Been putting on some flights the last couple days. Great weather. Today I flew the 550X and Gob 500. Still tuning in the Ikon on the Gob 500. Piro rate is good, but the cyclic roll rate is still a bit fast. Another flight or two and I think I'll have it. My goal is to get a good match to my 550X and then have a "woah!" bank setting to switch to when I really want to lay on some super fast rolls/flips, etc. and for when I finally get my tictocs nailed at the more moderate roll rates I'll have a switch position to move up to.
So practice on tictocs (mostly elevator, tail down, skids out): Went well on the 550X. I'm taking a slower approach with this heli on this manever, actively stopping the heli in a relatively slow controlled tic toc. And then speeding up a bit each flight. On the Gob 500... due to the roll rate being a bit too fast it was too enticing to do these slow so I was trying to rip them out fast while trying to keep collective as light as possible. Various success. On one attempt, though, I kept creeping closer and closer to myself (skids out, blades in). It got about 12ft away and and 10ft off the ground! I did a negative push out to get it away from me. Little too close for comfort.
But it looked and sounded cool. Spectators thought I was in total control.
Half piro flips: On both the goblin and 550X I spent most of my half-piro flip time doing relatively slow piro rate half-piro flips. It is definitely more challenging, but more rewarding too. Being able to rip out some ultra quick piro flips is cool, but I think there is a lot to be said for a nice slow, controlled, floating piro flip too. So I started to get this nailed pretty well today, particularly on the 550X (again goblin's too fast cyclic roll rate was screwing thing things a bit). I was actually doing three half-piro flips in succession, holding altitude fairly well, but tending to slide left a bit with each flip (not getting to zero collective at the right time in the maneuver). I also practiced my right piro flips (I have been focused on left piros since it feels more comfortable) and did pretty well. They aren't nearly as clean as the left piro flips, but I got the stir correct most of the time and they weren't a total mess.
Hurricanes: Still doing these 75ft up. But I tried clockwise in addition to my usual counter clockwise. Also played around more with using rudder during it to control flight path and also varying elevator and collective to tighten or widen them. Need a lot more work on these before I'm going to start bringing them down to ground more. But progress.
Slow ail and ele loops: Doing these forward, backward, left and right and starting to do some side in elevator loops. I'm really enjoying this practice. Learning a lot about collective management through a maneuver, using collective to fight wind, correcting for left/right drift at various points in the loops, etc. Big huge loops are fun, but they are also a bit easy and don't require fine tuned corrective skills (unless you're trying to fly perfect circles and set maneuver type aerobatics). The small slow loops though, practically floating in speed and no larger than 10ft in diameter, I'm finding to be challenging and requiring a lot of control. Great warm up maneuver and also good for making sure expo is set well once you start cranking up the cyclic roll rates.
I'm going to fly some more tomorrow in the back yard (was at the club field today) and will get some video. Hopefully my improvement doesn't evaporate overnight.