So got out and did a bunch of flying yesterday. 45 degrees, almost dead calm, mostly clear skies. Beautiful conditions!
First out, my DraganFlyer III quad: Was doing good for a few minutes but then tried to do a banked turn. Mistake. This quad has horrible yaw rate, and when it does start to come around it is slow to stop the yaw. I got it into the bank and was going to yaw around on it, but it wouldn't yaw fast enough. And when you yaw a quad it slows one set of blades, so depending on the direction and rate of the yaw you either lose elevator or aileron response too. In this case I lost aileron control so I couldn't flatten out to recover. Bam into the ground from 12 feet up. Broke a couple motor mounts. Got parts on order from Canada.
Second out, nano cpx: Great fun. Was flying slow and fast circuits for a few batteries. Last battery tried some flips and getting to inverted. Flips while moving were fine. Stationary flips didn't work out too well (should have tried at higher altitude for more recovery room). Getting inverted was fun, but crashed each time. No damage. Love this little heli.
Then came the 550 X Pro: First I forgot to put the gyro selection switch back to heading hold so when I took off tail was drifting right quite a bit (have the tail link length set for neutral at reference, not steady hold in hover). Took me two take-offs and two landings to realize what was going on. Thought I had accidently bumped in some rudder trim. Once that was solved I went through two batteries of hovering, orientation training, and tail in flight. Third battery, I moved to a different piloting position where I had a good open stretch to fly across my position and did some narrow circuit flying. First forward circuit flying with it. I'm very impressed with the stability and control of this larger heli. I was afraid I'd have a difficult time controlling the speed and altitude of this thing in circuit flight. Altitude did prove a bit difficult, but speed was not at all an issue. And most of my altitude issues were when I pulled back to cut some forward speed and the tendency to climb as a result. No crashes. I'm a happy camper.
First out, my DraganFlyer III quad: Was doing good for a few minutes but then tried to do a banked turn. Mistake. This quad has horrible yaw rate, and when it does start to come around it is slow to stop the yaw. I got it into the bank and was going to yaw around on it, but it wouldn't yaw fast enough. And when you yaw a quad it slows one set of blades, so depending on the direction and rate of the yaw you either lose elevator or aileron response too. In this case I lost aileron control so I couldn't flatten out to recover. Bam into the ground from 12 feet up. Broke a couple motor mounts. Got parts on order from Canada.
Second out, nano cpx: Great fun. Was flying slow and fast circuits for a few batteries. Last battery tried some flips and getting to inverted. Flips while moving were fine. Stationary flips didn't work out too well (should have tried at higher altitude for more recovery room). Getting inverted was fun, but crashed each time. No damage. Love this little heli.
Then came the 550 X Pro: First I forgot to put the gyro selection switch back to heading hold so when I took off tail was drifting right quite a bit (have the tail link length set for neutral at reference, not steady hold in hover). Took me two take-offs and two landings to realize what was going on. Thought I had accidently bumped in some rudder trim. Once that was solved I went through two batteries of hovering, orientation training, and tail in flight. Third battery, I moved to a different piloting position where I had a good open stretch to fly across my position and did some narrow circuit flying. First forward circuit flying with it. I'm very impressed with the stability and control of this larger heli. I was afraid I'd have a difficult time controlling the speed and altitude of this thing in circuit flight. Altitude did prove a bit difficult, but speed was not at all an issue. And most of my altitude issues were when I pulled back to cut some forward speed and the tendency to climb as a result. No crashes. I'm a happy camper.
