Marius' learning to fly - "video diary"

[stokke]

Amazing bro, simply amazing. I don't know if you noticed or not, but when you were in IU, the heli looked much more stable than in normal mode.

As for the pitch settings, your swash is too low. You said you shortened the links 2 turns. Try to lengthen them one turn and see if you can get any closer. If not, it's not a big deal. Keep it up, you are doing great.

Thanks, Tony
At first, I was sort of afraid of the IU mode But now I'm starting to feel a bit more relaxed, and that's good.
As for the pitch, I feel she's flying so good now, so I will postpone adjusting this. At least for now.

You make this look easy great job man keep them coming. Work on some nose in hovering and soon before you know it inverted.

Thanks, Adam!
Will work some more on the nose in. It's just that I'm nervous doing stuff in IU, which i could do easily in Normal mode before. Guess it'll pass eventually. Inverted is my next goal, but I cannot rush it - need more time with the Sim first.

looking good. did you have to recenter all the trims since you leveled the swash?

Thanks, Matthias.
I re-did everything. Took out all sub trim, then adjusting until 90. Then I adjusted the swash links individually until the swash was level. My lesson has been; "One cannot rush while setting up the head". LOL

Great flying man!

Thanks, Sam

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Today, we're blessed with some good weather again!
Also, I went ahead and ordered another battery, so now I have three packs
Seeing that I have so "many" packs now, I have decided to only record my last (third) flight.

I've been working on using Idle Up. I expected that this will drain my batteries faster, but I had a bit of a doozy on my second flight. Just as my alarm goes off, I am still in IU, and THEN she's starting to loose power! I tried to land on my ramp, but had to abort - she was running out of juice FAST.

This resulted in an emergency landing in the field...

After removing all the grass from my tail rotor, I lowered my timer quite a bit.
Turns out, when flying in IU compared to Normal mode, this shaves off about two minutes of flight time...

Well, here's my latest flight.

http://youtu.be/JqKZjqlUNBI

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MAN, I'm having a blast flying in IU Mode.
It was fun flying in Normal as well, but it's just crazy how good it feels to mess about in IU
After these last runs, I also noted I'll have to increase the tail gain, as it keeps slipping in IU.
So now, I'll also have to learn to switch between NORM gain, and IU gain. But it's just a matter of practice.

I would just like to thank everybody for your insights and suggestions
Especially Tony, as I feel he sort of "pushed" me into going into IU mode.

 

[breeze400]

Marius, your flying is just amazing! I don't think you should have any worries going inverted! I also just love the scenery there in Norway! Reminds me of the North western states here in the us.

 

[Tony]

Pushing you? I just told you it would be more stable on multiple occasions hahaha.

But you are doing great. One thing though. I notice that you like to bang those sticks around pretty good. You should start doing your flights like you do your landings, with precise control. When you are nose in, try to hold a perfect hover, when you are flying a pattern, try to hit your marks every time.

As for only videoing the last flight session, I don't know if I would do that because of the above reason. You would have gotten that mishap on video if you would record all of them. I'm not saying to post all of them or edit all of them, but record all of them just incase something happens.

 

[murankar]

Keep it up. Like tony said take it easy on the sticks and make the moves more fluid. I also noticed your almost doing hurricanes on those circle patterns.

 

[stokke]

Marius, your flying is just amazing! I don't think you should have any worries going inverted! I also just love the scenery there in Norway! Reminds me of the North western states here in the us.

Thanks, Sam. Yeah, I'm really pleased with the spot I found. Not surprised there's somewhere in the US which would resemble Norway, your country is HUGE

Pushing you? I just told you it would be more stable on multiple occasions hahaha.

But you are doing great. One thing though. I notice that you like to bang those sticks around pretty good. You should start doing your flights like you do your landings, with precise control. When you are nose in, try to hold a perfect hover, when you are flying a pattern, try to hit your marks every time.

As for only videoing the last flight session, I don't know if I would do that because of the above reason. You would have gotten that mishap on video if you would record all of them. I'm not saying to post all of them or edit all of them, but record all of them just incase something happens.

Keep it up. Like tony said take it easy on the sticks and make the moves more fluid. I also noticed your almost doing hurricanes on those circle patterns.

Thanks guys. I'm not really trying to DO anything yet. I'm sort of calibrating my brain, if you know what I mean? And, I really love all the sounds generated by kicking her around a bit

 

[murankar]

So do I. I like the sound the blades make when you quickly change direction. That low tone the blades make. You can hear it more on a 700.

 

[stokke]

You can hear it more on a 700.

I KNOW! I was at a local heli meet last weekend, and there were many 600- and up birds there. Man oh man, it's some sick sound coming from those things

 

[murankar]

The one sound I like the most and no rc heli can make this sound and that is the sound of a CH 46 chinook flying by. the rotor flaping makes this god loving sound. You have to here it to understand.

 

[Tony]

I hear that Chinook sound every week on multiple days. They hover right next to my office and it shakes the whole place. I mute the TV when they are flying just to hear them. Just in case you have not heard Marius, the Chinooks don't actually fly, they beat the air into submission!!!

 

[stokke]

Not much flying the last couple of days, as we're loosing daylight earlier and earlier for every day. This is the "punishment" for living in Norway In about a month or so, it'll be dark as early as 6.30 pm. And the darkness is of course accompanied by colder and colder temperatures.

BUT, I have just ordered some new exciting gear that may allow me to fly in spite of the cold temperature at least

I'm planning to get up half an hour earlier in the morning. I drive by some big fields on my way to work, so I think I could stop for a while and "squeeze" some batteries. That way I could be able to beat the darkness (I usually get home from work around 6 pm).

Anyways.. Even though not flying, I have been busy

I fixed up my first bird, the Nine Eagles Solo Pro.
Got some new servos, top frame and a new (and much needed) canopy.

Before:

After

It's kinda weird to fly this thing now, as I'm used to the 450. Working the Tx is like swinging a baseball bat LOL. But I love that bird, since it's what taught me to fly in the first place.

I also got some new stick ends (again).
I'm struggling to find ends that's perfectly to my liking.
So now I have gotten some with the same length as original, but with a more "sticky" top.

 

[stokke]

Today I got up earlier than usual, and took the bird along on my way to work.
Well, not really more to say about that. Just circuit training.

http://youtu.be/EcsFmeWJn3c

After work I charged up my packs and went for some new runs.
I executed my first inverted hover, lasting about 2 secs!
I also attempted some tic tocs. Not very good, but at least it resembled tic tocs ;D

Pretty great day, all in all.
Sorry, no recording of the acrobatic stuff - but will record my next attempts.

 

[Tony]

Looking great as always. Loved the reverse flight!

 

[Bruno]

Hi Marius, I have not had a chance lately to finish my 450 PRO 3GX build but I have read some threads. However, you have been very helpful. I was concerned to read that some memebers were dissatisfied with the 3GX performance and recommending instead the BEASTX. The complaint was that the 3GX lacked stability and even behaved erractic at times. Now that you have flown the 3GX for a while what is your opinion of it's stability at various intervals of flight? Thanks.

 

[Tony]

It's all in how you set it up. The ONLY reason I would go with a BeastX is to combine the Rx with the 3 axis gyro. And the 3GX does just that when you use a 7+ channel Tx with satellite Rx's. The 3GX is one of the most stable platforms out there if you set it up correctly. I think the V2.1 is the best yet, but again, setup is key!

 

[Bruno]

Thanks Tony. That puts me at ease. I would hate to finish this buid (probably need 2-4 hours) only to find that the 3GX is too twitchy. I plan on working on this bird tonoght. I can do so now with confidence in its potential performance. FYI: I am the new member that has been following your build videos for the V2. I am using the SPEKTRUM AR6210. All has gone very well so far. I left the tail build for last since I was interested with making sure the Rx and 3GX would communicate well and they seem fine together. I have been practicing for about a year on a Phoenix simulator and with my Blade MCPX2 and my Helipal (TREX FLY BAR CLONE). I am looking forward to trying this Align bird out which combines the MCPX FBL and the experience with the clone. I am looking forward to realizing the benefit of what I believe is an awesonme product. Thanks again.

 

[stokke]

Firstly, I would like to agree with everything Tony stated.

I was at a local "Heli Fun Fly" a few weeks ago, and I came to discuss the available flybarless systems with some of the pilots there. As I am the newbie, I cannot press my opinions in anyone's face just yet. So I had to stand there listening to them talking down the 3GX unit, as the lesser of the available systems...

Up to this point, I have steadily gained experience with the 3GX unit. People who's been following my build and vid threads know this... I believe that people who "hates" the 3GX or thinks less of it, simply didn't try to understand it enough. I can admit the 3GX isn't super user friendly, and the BeastEx may be easier to set up.

To the beginners:

I would recommend people that have the 3GX v 1.2 to just leave it be for the first 20 flights. The v 1.2 has a very easy to understand "difficulty slider", ranging between "Beginner", "Intermediate", "Expert" and "Custom set-up". This is easy to just set at "Beginner" when starting out to fly.

When the unit is flashed to v 2.1 the "difficulty slider" has been removed, and the user is forced to learn about all the different individual settings. But the v 2.1 is NOT difficult to set up. If you hold the mouse pointer over the far left "plus/minus symbol", you get a fairly understandable description of what that particular slider will do to your heli set-up.

The most important thing for beginners when using the v 2.1 is to reduce the roll rate, and flip rate with maybe 15 points.
The second most important thing, is that the head (links, swash, pitch and such) has to be set up perfectly.

In conclusion:

The 3GX is truly an advanced FBL unit, and I believe it will do the job JUST as well as it's competitors. I have just started to do some acrobatics on my unit, and the bird is coping perfectly. I still have left to do extreme maneuvers, but do not think it'll be any problem with the 3GX. If the unit and bird is set up perfectly - you will have one great heli on your hands.

 

[Bruno]

Firstly, I would like to agree with everything Tony stated.

I was at a local "Heli Fun Fly" a few weeks ago, and I came to discuss the available flybarless systems with some of the pilots there. As I am the newbie, I cannot press my opinions in anyone's face just yet. So I had to stand there listening to them talking down the 3GX unit, as the lesser of the available systems...

Up to this point, I have steadily gained experience with the 3GX unit. People who's been following my build and vid threads know this... I believe that people who "hates" the 3GX or thinks less of it, simply didn't try to understand it enough. I can admit the 3GX isn't super user friendly, and the BeastEx may be easier to set up.

To the beginners:

I would recommend people that have the 3GX v 1.2 to just leave it be for the first 20 flights. The v 1.2 has a very easy to understand "difficulty slider", ranging between "Beginner", "Intermediate", "Expert" and "Custom set-up". This is easy to just set at "Beginner" when starting out to fly.

When the unit is flashed to v 2.1 the "difficulty slider" has been removed, and the user is forced to learn about all the different individual settings. But the v 2.1 is NOT difficult to set up. If you hold the mouse pointer over the far left "plus/minus symbol", you get a fairly understandable description of what that particular slider will do to your heli set-up.

The most important thing for beginners when using the v 2.1 is to reduce the roll rate, and flip rate with maybe 15 points.
The second most important thing, is that the head (links, swash, pitch and such) has to be set up perfectly.

In conclusion:

The 3GX is truly an advanced FBL unit, and I believe it will do the job JUST as well as it's competitors. I have just started to do some acrobatics on my unit, and the bird is coping perfectly. I still have left to do extreme maneuvers, but do not think it'll be any problem with the 3GX. If the unit and bird is set up perfectly - you will have one great heli on your hands.

Thank you, Tony and Marius. I have copied and pasted this narrative to my helpful hints file.

 

[Adam]

Re: Marius' learning to fly - "video diary"

And i own the trex tony built and i had to set it up with a dx6i and yes set everything perfect and it is great. Have a few things not correct and well lets just say get everything setup correctly and you will be an happy flier

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And sorry marius I am trying to build an launch pad also i tried an small prototype which is not an failure i can use that one for the 130x blade when i get it tehe. I loved your idea so much and was sick of taking off on grass and landing on grass it gets on everything without even touching the grass

 

[Bruno]

Re: Marius' learning to fly - "video diary"

And i own the trex tony built and i had to set it up with a dx6i and yes set everything perfect and it is great. Have a few things not correct and well lets just say get everything setup correctly and you will be an happy flier

Thanks!!

- - - Updated - - -

And sorry marius I am trying to build an launch pad also i tried an small prototype which is not an failure i can use that one for the 130x blade when i get it tehe. I loved your idea so much and was sick of taking off on grass and landing on grass it gets on everything without even touching the grass

Thanks!!

 

[stokke]

Re: Marius' learning to fly - "video diary"

I ordered two new canopys, got them yesterday. The store had managed to send one wrong, so only one would fit my Pro.

Anyways here it is

I guess it'll be another week for the other (correct) one arrives. I have high hopes for that one, as it looked very cool on the store's website.

I got out today and continued practicing inverted hover. I also attempt some tic tocs, but still need MUCH more practice. Also there was quite a bit of wind today, and it caused some erratic behavior - as I have never flown in this much wind before. The 450 manages some wind, but this is right on the border to what I dare fly in.

http://youtu.be/UiMx0zbFekg

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ps. forgot to zoom in a few clicks as I usually do