Love Hate Love

I Love-Hate-Love helis.

I love that they are so complex in their engineering and flight physics. I prefer FLYBARRED to FLYBARLESS. Sort of. I love the genius of the Bell Flybar, and the simplicity of a simple AVCS head lock gyro. But I also like the clean lines and engineering of the FBL systems.

I hate that a simple tip over results in hours of work and money. Albeit most of the time its an hour or so, and less than $20.

I love that I when I do crash, its pretty much always fixable. There may be a lot of parts to replace, but unlike a toothpicked gasser fuselage, it can be made whole rather easily.

Not that it matters much... I'm a lousy heli pilot.

I flew my little 3D capable XK EC145 today. Love this little heli. I figured out that she is still skittish in pitch with huge random departures, but in forward flight this calms down, and keeping her nose up in turns makes for a stable flight path without altitude loss.

I had ordered a new swash since a plastic ball came off the original. They sell an inexpensive metal swash, so I got that and it arrived today from MotionRC. I installed it in about 15 minutes.

The original plastic swash with missing ball, and the installed metal swash.

I had flown the EXI 450FBL a few days ago, and had to really work to remove any looseness in the rudder to get her tail to stop wagging. That's fixed. But now she has a new wobble, well, actually its been there... I had installed a 11T pinion on the motor as it was what I had when the previous one wouldn't hold its nut. On hover she would start to oscillate about the main shaft and this would just get spectacular. A touch down would stop it, re-enter hover and she'd be fine, then any forward motion restarted the oscillation. I thought maybe this was the loss of headspeed with the smaller pinion, so today the 14T came in and I installed it. Still having the same problem. She is unflyable. The oscillation is first in the main rotor disc then pitch starts to go nuts. I hit HOLD and auto down, the oscillation stopping immediately when the power comes off at the flick of the switch. I have no idea what this is. She's benched. Both of my 450's are benched, the other awaiting servos from HobbyKing.

The HK500 FBL flew today, marvelous in hover. I was shaking so much... I don't know what it is, the massive sound of the immense energy and power? It scares the crap out of me. I am still trying to find my DR/Expo settings... I seem to need low Expo, despite the twitch, flying about 35.  I landed her and twitched causing a tip, and bam... an hour replacing the main shaft, and main blades (one cracked). The feathering shaft and main gear are fine. The original main shaft is the old school longer one, the new one is the FBL shorter version. This made my swash all too high, so I had to change out the swash control arms for ones about 7mm shorter. Happened to have some. Realigned the swash, checked tracking, and put her on the bench. Will hover her later.

I can fly my helis of all sizes fine on the Phoenix sim. Like I have been flying them forever. But IRL I get all wonky and freaked out, because a simple tip results in so much work... I need to get over this. That, by the way, is why I don't reset my crash clock for heli accidents. I am guaranteed one with every single flight.