flier? If you are, I hope to provide valuable information to help you get off the ground! RC flying can be very frustrating, and this is quite normal, so don't let it stop you from enjoying this wonderful hobby! Once you get your plane up there, I promise you will be happy you did it! Please let me know if there's anything you'd like to see here or if you have any questions.
Aircraft listed in bold now have mini-reviews and/or videos.
Over and out! Jasmine jasmine2501 at "don'tspamme" netzero dot com
I picked up the 130X on impulse to kind of celebrate my new job, and I must say I'm pleasantly surprised. I didn't expect much from a little plastic heli with AS3X, but Blade has done a great job again. The 130X has the stability you might be familiar with from other aircraft with AS3X, but it's much more nimble than the mCPX, and the brushless power system makes it a real 3D machine. The shaft-driven variable pitch tail system provides solid tail control even with me at the sticks! No more tail blowouts in simple maneuvers! I think if you can fly the mCPX, or you're good with simulated CP helicopters, the 130X would be a great choice for your next helicopter!
Here's the review video, flight test at the end...
Music preference: swing or big band, Brian Setzer, or Sinatra
Announcer Script (after a simple ad-lib introduction):
The Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser is an American three-seat, high wing, single engine fixed gear light aircraft produced by Piper Aircraft between 1946 and 1948. It is an upgraded and redesignated Piper J-5. As a three seat aircraft, the PA-12 is flown without a co-pilot, from the front seat, with room for two passengers side by side in the back. The PA-12 is known for its reliability and short take-off capability. In 1947, two PA-12s flew around the world and the worst mechanical failure they suffered was a broken tail wheel. The PA-12 is still a popular bush plane today, and in 2009, over 1900 PA-12s were currently registered in North America.
The model being flown today is 1/6th scale and electric powered. It uses a 4-cell, 14.8V Lithium Polymer battery and an E-Flite Power 32 motor, producing approximately 600 watts (just over 3/4 horsepower). This gives the model "better than scale" performance, making it an excellent trainer and all-around fun flyer.
Quote from the pilot: "This plane is really joy to fly. It is beautiful in the air and flies like an airplane should!"
Simulator - you can learn everything you need to know on a good simulator. RealFlight and Phoenix are the best, but there's some free ones which are pretty good (FMS is lousy and should be avoided).
- Heli-X - download at http://www.heli-x.net/
- HeliSim - download at http://www.marksfiles.net/HeliSimRC/index.htm
Coaxial - These are helicopters with two sets of main rotor blades rotating in opposite directions. The two sets of blades cancel each other's torque effects, so a tail rotor is not needed. These helicopters are very stable and less maneuverable. Most of them will hover hands-off, and they are only suitable for flying indoors. The coaxial can teach you maintaining altitude with throttle, directional control using rudder (heading) and cyclic control to generate thrust in horizontal directions. The coaxial will not teach you the behavior of the other types of helicopters with a single main rotor, and may lead to some bad habits - it is not possible to roll a coaxial upside-down! Examples are the E-Flite Blade CX/CX2/CX3, E-Flite Blade mCX, and E-Sky Lama.
Fixed Pitch - These helicopters have a single main rotor, and an anti-torque tail rotor. The main blades have a fixed amount of pitch, much like an airplane propeller, and the lift of the helicopter is adjusted using changes in throttle. These helicopters are generally less expensive to purchase and maintain, but most people do not find them any easier to fly than the collective pitch helicopters. The fixed-pitch helicopter will teach you to manage the helicopter's attitude using cyclic control to create thrust in various directions. It will help you learn to coordinate cyclic and rudder controls to make turns, and help you learn throttle and cyclic coordination to make the helicopter fly in various directions. These helicopters are not very stable, and are more manueverable than coaxial helicopters, but are not usually as precise as the final type of helicopter, collective pitch type. Examples are the E-Sky Honey Bee, and the Hirobo Quark.
Collective Pitch - These helicopters share many features with full scale helicopters. They feature a single main rotor and an anti-torque tail rotor, both with variable pitch. Some collective pitch helicopters use a fixed-pitch tail rotor with a variable speed motor for tail control - these are generally not as easy to fly as collective pitch helicopters with a belt or shaft-driven tail rotor with variable pitch tail blades. Collective pitch helicopters are fully aerobatic, capable of flying inverted, and doing loops and rolls, sustained inverted hovering, and many other exciting maneuvers. In my opinion, they are actually not very hard to fly - but they require careful setup and a lot of practice. These helicopters are more expensive than the other types, and the mechanics are much more complicated, making them more difficult and expensive to repair in the event of a crash. The other types of helicopters are usually electric, but if you love nitro power, you're going to need a collective pitch helicopter. Examples of this type are the Align Trex, and the Thunder Tiger Raptors - both of which come in many sizes. Bigger ones are easier to fly, but can be very expensive to purchase and repair. For this reason, the 400-class electrics such as the Align Trex 450, Thunder Tiger Mini-Titan, and E-Flite Blade 400 are very popular.
Collective Pitch Helicopter Setup
The coaxial and fixed pitch helicopters are usually quite easy to set up and maintain, but the collective pitch type can be very difficult to get "dialed in" and they require periodic inspection and maintenance in order to fly properly. I think that learning to fly a collective pitch helicopter is possible and beneficial because you can avoid spending money on the other types which are less fun and provide fewer opportunities for flying time due to their poor handling in the wind. However, many beginners do not understand or take the time to properly set up the helicopter, and this can make it very difficult to fly, and can lead to costly crashes. An improperly set up helicopter can be nearly impossible to fly, even for an expert, so learning proper setup is very important. This is true even if you have a RTF helicopter, as they are often not adjusted properly from the factory. Tonight I am giving a basic overview of setup, from top to bottom. If you do this correctly, your helicopter should fly fairly well the first time, but it will still need fine tuning. There is a step-by-step process to perfect helicopter setup.
Build it right.
- Lock-tite screws that go into metal - very important on feathering shaft!
- CA on screws that go into composite plastics
- Ball links sized correctly
- Servos centered properly
- Parts in proper orientation (some parts can be backwards or upside-down)
- Gear mesh set properly (test with paper)
- Flybar balanced, and paddles aligned
- Rudder push rod straight
- Tail fins and support rods aligned
- Bearings lubed (Tri-Flow)
- Blade grip tension correct
- Belt tension correct
Set up the head. (Top-down method)
- Hold the blade grips at zero pitch throughout this procedure
- Adjust the pitch mixing links to equal lengths, and until the pitch mixing arms are both level - 90 degrees from the main shaft and level with each other
- Snap the radius arms onto the swash plate
- With the blades and paddles at zero pitch, adjust the washout links and the long mixing arm links until the washout arms are level - 90 degrees to the main shaft, and level with each other. This can be tricky because you'll need to get them both correct at the same time - use the suggested measurements from your helicopter manual as a starting point.
- At this point, the blades should be at zero pitch, the flybar cage level, and the mixing arms and washout arms should be 90 degrees from the main shaft, and level with each other.
- This sets the height of the swash plate at zero pitch.
- Center your cyclic servos, and adjust the swash plate links so that the servos and swash can be connected with the swash at the 'zero pitch' height, and the servos perfectly centered.
Program the radio.
- Set CCPM mode, 120-degree swash plate
- unplug the motor
- plug in the helicopter and let it initialize - center the throttle stick
- Move the throttle stick up and down a little bit
- All three cyclic servos should move up and down together - if one doesn't, reverse that servo only.
- Go to your pitch mixing setup
- Move the throttle stick up - all three servos should move together, and your blades should get more positive pitch. If not, change the pitch mixing number from positive to negative - we will set the actual number later, just getting the direction correct now.
- Move the cyclic stick to the right - your swash plate should tilt down on the right - if not, change the aileron mixing number from positive to negative. Again, we'll set the actual number later.
- Move the cyclic stick forward - the swash should tilt down on the front side. If not, reverse the elevator mixing number from positive to negative.
- Double check your settings - make sure that more throttle gives you more positive pitch, and the swash is tilting in the right directions.
- Check that the blades are at zero pitch with the throttle stick in the middle - you have not adjusted the pitch curve yet, so this should be the case.
- Put the throttle stick all the way up. Adjust the pitch mixing number until the swash moves up to the extreme - the washout block should nearly run into the head.
- Put the throttle stick all the way down. Make sure there is no binding, and the washout block does not slip off the washout guide rods. If it is going too far, be double sure you are getting zero pitch at mid-stick, and reduce the pitch mixing number if you need to.
- Go back to your servo reversing menu.
- Move the rudder stick all the way to the left - the leading edges of the tail blades should move to the right. If not, then reverse the rudder channel.
- Program the pitch curves - this is a matter of personal preference and flying style. I set mine up to give me maximum pitch in both directions, positive and negative. A 5-point curve for normal mode would be 30-40-50-75-100. For my stunt modes I use 0-25-50-75-100. It is important that the last three numbers be 50-75-100 in all modes, so that when you switch modes in flight, you don't get sudden pitch changes.
- Program the throttle curves - again, this is a matter of personal taste. For my normal mode I use 0-50-75-90-100, which gives me high head speed very early, makes the transition to stunt mode less severe, makes the helicopter a bit more stable in a hover, but also makes it more reactive. For my stunt mode, I use 100% all the way across. Some people prefer a v-shaped throttle curve such as 100-90-80-90-100.
Set up the gyro.
- First you need to set the gyro direction. To do this, wag the tail to the left - the leading edges of the tail blades should move right. The tail should try to fight your motion. If not, reverse the gyro direction on the gyro itself. You should not need to reverse the rudder channel if you do this, but double check it to be sure.
- There are many ways to set the gyro gain - most setups have a remote gain setting programmed in the radio by signalling the gear channel.
- To adjust the gain, you will need to fly the helicopter. The gyro does not understand what is happening when the helicopter is not flying, and it may do weird things such as stick the servo to one side and stay there.
- Move the rudder stick to both sides and hold it there. Make sure the servo is not capable of driving the pitch slider too far. Use the limit feature of the gyro, or change holes on your servo arm to limit the travel. Do not use adjustable rates on the radio to try to limit the servo travel - it will not work, and you will risk having the servo bind and strip in flight.
- Using training balls to fly your helicopter the first time, you will adjust the gyro gain higher until the tail starts to wag back and forth forcefully. Then lower the gain from that point until the wagging stops. You may find that the tail starts wagging again after hard spins or loops, or during turns. Lower the gain some more if this happens. See my Trex 500 video on the "arvadamodelers" Youtube channel for an example of gyro gain too high, not causing tail wag in hovering, but wagging in forward flight. I lowered it 1% from there, and now it's perfect.
Balance and track the blades.
- Before your first flight, make sure the blades are balanced. You can use a blade balancing tool, or a very accurate scale to do this.
- Now bring your helicopter into an eye-level hover, and have an assistant look at the blades - there should be no gap between them. If there is, you will need to adjust the pitch mixing links to close the gap.
- Usually, I just pick a link to adjust and see if it makes the tracking better or worse. Mark the link with a silver Sharpie, and adjust it in the other direction if it makes the tracking worse. Do one full turn at a time, as this is a very sensitive adjustment.
- If you use carbon fiber blades, and you zeroed your blade pitch properly, they should track perfectly - if not, be sure to check the pitch again before adjusting the tracking.
Final inspections and test flight.
- Lube all the bearings
- Pull on the ball links and make sure they are tight
- Check the belt tension
- Check the blade grip tension
- Check the rudder direction while spooling up
- Make sure everything sounds smooth
- Watch for vibrations when spooling up
- Fly for only a minute or two the first time
- Check the parts temperature after first flight - motor, servos, gyro, and battery. Hot parts can indicate a problem.
Remember - the helicopter is the only type of aircraft capable of crashing into itself! If you build and maintain properly, this won't happen.
I hear this comment occasionally - "The simulator is really boring, and I can't stand to use it long enough to learn anything" - here's my response to that.
Are you trying to learn to fly? Or just pass the time? The simulator can be entertaining when your flying is fairly good, but crashing a lot can be very frustrating. This hobby is like that, regardless of simulators, it has always been like that. You do a lot of work, and it sucks and some of it is boring, some of it is difficult, a lot of it is confusing and frustrating, but then after a while, it all starts to click, you stop freaking out about the details all the time, and suddenly... you're having fun! Works that way every time.
So, maybe you just need to work through the training stage and learn to have some fun. In order to train most quickly, you need to practice every day without fail - do not miss a day. The part you will like is this: if your practice is focused and effective, you can only handle 15 minutes of it anyway, so you only need 15 minutes per day. You will improve much faster this way than if you have hour long sessions only once a week.
When you learn to fly on instinct, you'll have a lot more fun. You might not like the simulator still, but you'll be able to fly your real stuff without worrying so much about crashing. Fear of crashing is the single biggest source of stress in this hobby - get over it as soon as possible.
This is my new Stryker. I haven't clocked it yet but it's in the 90mph range - not ridiculous but respectable. It's a ton of fun to fly, and I did win a pylon race with it on crappy old batteries. I'm using the 35C Hyperion 2200 3S Lipos now, and she really screams. That's the only problem with Strykers - they are LOUD!
E-Flite Six Series 2700kV Motor
2200mAh 3S Hyperion 35C Lipo
HS-81MG servos
Castle BEC
AR500 Receiver
Align 35X ESC (heli ESC, has a nice LVC feature which shuts down slow)
Custom Painted with rattle cans (Testors Metallics, Black and Ruby)
I really wish the marketing department would call these what they are - the number of channels doesn't really help noobs figure out what it is. Just so you know, the number of channels is how many things you can control on the aircraft - so for example, an airplane with throttle and rudder only is two channels, add an elevator and it's three channels, add ailerons for four channels, control each aileron independently is 5 channels, etc, etc, etc....
On helicopters, there are two channel toys like the Air Hogs. They typically have throttle and rudder control only - so they can go up and down and they can spin around, usually in both directions. These are fun but they are toys.
Above that, we have the fixed-pitch helicopters. There's two types, the coaxial and the normal type. The coaxials helicopters have two sets of rotors on top, which spin in opposite directions, and they don't have tail rotors. Coaxial helicopters almost always have rudder control which is done by speeding up one or the other rotor and turning by the reaction force. These helicopters can be 3 or 4 channels - they all have forward/back, rudder, and throttle. The 4-channel coaxial also has side-to-side control. Coaxial helicopters are naturally stable and very easy to fly - they hover by themselves without pilot input usually.
The "normal style" fixed-pitch helis have a single main rotor on top and a tail rotor. As far as I know, they are all 4-channel helis. They have throttle, rudder, sideways, and front/back control. There's a wide range of these available now, from super easy (the Blade mSR) to fairly difficult (the Novus FP). These typically require a little skill to fly and they need constant management by the pilot - but some like the mSR are super stable, like coaxials.
OK that part is easy to follow - you have helis which fly by controlling throttle and direction, no problem... well, kinda. Since these helicopters change their lift by changing the speed of the blades, they can be difficult to control because it takes time for the motor to ramp up and down, and the pilot will need to be putting in throttle changes very early in order to maintain or change altitudes. Turns out, it's a whole lot better, and faster, to rotate the blades at a constant speed and simply change their angle of attack in order to change lift. This can be accomplished almost instantly. So... we want to control a 5th thing now, the angle of attack on the blades, and we need 5 channels. We call the angle the "collective pitch" of the blades, and these helicopters are more properly called "collective pitch" helicopters rather than 5 or 6 channel. The 6th channel is usually used to control the sensitivity of a gyro which assists the pilot in operating the tail rotor for rudder control.
Generally, we have people start with fixed-pitch helis, usually coaxials. To progress to collective-pitch helis, I recommend you start with a quality simulator rather than the real thing.
This is the Align Trex 250 micro 3D helicopter. It is a fully 3D capable micro helicopter, and since it's small and has no momentum, it can fly some impressive punchy moves.
This is my E-Flite Blade 400. On the second flight, the tail servo stripped in mid-air for some reason, and the pitch servo stripped on the resulting crash. I replaced the cyclics with Hitec HS55 servos, and I replace the gyro with a GY401. The overall feel and performance of the helicopter was vastly improved by these upgrades.
Stock ESC and motor HS55 cyclic servos GY401 Gyro Thunder Power 2100 3-cell JR 290G tail servo Align tail hub and carbon blades Thunder Power Carbon main blades Spektrum DX7 radio with AR6100e receiver
Here she is in flight:
And here's a photo of the new color scheme. I crashed it into a fence one day and had to re-build the whole thing. Instructional videos of how to build it are on Vimeo (search "Blade 400 Rebuild").
Here's the videos - first one is recently, but before the crash. After the videos are my radio settings for the Blade 400 and DX7 radio.
Radio settings Aircraft Type: Heli Model Name: Blade400 Swash Type: 3 Servos 120 degrees Input Type: AUX2-AUX2 GEAR-GYRO Thro recovery: INH Trainer: INH (Is it possible I actually have 17 hours on this thing?!)
OK then on the flight settings I have this: OK on the dual rates screen, I have 30% expo on all three channels. VERY IMPORTANT: Make sure to switch the dual rate switch for each channel and program the same expo again. You will use the dual rate switches for other things and it's pretty important that you don't end up changing the expo when you do that, so program both options to the same expo and rate (100%) on all three channels.
Timer: 6 minutes - gives me time to land No programmable mixes are entered.
OK, "Gyro sens" screen: Set it to Auto - then next to the "0:" set your gyro gain rate for normal mode. Then next to the "1:" set the gyro gain you use for idle-up. Mine are 74% and 71%, but I'm using a GY401 and these numbers are never the same for any two people, so you'll have to figure out the numbers for yourself. They may be different from the gain settings on your DX6i, but that's a good starting point. OK, then on the side I set NORM: 0, STNT:1, and HOLD:0.
No revo mix is used - I'm not even sure what it is.
Pitch curves are: HOLD - 0-25-50-75-100 ST-2 - 0-25-50-75-100 ST-1 - 0-25-50-75-100 (these are all three the same, important for autos) NORM - 35-INH-50-75-100 (INH lets it calculate the line for you)
Throttle curve for ST-1 and ST-2 are both set to 100% all the way across. Throttle curve for normal mode is set to 0-50-85-100-100, with "exp" activated which smooths out the line. You may want something different - don't be afraid to experiment. I'm at high altitude, and I find that this setting gets me off the ground nicely and pretty much eliminates any jumping when I switch in and out of idle-up mode.
Thro Hold: -5.0% SW:GEAR (you could adjust this for your personal preference)
Swash mix: AILE:-65% ELEV:+65% PIT.: +85% (again, personal preference, and checked to eliminate binding on my bird - I had to reduce the aile and elev channels. I may change that around though and reduce the pitch channel and increase the others. Just make sure you don't get any binding)
My travel adjustments are all 100% at the moment. I've some CCPM coupling though, so I'll be messing with that eventually.
I have the subtrims set to various numbers - I replaced the servos, so these numbers will be different for you. NO subtrim on the rudder... !
Reversing: THRO:N, AILE:N, ELEV:R, RUDD:R, GEAR:N, PIT.:R, AUX2:N (again, this might be different for you because I use different servos.)
Align TRex 450 - Custom Decals came out a little light. This is the most solidly built aircraft I have owned, but also the most expensive by far. If you count the battery and don't count the radio, it was a little over $700 all up. WELL WORTH IT!!!
Spektrum radio - DX7 + AR6100 Align 35 ESC Align 430L motor Futaba GY401 Gyro JR DS285 Cyclic servos JR DS3400G Tail servo Thunder Power Extreme 2200 battery
E-Flite Blade CP Pro with carbon fiber main and tail blades, and metal swash plate. Also, I set this up to fly with my Spektrum DX7, and it flies a little better with the expo and other features of the DX7 radio.
This is my best 3D plane to date. It flies very nice and is way more durable than it looks. I did biff it in to the dirt one day pretty hard and all that broke was the wheel pants and prop. Pikachu is permanently mounted in the cockpit :)
This plane exploded in mid-air (kinda cool actually, hehehee), so I returned it for store credit. It flew wonderfully though... one of the best planes I've ever flown. It just needs reinforcement around the motor mount.
Airfoilz Extra 260 - I have crashed this plane 3 times fairly badly. It flies so well it tempts you to try moves you can't do. Click here for video where I didn't crash it :)
This is my SIG Hummer which I converted to electric. It goes over 100mph and is very aerobatic as well. Here's the video of the maiden flight, in which she reached 86mph!
Flying my Brio 10. When I was landing, the wind was blowing and it suddenly stopped, stalling my plane. There wasn't much I could do. The whole bottom of the fuselage needs to be re-built now....
I have only been flying RC about a year if you don't count a few hours as a kid, but after you read this, you'll know why I think it counts. I have been building (flying) model airplanes all my life though mostly free-flight stuff, paper planes, and I built my own free-flight helicopter as a kid (a modified Guillows glider). When I was maybe 7 until I was 12, I would often be cared for by the town mayor and his wife, Lester and Mary Rogers. He was the mayor, and one of the coolest people I'd ever met. He built and flew model airplanes which were all gas-powered, and he invented a thing called a "ufo" which is a bizarre free-flight vehicle, and he also built a lot of 'toys' which were technologically interesting to me at that age.
This was Kansas farm country in the mid to late 1970s, and technology was nearly non-existent, and Lester (Mr. Rogers?) had HAM radio and other fun stuff. I remember he taught me how to make a pop gun with a manilla folder some typing paper and some tape. We must have killed each other hundreds of times with those things! Anyway, I must have annoyed the heck out of the guy, always begging to go fly planes, so he came up with other fun things to entertain me.
I finally understand what he meant by "it's too windy, maybe later" - but when it wasn't, we would go fly planes and always had a good time. You know, in all those years I didn't actually see him crash once, but my dad tells me now that he used to crash all the time and tell funny stories about it. I do remember people in town finding his UFOs on their roofs and in their yards and stuff. It was a free-flight vehicle made from pie plates, and (I think) powered by a .049 motor, and designed to fly in one direction - straight up. Needless to say they almost always disappeared, but it was a small town and I'd like to think he probably got most of them back. He was the mayor after all.
These days I know how amazing all this was at the time. It was 1976 and he was flying big 4-channel gassers, presumably with home-made equipment. Watching those airplanes in the beautiful Kansas skies at that age, I instantly fell in love with aviation. Ever since those days as an insufferably precocious child begging to go fly planes, I've been building airplanes in one form or another. I organized a paper airplane contest at my grade school one year, I've built hundreds of rubber powered planes of all kinds, and I've experimented with electric free-flight planes.
That experience as a child gave me a real love for science and technology, and as I grew older I spent a lot of time learning about airplanes and other technologies. In the 1980s I became positively obsessed with computers and this led to my current career as a programmer, but I have always also loved electronics, physics, math, and of course, aviation. In 1999 I graduated from Hastings College with a degree in Biology, but I only worked briefly in that field before I went into computer programming.
Now that I'm old enough to afford it, I have taken up RC airplanes and I really love it. It is the perfect way to combine my love of technology with aviation, and get out in the world and participate in a healthy hobby in the great outdoors, and meet other people who love it too! I have had the good fortune to meet many inspiring people over the years, but I credit Lester Rogers with starting a trend that has lasted a lifetime and has provided a lot of happiness, and led to a career that I enjoy. I sincerely hope that everyone has an opportunity, no matter what age they are, to meet inspiring people like this, and I hope that people will continue to take advantage of the opportunities to be inspiring and helpful to others as well, in this hobby and in all of life's endeavors. So get your neighbor, friend, or kid and get out there and fly some planes!
(If you haven't already done it, you should join one of the forums on Wattflyer or RCGroups and try to help out when you can, and if you can instruct, please sign up for the AMA Park Pilot Partners Program (I think they need more P words in that name)
