Maiden Flight 450L

Barge

Member
I got the 450L off the ground for the first time today, the other first was I flew a real RC heli for the first time, the only other experience was on Real Flight, and they both went reasonably well. It has been mentioned on the forum somewhere that there is no comparison between a real heli and the sims, and how right they are.

The first lift off was all over the place, luckily I has a fair bit of real estate to work with and eventually got it to a reasonably stable hover, done some cautious lefts and rights and then managed to get it on the ground in one piece. Happy about that I can assure you.

I noticed a couple of things going on, one was the tail was drop on lift off so I hooked the heli up to the PC and adjusted the collective pitch elevator precompensation value up 10% from 50 to 60, and it did have a bit of tail wag and I used the RD dial to knock a bit of gain out of the rudder and went to test flight round two.

It lifted off a lot better with the tail staying more horizontal and I did go up another 5% higher on the precompensation value which fairly well sorted that out. The wag had nearly gone so while it was in flight I tweaked the dial a bit more to correct that problem and landed again. I must admit it is a little bit of a handful at the moment but it is improving, that's the best part.

On lift off it also had the tendency to drift left which was easily compensated for, but out of curiosity I rechecked the swash plate and it was out a little, a bit low on the elevator and aileron so I adjusted the pitch down to even things up, I then went back through the DIR setup to redo the pitch and checked everything else out to make sure it was good to go.

I ended up running out of light, and I fly back to work tomorrow so that is the end of testing for 9 days. I must admit I was as nervous as with the maiden lift off, but after that first one was out of the way it became enjoyable to say the least.
 

Tony

Staff member
Moved this into the Flight Stories forum.

Congrats on getting your bird off the ground. Sounds like it was successful.

The going left on lift off is completely normal. Do not try to trim that out. Get the helicopter at least 3' off the ground (1 meter) and test it for level there.
 

Barge

Member
Thanks for the advice Tony, it turned out well, looking forward to the next bout of testing with the inverted lawnmower.
 

pvolcko

Well-Known Member
And I'd recommend against making adjustments to gain settings while in flight. Always land, adjust, then fly again.
 

Barge

Member
And I'd recommend against making adjustments to gain settings while in flight. Always land, adjust, then fly again.

I'll definitely take that advice on board, this is the information that is invaluable to us trainee heli pilots, Cheers
 
Congratulations on your successful maiden flight. That is a great feeling bring it home in one piece and accomplishing something more than you did the last time. Keep it up.
 

Mda1701d

Member
You did much better than me!!
Not been more than a couple of seconds in the air, and already on my third set of tail drive gears. My dom also seems to try to lift off tail down, im making the same changes as you before trying again. Seems to have so much torque through the heli that the tail twists as it sticks on the grass, then the tail rotors strke and bang, gears strip so easily. I wonder if you had training gear on?

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You did much better than me!!
Not been more than a couple of seconds in the air, and already on my third set of tail drive gears. My dom also seems to try to lift off tail down, im making the same changes as you before trying again. Seems to have so much torque through the heli that the tail twists as it sticks on the grass, then the tail rotors strke and bang, gears strip so easily. I wonder if you had training gear on?
 
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