136 MODEL AVIATION
GREETINGS FROM THE great, white North! Although this issue
will come out when spring has sprung and the smell of nitro is in the
air, I’m writing this during one of the more spectacular winter lakeeffect
snowstorms I’ve seen in Syracuse. We can get a pile of snow
in a hurry or nothing at all, depending on wind direction. After a
snowy start to December, we had quite the warm-up near the
holidays. A lot of helicopter flying was done. It was nice to thaw the
thumbs and get a little airtime.
It’s been awhile since I’ve written about the basics. Writing material
gets a little lean in the wintertime. This is for the newbies.
I’m assuming you’ve been practicing hovering and getting in
some forward flight to make things interesting. Yeah, I know, how
long can you go just flying your helicopter around like an airplane?
The airplane pilots get to do some rudimentary aerobatics fairly early.
This month I’ll go over the roll. It’s time to get the nerves fired up
and do some!
Before charging out to the field, some setup issues need to be
resolved. You need to set up what is called Idle Up or Stunt mode.
I’m going to call it Idle Up. You get to use that little switch you were
told not to touch while you were learning to hover.
The term “Idle Up” is slightly misleading; it doesn’t bring the idle
up. It basically makes it disappear altogether! Right now with the Idle
Up switch in the Normal position, low left stick brings the engine
throttle to idle. You need Normal to start it. Once airborne, this idle at
low stick is no longer necessary until you land.
We’re going to take advantage of the programming in the
transmitter to set up new curves for the engine and pitch. I’m not
going to go into intimate detail about how to do the programming on
each individual transmitter. It would take a really long column to
accomplish that.
First, let’s discuss how we want the pitch curve. To accomplish a
loop or a roll, negative pitch is needed during the inverted part of the
maneuver. I usually set up models for Idle Up 1 to have
approximately –5° pitch at low stick, 0° for one-quarter stick, +5° for
half stick, and roughly 9° for high stick. From half stick and above,
the settings will remain the same as the Normal settings. We want to
Dan Williams, 27 Treeline Dr., Liverpool NY 13090; E-mail: [email protected]
RADIO CONTROL HELICOPTERS
A lush, green field looks inviting in the middle of winter. John
Mudrian hovers his Hirobo Shuttle Challenge.
Shown is a Concept 30SRX with MS Night Blades and RAM
lighting during a Black Sheep Squadron night-flying session.
The Lama with the camera temporarily installed at the shop. The
extra connectors weighed more than the camera!
What is inside the molded junction where all the connectors
came together. You can see the capacitor installation.
preserve the “hover at half stick” point so that hovering remains
comfortable in that range for the newer pilot.
We will need power from the engine while inverted, so the
throttle will have to come back up as the stick is brought down to the
low position. Hence the label “Idle Up.” During Idle Up, the throttle
is going to be at roughly the same percentage at low stick as it is for
hover at half stick. The helicopter will almost hover inverted at low
stick now, so the same engine power is necessary. At half stick and
above, the engine throttle settings will remain the same as the Normal
throttle curve.
To sum things up, for Idle Up 1 we will have the following: low
stick—throttle 50%, pitch –5°; one-quarter stick (from low)—throttle
30-40%, pitch 0°; half stick—throttle 50%, pitch +5°; three-quarters
stick—throttle 60-70%, pitch +7°; full stick—throttle 90-100%, pitch
+9° or +10°.
When programming, you might have to turn on your radio’s Idle
Up or Stunt function, and you might have to turn on the program
points for one-quarter and three-quarters stick for a five-point throttle
and pitch curve.
If you’re trying to set up one of the lower-end, entry-level radios
that only have low, hover, and high program points, you may not get
good results. You’ll have to try it and see. You won’t have the
adjustability that can be obtained with five-point curves; as a result,
there may be an engine overspeed problem when the stick is at onequarter
position. With the reasonable cost of radios such as the JR
8103 and the Futaba 8U, it might be best to consider one of these
now that aerobatics and 3-D are in the near future.
The gyro setup will have to be adjusted from what is used in the
Normal switch position. If Revolution Mixing is used for your
particular gyro, the mixing will want to be close to 0 at one-quarter
stick, and the setting at low stick will be the same as the setting
already being used at half stick. That is because the head is producing
torque at low stick, even with negative pitch in the blades.
This may seem strange at first, but even with negative pitch the
direction of torque is the same, so the tail-rotor torque compensation
should be the same. If you have a heading-hold gyro, follow the
procedures in your gyro instructions.
At this point it would be really nice to have someone who is more
experienced take the machine out for a test fly. Most helicopters used
for learning have a docile setup mode in the cyclic to make it soft and
unresponsive because a new pilot tends to overcontrol.
The cyclic ATV (aileron and elevator) throw is probably going to
have to be increased from that used for basic hovering. The
instructions for the helicopter should show the percentages and setup
used for aerobatics. Follow them first.
The cyclic throws may have been scaled back to 70% or 80% for
hovering. Bring them up to 100%. If your particular radio has
separate cyclic ATV throws for Normal and Idle Up, leave the throws
where they are for Normal and adjust the Idle Up throws to 100%. If
there are mechanical changes necessary for aerobatics, follow your
instruction manual for those.
Doing a roll with reduced throws ends up being a very slow roll,
which is rather unnerving for a new aerobatic pilot. Doing a loop
with that setup will probably mean that the helicopter gets stuck
inverted with no forward speed. I don’t think you’ll be ready for
inverted hovering quite yet. Get some help here if you can. Also, do
some simulator practice first to get used to what to do—especially
how to bail out when things go bad. Now it’s time to fly!
May 2004 137
The completed installation is shown, ready to test out. The things
we do when we’re bored in the winter!
Jeff Green does what he does best! The author’s group had fun
flying the Lama with customers who wanted to try it.
or down, or losing any altitude or forward
speed. It will look as if it rolled on a wire.
Your first rolls probably won’t look that
way; they may look more like barrel rolls.
Once you’re comfortable flying around
in fast forward flight at a good altitude,
make a turn into the wind and bring the
helicopter across the field for a roll. The idea
is for the helicopter to be halfway through
the roll, inverted, as it passes in front of you.
The roll should start while the helicopter
is coming at you across the field. Push the
right stick all the way to the right without
any up or down stick. As the helicopter
approaches, rolling on its side, reduce pitch
on the left stick. Ideally, you should be at 0
pitch, one-quarter left stick when the
helicopter is on its side.
As the helicopter begins to go inverted,
continue reducing pitch until the model is
fully inverted. You want to have a good
amount of negative pitch at this moment to
keep the helicopter from falling from the sky
inverted. Keep applying full right aileron as
you go.
As the helicopter starts to come back on
its side again, increase pitch. Ideally, once
again you should be at 0 pitch. As the
helicopter comes back right-side up, increase
pitch some more until you are back to
forward-flight pitch (somewhat less than
hover pitch).
So, how’d you do? Smoothness is the
key. Apply pitch changes smoothly as the
helicopter rolls. Don’t panic! If the
helicopter starts to lose altitude while
inverted, increase negative pitch. If it starts
climbing inverted, reduce negative pitch. If
the helicopter tries to slow down or the nose
pitches away from the ground, use a bit of
back cyclic (up-elevator) to keep it from
slowing and stopping.
If the helicopter rolls too slow and
takes more than roughly two seconds to
complete the roll, you’ll have to increase
the roll rate. If the throws are at
maximum, without mechanical binding, a
different set of flybar paddles or a shorter
flybar may be the answer. If there are
flybar weights, move them in some and
don’t forget to keep things balanced.
That’s really all there is to it!
After checking things extremely
carefully, get the helicopter up in the air and
make sure everything feels okay. Fly
around a bit and get used to flipping the Idle
Up switch on and off while flying. The
machine may feel a bit different even in
Normal mode, depending on what changes
were made. Get used to it.
Practice a bit, flying the helicopter in
fast forward flight. Try to keep it straight
and fast for a fairly long distance across the
field. Also, altitude is going to be your
friend, so get the model up in the air to
allow for a recovery if things go screwy.
The first thing I’ll discuss is the basic
roll. The ideal roll will have the helicopter
rolling on the roll axis without pitching up
138 MODEL AVIATION
May 2004 139
Just before the holidays, Walt’s Hobby—
the local Syracuse hobby shop—had a
special all-day sale. Walt invited some
manufacturers, distributors, and
representatives in to show off their stuff,
along with local clubs that use the shop for
meetings.
Jeff Green of Model Rectifier
Corporation/Altech Marketing
(www.modelrectifier.com) came up to
Syracuse to show some products. He
brought a Hirobo XRB Lama to demonstrate
some indoor flying. He worked diligently,
showing kids and adults how to hover. Jeff
is a master of this little model, and he does a
great job of showing the inexperienced the
ropes of hovering.
Then we started to play. Give adults
something to play with, and things can get
out of hand. We had fun flying the Lama,
but we got bored and had to make things
interesting. We mounted a new wireless
camera, which is sold at the shop, to the
skid. The camera/transmitter runs on a 9-volt
battery. All that weight was too much for the
Lama, and we couldn’t get it out of ground
effect. We had to get rid of the battery.
The wireless-camera kit comes with a
wall-wart 9-volt power supply that can be
used. I cut the connector off and wired
miniature twin-lead wire and ran that up the
tether wire to the Lama. We were cooking.
We fastened the camera to the skid with
some zip ties, and we were in business. The
Lama had no problem hovering. Some of the
guys were racing electric RC cars on the
indoor track, and we were playing heli-cam.
I took a few shots of the permanent
installation on the Lama. I removed the
connector junction by carefully splitting the
molded shell. Inside was a small PC board
with a 5-volt regulator. I unsoldered video,
audio, and power connectors from the
camera/transmitter and brought two small
wires out. I put heat-shrink tubing over the
whole thing.
The Lama has the tether connector inside
that brings 9 volts in from the power supply.
The gray and black wires bring 9 volts in.
Blue is positive and black is negative. With
this setup, I no longer needed a separate 9-
volt source for the camera. I added a 0.1-
microfarad capacitor across the connections
to help keep motor noise from the Lama
from getting into the camera.
The camera has an antenna to transmit
video to a remote receiver connected to a
monitor. The setup can go quite a distance,
through some walls, to get the signal to the
receiver. You can spy over the cubicle into
the next office or out into the hallway. I
don’t think it’s going to be very stealthy,
though.
Look for the camera on the Internet at
www.man-ming.f2s.com/products/ccd.php
for more information. It is the JMKWS007A-
P—a pinhole spy camera.
That’s it for this month. Keep the thumbs
and brain nimble—fly your simulator! MA
Edition: Model Aviation - 2004/05
Page Numbers: 136,137,138,139
Edition: Model Aviation - 2004/05
Page Numbers: 136,137,138,139
136 MODEL AVIATION
GREETINGS FROM THE great, white North! Although this issue
will come out when spring has sprung and the smell of nitro is in the
air, I’m writing this during one of the more spectacular winter lakeeffect
snowstorms I’ve seen in Syracuse. We can get a pile of snow
in a hurry or nothing at all, depending on wind direction. After a
snowy start to December, we had quite the warm-up near the
holidays. A lot of helicopter flying was done. It was nice to thaw the
thumbs and get a little airtime.
It’s been awhile since I’ve written about the basics. Writing material
gets a little lean in the wintertime. This is for the newbies.
I’m assuming you’ve been practicing hovering and getting in
some forward flight to make things interesting. Yeah, I know, how
long can you go just flying your helicopter around like an airplane?
The airplane pilots get to do some rudimentary aerobatics fairly early.
This month I’ll go over the roll. It’s time to get the nerves fired up
and do some!
Before charging out to the field, some setup issues need to be
resolved. You need to set up what is called Idle Up or Stunt mode.
I’m going to call it Idle Up. You get to use that little switch you were
told not to touch while you were learning to hover.
The term “Idle Up” is slightly misleading; it doesn’t bring the idle
up. It basically makes it disappear altogether! Right now with the Idle
Up switch in the Normal position, low left stick brings the engine
throttle to idle. You need Normal to start it. Once airborne, this idle at
low stick is no longer necessary until you land.
We’re going to take advantage of the programming in the
transmitter to set up new curves for the engine and pitch. I’m not
going to go into intimate detail about how to do the programming on
each individual transmitter. It would take a really long column to
accomplish that.
First, let’s discuss how we want the pitch curve. To accomplish a
loop or a roll, negative pitch is needed during the inverted part of the
maneuver. I usually set up models for Idle Up 1 to have
approximately –5° pitch at low stick, 0° for one-quarter stick, +5° for
half stick, and roughly 9° for high stick. From half stick and above,
the settings will remain the same as the Normal settings. We want to
Dan Williams, 27 Treeline Dr., Liverpool NY 13090; E-mail: [email protected]
RADIO CONTROL HELICOPTERS
A lush, green field looks inviting in the middle of winter. John
Mudrian hovers his Hirobo Shuttle Challenge.
Shown is a Concept 30SRX with MS Night Blades and RAM
lighting during a Black Sheep Squadron night-flying session.
The Lama with the camera temporarily installed at the shop. The
extra connectors weighed more than the camera!
What is inside the molded junction where all the connectors
came together. You can see the capacitor installation.
preserve the “hover at half stick” point so that hovering remains
comfortable in that range for the newer pilot.
We will need power from the engine while inverted, so the
throttle will have to come back up as the stick is brought down to the
low position. Hence the label “Idle Up.” During Idle Up, the throttle
is going to be at roughly the same percentage at low stick as it is for
hover at half stick. The helicopter will almost hover inverted at low
stick now, so the same engine power is necessary. At half stick and
above, the engine throttle settings will remain the same as the Normal
throttle curve.
To sum things up, for Idle Up 1 we will have the following: low
stick—throttle 50%, pitch –5°; one-quarter stick (from low)—throttle
30-40%, pitch 0°; half stick—throttle 50%, pitch +5°; three-quarters
stick—throttle 60-70%, pitch +7°; full stick—throttle 90-100%, pitch
+9° or +10°.
When programming, you might have to turn on your radio’s Idle
Up or Stunt function, and you might have to turn on the program
points for one-quarter and three-quarters stick for a five-point throttle
and pitch curve.
If you’re trying to set up one of the lower-end, entry-level radios
that only have low, hover, and high program points, you may not get
good results. You’ll have to try it and see. You won’t have the
adjustability that can be obtained with five-point curves; as a result,
there may be an engine overspeed problem when the stick is at onequarter
position. With the reasonable cost of radios such as the JR
8103 and the Futaba 8U, it might be best to consider one of these
now that aerobatics and 3-D are in the near future.
The gyro setup will have to be adjusted from what is used in the
Normal switch position. If Revolution Mixing is used for your
particular gyro, the mixing will want to be close to 0 at one-quarter
stick, and the setting at low stick will be the same as the setting
already being used at half stick. That is because the head is producing
torque at low stick, even with negative pitch in the blades.
This may seem strange at first, but even with negative pitch the
direction of torque is the same, so the tail-rotor torque compensation
should be the same. If you have a heading-hold gyro, follow the
procedures in your gyro instructions.
At this point it would be really nice to have someone who is more
experienced take the machine out for a test fly. Most helicopters used
for learning have a docile setup mode in the cyclic to make it soft and
unresponsive because a new pilot tends to overcontrol.
The cyclic ATV (aileron and elevator) throw is probably going to
have to be increased from that used for basic hovering. The
instructions for the helicopter should show the percentages and setup
used for aerobatics. Follow them first.
The cyclic throws may have been scaled back to 70% or 80% for
hovering. Bring them up to 100%. If your particular radio has
separate cyclic ATV throws for Normal and Idle Up, leave the throws
where they are for Normal and adjust the Idle Up throws to 100%. If
there are mechanical changes necessary for aerobatics, follow your
instruction manual for those.
Doing a roll with reduced throws ends up being a very slow roll,
which is rather unnerving for a new aerobatic pilot. Doing a loop
with that setup will probably mean that the helicopter gets stuck
inverted with no forward speed. I don’t think you’ll be ready for
inverted hovering quite yet. Get some help here if you can. Also, do
some simulator practice first to get used to what to do—especially
how to bail out when things go bad. Now it’s time to fly!
May 2004 137
The completed installation is shown, ready to test out. The things
we do when we’re bored in the winter!
Jeff Green does what he does best! The author’s group had fun
flying the Lama with customers who wanted to try it.
or down, or losing any altitude or forward
speed. It will look as if it rolled on a wire.
Your first rolls probably won’t look that
way; they may look more like barrel rolls.
Once you’re comfortable flying around
in fast forward flight at a good altitude,
make a turn into the wind and bring the
helicopter across the field for a roll. The idea
is for the helicopter to be halfway through
the roll, inverted, as it passes in front of you.
The roll should start while the helicopter
is coming at you across the field. Push the
right stick all the way to the right without
any up or down stick. As the helicopter
approaches, rolling on its side, reduce pitch
on the left stick. Ideally, you should be at 0
pitch, one-quarter left stick when the
helicopter is on its side.
As the helicopter begins to go inverted,
continue reducing pitch until the model is
fully inverted. You want to have a good
amount of negative pitch at this moment to
keep the helicopter from falling from the sky
inverted. Keep applying full right aileron as
you go.
As the helicopter starts to come back on
its side again, increase pitch. Ideally, once
again you should be at 0 pitch. As the
helicopter comes back right-side up, increase
pitch some more until you are back to
forward-flight pitch (somewhat less than
hover pitch).
So, how’d you do? Smoothness is the
key. Apply pitch changes smoothly as the
helicopter rolls. Don’t panic! If the
helicopter starts to lose altitude while
inverted, increase negative pitch. If it starts
climbing inverted, reduce negative pitch. If
the helicopter tries to slow down or the nose
pitches away from the ground, use a bit of
back cyclic (up-elevator) to keep it from
slowing and stopping.
If the helicopter rolls too slow and
takes more than roughly two seconds to
complete the roll, you’ll have to increase
the roll rate. If the throws are at
maximum, without mechanical binding, a
different set of flybar paddles or a shorter
flybar may be the answer. If there are
flybar weights, move them in some and
don’t forget to keep things balanced.
That’s really all there is to it!
After checking things extremely
carefully, get the helicopter up in the air and
make sure everything feels okay. Fly
around a bit and get used to flipping the Idle
Up switch on and off while flying. The
machine may feel a bit different even in
Normal mode, depending on what changes
were made. Get used to it.
Practice a bit, flying the helicopter in
fast forward flight. Try to keep it straight
and fast for a fairly long distance across the
field. Also, altitude is going to be your
friend, so get the model up in the air to
allow for a recovery if things go screwy.
The first thing I’ll discuss is the basic
roll. The ideal roll will have the helicopter
rolling on the roll axis without pitching up
138 MODEL AVIATION
May 2004 139
Just before the holidays, Walt’s Hobby—
the local Syracuse hobby shop—had a
special all-day sale. Walt invited some
manufacturers, distributors, and
representatives in to show off their stuff,
along with local clubs that use the shop for
meetings.
Jeff Green of Model Rectifier
Corporation/Altech Marketing
(www.modelrectifier.com) came up to
Syracuse to show some products. He
brought a Hirobo XRB Lama to demonstrate
some indoor flying. He worked diligently,
showing kids and adults how to hover. Jeff
is a master of this little model, and he does a
great job of showing the inexperienced the
ropes of hovering.
Then we started to play. Give adults
something to play with, and things can get
out of hand. We had fun flying the Lama,
but we got bored and had to make things
interesting. We mounted a new wireless
camera, which is sold at the shop, to the
skid. The camera/transmitter runs on a 9-volt
battery. All that weight was too much for the
Lama, and we couldn’t get it out of ground
effect. We had to get rid of the battery.
The wireless-camera kit comes with a
wall-wart 9-volt power supply that can be
used. I cut the connector off and wired
miniature twin-lead wire and ran that up the
tether wire to the Lama. We were cooking.
We fastened the camera to the skid with
some zip ties, and we were in business. The
Lama had no problem hovering. Some of the
guys were racing electric RC cars on the
indoor track, and we were playing heli-cam.
I took a few shots of the permanent
installation on the Lama. I removed the
connector junction by carefully splitting the
molded shell. Inside was a small PC board
with a 5-volt regulator. I unsoldered video,
audio, and power connectors from the
camera/transmitter and brought two small
wires out. I put heat-shrink tubing over the
whole thing.
The Lama has the tether connector inside
that brings 9 volts in from the power supply.
The gray and black wires bring 9 volts in.
Blue is positive and black is negative. With
this setup, I no longer needed a separate 9-
volt source for the camera. I added a 0.1-
microfarad capacitor across the connections
to help keep motor noise from the Lama
from getting into the camera.
The camera has an antenna to transmit
video to a remote receiver connected to a
monitor. The setup can go quite a distance,
through some walls, to get the signal to the
receiver. You can spy over the cubicle into
the next office or out into the hallway. I
don’t think it’s going to be very stealthy,
though.
Look for the camera on the Internet at
www.man-ming.f2s.com/products/ccd.php
for more information. It is the JMKWS007A-
P—a pinhole spy camera.
That’s it for this month. Keep the thumbs
and brain nimble—fly your simulator! MA
Edition: Model Aviation - 2004/05
Page Numbers: 136,137,138,139
136 MODEL AVIATION
GREETINGS FROM THE great, white North! Although this issue
will come out when spring has sprung and the smell of nitro is in the
air, I’m writing this during one of the more spectacular winter lakeeffect
snowstorms I’ve seen in Syracuse. We can get a pile of snow
in a hurry or nothing at all, depending on wind direction. After a
snowy start to December, we had quite the warm-up near the
holidays. A lot of helicopter flying was done. It was nice to thaw the
thumbs and get a little airtime.
It’s been awhile since I’ve written about the basics. Writing material
gets a little lean in the wintertime. This is for the newbies.
I’m assuming you’ve been practicing hovering and getting in
some forward flight to make things interesting. Yeah, I know, how
long can you go just flying your helicopter around like an airplane?
The airplane pilots get to do some rudimentary aerobatics fairly early.
This month I’ll go over the roll. It’s time to get the nerves fired up
and do some!
Before charging out to the field, some setup issues need to be
resolved. You need to set up what is called Idle Up or Stunt mode.
I’m going to call it Idle Up. You get to use that little switch you were
told not to touch while you were learning to hover.
The term “Idle Up” is slightly misleading; it doesn’t bring the idle
up. It basically makes it disappear altogether! Right now with the Idle
Up switch in the Normal position, low left stick brings the engine
throttle to idle. You need Normal to start it. Once airborne, this idle at
low stick is no longer necessary until you land.
We’re going to take advantage of the programming in the
transmitter to set up new curves for the engine and pitch. I’m not
going to go into intimate detail about how to do the programming on
each individual transmitter. It would take a really long column to
accomplish that.
First, let’s discuss how we want the pitch curve. To accomplish a
loop or a roll, negative pitch is needed during the inverted part of the
maneuver. I usually set up models for Idle Up 1 to have
approximately –5° pitch at low stick, 0° for one-quarter stick, +5° for
half stick, and roughly 9° for high stick. From half stick and above,
the settings will remain the same as the Normal settings. We want to
Dan Williams, 27 Treeline Dr., Liverpool NY 13090; E-mail: [email protected]
RADIO CONTROL HELICOPTERS
A lush, green field looks inviting in the middle of winter. John
Mudrian hovers his Hirobo Shuttle Challenge.
Shown is a Concept 30SRX with MS Night Blades and RAM
lighting during a Black Sheep Squadron night-flying session.
The Lama with the camera temporarily installed at the shop. The
extra connectors weighed more than the camera!
What is inside the molded junction where all the connectors
came together. You can see the capacitor installation.
preserve the “hover at half stick” point so that hovering remains
comfortable in that range for the newer pilot.
We will need power from the engine while inverted, so the
throttle will have to come back up as the stick is brought down to the
low position. Hence the label “Idle Up.” During Idle Up, the throttle
is going to be at roughly the same percentage at low stick as it is for
hover at half stick. The helicopter will almost hover inverted at low
stick now, so the same engine power is necessary. At half stick and
above, the engine throttle settings will remain the same as the Normal
throttle curve.
To sum things up, for Idle Up 1 we will have the following: low
stick—throttle 50%, pitch –5°; one-quarter stick (from low)—throttle
30-40%, pitch 0°; half stick—throttle 50%, pitch +5°; three-quarters
stick—throttle 60-70%, pitch +7°; full stick—throttle 90-100%, pitch
+9° or +10°.
When programming, you might have to turn on your radio’s Idle
Up or Stunt function, and you might have to turn on the program
points for one-quarter and three-quarters stick for a five-point throttle
and pitch curve.
If you’re trying to set up one of the lower-end, entry-level radios
that only have low, hover, and high program points, you may not get
good results. You’ll have to try it and see. You won’t have the
adjustability that can be obtained with five-point curves; as a result,
there may be an engine overspeed problem when the stick is at onequarter
position. With the reasonable cost of radios such as the JR
8103 and the Futaba 8U, it might be best to consider one of these
now that aerobatics and 3-D are in the near future.
The gyro setup will have to be adjusted from what is used in the
Normal switch position. If Revolution Mixing is used for your
particular gyro, the mixing will want to be close to 0 at one-quarter
stick, and the setting at low stick will be the same as the setting
already being used at half stick. That is because the head is producing
torque at low stick, even with negative pitch in the blades.
This may seem strange at first, but even with negative pitch the
direction of torque is the same, so the tail-rotor torque compensation
should be the same. If you have a heading-hold gyro, follow the
procedures in your gyro instructions.
At this point it would be really nice to have someone who is more
experienced take the machine out for a test fly. Most helicopters used
for learning have a docile setup mode in the cyclic to make it soft and
unresponsive because a new pilot tends to overcontrol.
The cyclic ATV (aileron and elevator) throw is probably going to
have to be increased from that used for basic hovering. The
instructions for the helicopter should show the percentages and setup
used for aerobatics. Follow them first.
The cyclic throws may have been scaled back to 70% or 80% for
hovering. Bring them up to 100%. If your particular radio has
separate cyclic ATV throws for Normal and Idle Up, leave the throws
where they are for Normal and adjust the Idle Up throws to 100%. If
there are mechanical changes necessary for aerobatics, follow your
instruction manual for those.
Doing a roll with reduced throws ends up being a very slow roll,
which is rather unnerving for a new aerobatic pilot. Doing a loop
with that setup will probably mean that the helicopter gets stuck
inverted with no forward speed. I don’t think you’ll be ready for
inverted hovering quite yet. Get some help here if you can. Also, do
some simulator practice first to get used to what to do—especially
how to bail out when things go bad. Now it’s time to fly!
May 2004 137
The completed installation is shown, ready to test out. The things
we do when we’re bored in the winter!
Jeff Green does what he does best! The author’s group had fun
flying the Lama with customers who wanted to try it.
or down, or losing any altitude or forward
speed. It will look as if it rolled on a wire.
Your first rolls probably won’t look that
way; they may look more like barrel rolls.
Once you’re comfortable flying around
in fast forward flight at a good altitude,
make a turn into the wind and bring the
helicopter across the field for a roll. The idea
is for the helicopter to be halfway through
the roll, inverted, as it passes in front of you.
The roll should start while the helicopter
is coming at you across the field. Push the
right stick all the way to the right without
any up or down stick. As the helicopter
approaches, rolling on its side, reduce pitch
on the left stick. Ideally, you should be at 0
pitch, one-quarter left stick when the
helicopter is on its side.
As the helicopter begins to go inverted,
continue reducing pitch until the model is
fully inverted. You want to have a good
amount of negative pitch at this moment to
keep the helicopter from falling from the sky
inverted. Keep applying full right aileron as
you go.
As the helicopter starts to come back on
its side again, increase pitch. Ideally, once
again you should be at 0 pitch. As the
helicopter comes back right-side up, increase
pitch some more until you are back to
forward-flight pitch (somewhat less than
hover pitch).
So, how’d you do? Smoothness is the
key. Apply pitch changes smoothly as the
helicopter rolls. Don’t panic! If the
helicopter starts to lose altitude while
inverted, increase negative pitch. If it starts
climbing inverted, reduce negative pitch. If
the helicopter tries to slow down or the nose
pitches away from the ground, use a bit of
back cyclic (up-elevator) to keep it from
slowing and stopping.
If the helicopter rolls too slow and
takes more than roughly two seconds to
complete the roll, you’ll have to increase
the roll rate. If the throws are at
maximum, without mechanical binding, a
different set of flybar paddles or a shorter
flybar may be the answer. If there are
flybar weights, move them in some and
don’t forget to keep things balanced.
That’s really all there is to it!
After checking things extremely
carefully, get the helicopter up in the air and
make sure everything feels okay. Fly
around a bit and get used to flipping the Idle
Up switch on and off while flying. The
machine may feel a bit different even in
Normal mode, depending on what changes
were made. Get used to it.
Practice a bit, flying the helicopter in
fast forward flight. Try to keep it straight
and fast for a fairly long distance across the
field. Also, altitude is going to be your
friend, so get the model up in the air to
allow for a recovery if things go screwy.
The first thing I’ll discuss is the basic
roll. The ideal roll will have the helicopter
rolling on the roll axis without pitching up
138 MODEL AVIATION
May 2004 139
Just before the holidays, Walt’s Hobby—
the local Syracuse hobby shop—had a
special all-day sale. Walt invited some
manufacturers, distributors, and
representatives in to show off their stuff,
along with local clubs that use the shop for
meetings.
Jeff Green of Model Rectifier
Corporation/Altech Marketing
(www.modelrectifier.com) came up to
Syracuse to show some products. He
brought a Hirobo XRB Lama to demonstrate
some indoor flying. He worked diligently,
showing kids and adults how to hover. Jeff
is a master of this little model, and he does a
great job of showing the inexperienced the
ropes of hovering.
Then we started to play. Give adults
something to play with, and things can get
out of hand. We had fun flying the Lama,
but we got bored and had to make things
interesting. We mounted a new wireless
camera, which is sold at the shop, to the
skid. The camera/transmitter runs on a 9-volt
battery. All that weight was too much for the
Lama, and we couldn’t get it out of ground
effect. We had to get rid of the battery.
The wireless-camera kit comes with a
wall-wart 9-volt power supply that can be
used. I cut the connector off and wired
miniature twin-lead wire and ran that up the
tether wire to the Lama. We were cooking.
We fastened the camera to the skid with
some zip ties, and we were in business. The
Lama had no problem hovering. Some of the
guys were racing electric RC cars on the
indoor track, and we were playing heli-cam.
I took a few shots of the permanent
installation on the Lama. I removed the
connector junction by carefully splitting the
molded shell. Inside was a small PC board
with a 5-volt regulator. I unsoldered video,
audio, and power connectors from the
camera/transmitter and brought two small
wires out. I put heat-shrink tubing over the
whole thing.
The Lama has the tether connector inside
that brings 9 volts in from the power supply.
The gray and black wires bring 9 volts in.
Blue is positive and black is negative. With
this setup, I no longer needed a separate 9-
volt source for the camera. I added a 0.1-
microfarad capacitor across the connections
to help keep motor noise from the Lama
from getting into the camera.
The camera has an antenna to transmit
video to a remote receiver connected to a
monitor. The setup can go quite a distance,
through some walls, to get the signal to the
receiver. You can spy over the cubicle into
the next office or out into the hallway. I
don’t think it’s going to be very stealthy,
though.
Look for the camera on the Internet at
www.man-ming.f2s.com/products/ccd.php
for more information. It is the JMKWS007A-
P—a pinhole spy camera.
That’s it for this month. Keep the thumbs
and brain nimble—fly your simulator! MA
Edition: Model Aviation - 2004/05
Page Numbers: 136,137,138,139
136 MODEL AVIATION
GREETINGS FROM THE great, white North! Although this issue
will come out when spring has sprung and the smell of nitro is in the
air, I’m writing this during one of the more spectacular winter lakeeffect
snowstorms I’ve seen in Syracuse. We can get a pile of snow
in a hurry or nothing at all, depending on wind direction. After a
snowy start to December, we had quite the warm-up near the
holidays. A lot of helicopter flying was done. It was nice to thaw the
thumbs and get a little airtime.
It’s been awhile since I’ve written about the basics. Writing material
gets a little lean in the wintertime. This is for the newbies.
I’m assuming you’ve been practicing hovering and getting in
some forward flight to make things interesting. Yeah, I know, how
long can you go just flying your helicopter around like an airplane?
The airplane pilots get to do some rudimentary aerobatics fairly early.
This month I’ll go over the roll. It’s time to get the nerves fired up
and do some!
Before charging out to the field, some setup issues need to be
resolved. You need to set up what is called Idle Up or Stunt mode.
I’m going to call it Idle Up. You get to use that little switch you were
told not to touch while you were learning to hover.
The term “Idle Up” is slightly misleading; it doesn’t bring the idle
up. It basically makes it disappear altogether! Right now with the Idle
Up switch in the Normal position, low left stick brings the engine
throttle to idle. You need Normal to start it. Once airborne, this idle at
low stick is no longer necessary until you land.
We’re going to take advantage of the programming in the
transmitter to set up new curves for the engine and pitch. I’m not
going to go into intimate detail about how to do the programming on
each individual transmitter. It would take a really long column to
accomplish that.
First, let’s discuss how we want the pitch curve. To accomplish a
loop or a roll, negative pitch is needed during the inverted part of the
maneuver. I usually set up models for Idle Up 1 to have
approximately –5° pitch at low stick, 0° for one-quarter stick, +5° for
half stick, and roughly 9° for high stick. From half stick and above,
the settings will remain the same as the Normal settings. We want to
Dan Williams, 27 Treeline Dr., Liverpool NY 13090; E-mail: [email protected]
RADIO CONTROL HELICOPTERS
A lush, green field looks inviting in the middle of winter. John
Mudrian hovers his Hirobo Shuttle Challenge.
Shown is a Concept 30SRX with MS Night Blades and RAM
lighting during a Black Sheep Squadron night-flying session.
The Lama with the camera temporarily installed at the shop. The
extra connectors weighed more than the camera!
What is inside the molded junction where all the connectors
came together. You can see the capacitor installation.
preserve the “hover at half stick” point so that hovering remains
comfortable in that range for the newer pilot.
We will need power from the engine while inverted, so the
throttle will have to come back up as the stick is brought down to the
low position. Hence the label “Idle Up.” During Idle Up, the throttle
is going to be at roughly the same percentage at low stick as it is for
hover at half stick. The helicopter will almost hover inverted at low
stick now, so the same engine power is necessary. At half stick and
above, the engine throttle settings will remain the same as the Normal
throttle curve.
To sum things up, for Idle Up 1 we will have the following: low
stick—throttle 50%, pitch –5°; one-quarter stick (from low)—throttle
30-40%, pitch 0°; half stick—throttle 50%, pitch +5°; three-quarters
stick—throttle 60-70%, pitch +7°; full stick—throttle 90-100%, pitch
+9° or +10°.
When programming, you might have to turn on your radio’s Idle
Up or Stunt function, and you might have to turn on the program
points for one-quarter and three-quarters stick for a five-point throttle
and pitch curve.
If you’re trying to set up one of the lower-end, entry-level radios
that only have low, hover, and high program points, you may not get
good results. You’ll have to try it and see. You won’t have the
adjustability that can be obtained with five-point curves; as a result,
there may be an engine overspeed problem when the stick is at onequarter
position. With the reasonable cost of radios such as the JR
8103 and the Futaba 8U, it might be best to consider one of these
now that aerobatics and 3-D are in the near future.
The gyro setup will have to be adjusted from what is used in the
Normal switch position. If Revolution Mixing is used for your
particular gyro, the mixing will want to be close to 0 at one-quarter
stick, and the setting at low stick will be the same as the setting
already being used at half stick. That is because the head is producing
torque at low stick, even with negative pitch in the blades.
This may seem strange at first, but even with negative pitch the
direction of torque is the same, so the tail-rotor torque compensation
should be the same. If you have a heading-hold gyro, follow the
procedures in your gyro instructions.
At this point it would be really nice to have someone who is more
experienced take the machine out for a test fly. Most helicopters used
for learning have a docile setup mode in the cyclic to make it soft and
unresponsive because a new pilot tends to overcontrol.
The cyclic ATV (aileron and elevator) throw is probably going to
have to be increased from that used for basic hovering. The
instructions for the helicopter should show the percentages and setup
used for aerobatics. Follow them first.
The cyclic throws may have been scaled back to 70% or 80% for
hovering. Bring them up to 100%. If your particular radio has
separate cyclic ATV throws for Normal and Idle Up, leave the throws
where they are for Normal and adjust the Idle Up throws to 100%. If
there are mechanical changes necessary for aerobatics, follow your
instruction manual for those.
Doing a roll with reduced throws ends up being a very slow roll,
which is rather unnerving for a new aerobatic pilot. Doing a loop
with that setup will probably mean that the helicopter gets stuck
inverted with no forward speed. I don’t think you’ll be ready for
inverted hovering quite yet. Get some help here if you can. Also, do
some simulator practice first to get used to what to do—especially
how to bail out when things go bad. Now it’s time to fly!
May 2004 137
The completed installation is shown, ready to test out. The things
we do when we’re bored in the winter!
Jeff Green does what he does best! The author’s group had fun
flying the Lama with customers who wanted to try it.
or down, or losing any altitude or forward
speed. It will look as if it rolled on a wire.
Your first rolls probably won’t look that
way; they may look more like barrel rolls.
Once you’re comfortable flying around
in fast forward flight at a good altitude,
make a turn into the wind and bring the
helicopter across the field for a roll. The idea
is for the helicopter to be halfway through
the roll, inverted, as it passes in front of you.
The roll should start while the helicopter
is coming at you across the field. Push the
right stick all the way to the right without
any up or down stick. As the helicopter
approaches, rolling on its side, reduce pitch
on the left stick. Ideally, you should be at 0
pitch, one-quarter left stick when the
helicopter is on its side.
As the helicopter begins to go inverted,
continue reducing pitch until the model is
fully inverted. You want to have a good
amount of negative pitch at this moment to
keep the helicopter from falling from the sky
inverted. Keep applying full right aileron as
you go.
As the helicopter starts to come back on
its side again, increase pitch. Ideally, once
again you should be at 0 pitch. As the
helicopter comes back right-side up, increase
pitch some more until you are back to
forward-flight pitch (somewhat less than
hover pitch).
So, how’d you do? Smoothness is the
key. Apply pitch changes smoothly as the
helicopter rolls. Don’t panic! If the
helicopter starts to lose altitude while
inverted, increase negative pitch. If it starts
climbing inverted, reduce negative pitch. If
the helicopter tries to slow down or the nose
pitches away from the ground, use a bit of
back cyclic (up-elevator) to keep it from
slowing and stopping.
If the helicopter rolls too slow and
takes more than roughly two seconds to
complete the roll, you’ll have to increase
the roll rate. If the throws are at
maximum, without mechanical binding, a
different set of flybar paddles or a shorter
flybar may be the answer. If there are
flybar weights, move them in some and
don’t forget to keep things balanced.
That’s really all there is to it!
After checking things extremely
carefully, get the helicopter up in the air and
make sure everything feels okay. Fly
around a bit and get used to flipping the Idle
Up switch on and off while flying. The
machine may feel a bit different even in
Normal mode, depending on what changes
were made. Get used to it.
Practice a bit, flying the helicopter in
fast forward flight. Try to keep it straight
and fast for a fairly long distance across the
field. Also, altitude is going to be your
friend, so get the model up in the air to
allow for a recovery if things go screwy.
The first thing I’ll discuss is the basic
roll. The ideal roll will have the helicopter
rolling on the roll axis without pitching up
138 MODEL AVIATION
May 2004 139
Just before the holidays, Walt’s Hobby—
the local Syracuse hobby shop—had a
special all-day sale. Walt invited some
manufacturers, distributors, and
representatives in to show off their stuff,
along with local clubs that use the shop for
meetings.
Jeff Green of Model Rectifier
Corporation/Altech Marketing
(www.modelrectifier.com) came up to
Syracuse to show some products. He
brought a Hirobo XRB Lama to demonstrate
some indoor flying. He worked diligently,
showing kids and adults how to hover. Jeff
is a master of this little model, and he does a
great job of showing the inexperienced the
ropes of hovering.
Then we started to play. Give adults
something to play with, and things can get
out of hand. We had fun flying the Lama,
but we got bored and had to make things
interesting. We mounted a new wireless
camera, which is sold at the shop, to the
skid. The camera/transmitter runs on a 9-volt
battery. All that weight was too much for the
Lama, and we couldn’t get it out of ground
effect. We had to get rid of the battery.
The wireless-camera kit comes with a
wall-wart 9-volt power supply that can be
used. I cut the connector off and wired
miniature twin-lead wire and ran that up the
tether wire to the Lama. We were cooking.
We fastened the camera to the skid with
some zip ties, and we were in business. The
Lama had no problem hovering. Some of the
guys were racing electric RC cars on the
indoor track, and we were playing heli-cam.
I took a few shots of the permanent
installation on the Lama. I removed the
connector junction by carefully splitting the
molded shell. Inside was a small PC board
with a 5-volt regulator. I unsoldered video,
audio, and power connectors from the
camera/transmitter and brought two small
wires out. I put heat-shrink tubing over the
whole thing.
The Lama has the tether connector inside
that brings 9 volts in from the power supply.
The gray and black wires bring 9 volts in.
Blue is positive and black is negative. With
this setup, I no longer needed a separate 9-
volt source for the camera. I added a 0.1-
microfarad capacitor across the connections
to help keep motor noise from the Lama
from getting into the camera.
The camera has an antenna to transmit
video to a remote receiver connected to a
monitor. The setup can go quite a distance,
through some walls, to get the signal to the
receiver. You can spy over the cubicle into
the next office or out into the hallway. I
don’t think it’s going to be very stealthy,
though.
Look for the camera on the Internet at
www.man-ming.f2s.com/products/ccd.php
for more information. It is the JMKWS007A-
P—a pinhole spy camera.
That’s it for this month. Keep the thumbs
and brain nimble—fly your simulator! MA
