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Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Programming Airplane Flight Modes (Three Idle Settings) iX12


My Hangar 9 Pulse XT60 is overpowered a bit with its RCGF 26cc gas engine. This makes it fast and powerful, especially with the thrust produced by its 3 blade prop. Even at idle she produces thrust. At low idle she can be unreliable, bog down, and die. Endpoints above that run well, but produce too much thrust. I need a way to have a reliable but slow flight idle, and a stable even if briefly, landing idle. After asking on the Facebook iX12 Users Group, I decided the best option was using throttle curves with different idle settings, set to a switch. This has so far turned out to be a great option. 

I set up the iX12 three position Switch B (traditionally the heli Flight Mode Switch) with a Flight Idle 6% above true idle, an Approach Idle set at 3% of true idle, and a Landing Idle set at actual idle. The Landing Idle is low enough to produce little to no thrust, tries to bog down, but usually will not stop despite threatening to. I chose 6% as this was a reliable slow RPM position that allowed an acceptable in-flight idle speed. 3% is simply 50% of the Flight Idle and is there to allow a step-down transition, and the Landing Idle that is slow, boggy, but will usually keep running. Using the Flight Mode Setup panel I was able to change the Call-Outs to reflect these new settings. 

The video walks you through how to do this!

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