FBL Gyro T-Rex maiden with Spirit Pro (at last!)

[Smoggie]

Phil,

If it works for you then all is good!.. Shame we weren't closer together so we could compare setups in person. What might be worth trying is programming some slightly different curves, as per previous suggestions, on other flight modes so you can quickly switch between them and see what you prefer.

By the way....I really like the jeti. I was tempted by a deal on a second hand one recently and would have went for it if not for the daunting prospect of having swap all the receivers over on my fleet. Once you build up a collection of models you do become somewhat 'locked-in' to a transmitter brand.

 

[Heliman450]

For me it was quite an easy decision as I wanted to upgrade for various reasons. Unless there's a reason to dump your existing Tx. no worries I suppose. I wanted the access to my Spirit Pro gyro via the Tx. as the highest priority and the Jeti has a superior quality of stick mechanism over all the others.

I know that Futaba also offers the gyro interface via their receivers but I'm not sure of the Spektrums.

 

[Heliman450]

Hi all, as I mentioned to Steve earlier on in the threads here's the current graph that shows how I've set up the heli for its next flight. Looks like a bit later this week as a sprinkling of snow reappeared last night to hinder my plan.

I decided to change over to the suggestion for a straight line for the throttle 'curve' as this can be programmed in the Jeti as a 'Constant' curve and only one value is needed. I went back to the Align instructions and picked up their data and 72.5% throttle should give 1900 rpm and hovering should occur at 5 degrees putting it between points 3 & 4 on the graph. Let's see how it goes.

View attachment Jeti Settings 25.04.16.pdf

 

[Heliman450]

Hi all, I managed to do my second test with the settings as per the pdf. I took video of the almost 9 minutes 'play-time' I managed to get from the battery and there was still some left, but not much.

The video isn't the most exciting to watch although one thing I did notice is that when attempting a pirouette the heli lost its stable hover. Probably due to the throttle setting at 73% being on its limit (governor not activated) to hold it there. I need to do some more investigation into why the ESC won't go into set-up mode but I'm feeling inclined to just change it anyway.

The motor sounded great and didn't sound as though it struggled at all. Another point to Align for their standard data being correct!

If anybody really feels the need to see the video, I'll do a bit of editing and publish it.

Bye for now.

 

[Smoggie]

Phil,

Great to hear that she's flying well, that's a nice long flight time.

 

[trainrider06]

Good deal Phil!

 

[Heliman450]

Hi all, seems like I've discovered the mystery of my problem with the motor variations in the video mentioned earlier on but picked up in more detail by Steve in thread #20.

What I failed to do was synchronise the Tx throttle position with the ESC such that when I thought I was giving enough throttle that wasn't the case. Using Steve's suggestion to control the initial take-off with the throttle hold switch turned out to be a bypass solution to the real problem i.e. no variation in the motor speed induced by the out of sync throttle positions.

Right now, I have no idea what the exact head speed is but that should be resolved when my new ESC turns up, hopefully before the end of next week as some other stuff isn't in stock right now.

I also decided to buy a pair of 550 rotor blades to test out the difference from the 520 currently fitted.

I found the solution in a video elsewhere explaining how to programme ESC's.

Bye for now!

 

[Smoggie]

Phil,

Great that you are getting your setup fine tuned. I find there is a bit of 'playing around' with most new heli builds to get them working just how you want them. So I'm reading it that your ESC throttle range wasn't calibrated, if so yes, that would screw up the % throttle values that you thought you were achieving.

As for the blades.. Make sure you double check that you have enough clearance between the tail blades and the mains, you dont want to have a blade to blade strike, they can end very badly. One way to check is turn the head until the main blade and tail blade grips are at their closest possible position. Now measure the distance between the main blade grip bold centreline and the tail blade grip bolt. The combined length of your tail and main blades should be less that this measured dimension.

The other way (if you have the blades) is to simply manipulate to head and blades to their closest possible position and see if you have safe clearance.

On the versions of the 550 Pro that came with 550mm blades as standard Align actually 'upgraded' the tail boom to the boom from the 600 to give extra blade clearance.

 

[Heliman450]

Cheers Steve! Thanks for the tip on the blades, I wouldn't have considered doing the check measurement without you mentioning it. I think that converting to the 600 boom is probably good belt and braces stuff, which I won't do yet. If it looks like a problem may result then I'll probably just wait on that until such time as there's a forced replacement (hopefully not).

As I bought the 550 second hand hardly used I guess the guy didn't get chance to iron out stuff like me, I just love messing around

 

[Smoggie]

Phil,
I did a 'stretch' on my 600 pro using cut down trex 700 parts, so i must still have the stock 600 boom, torque tube and tail control pushrod laying around somewhere. Just drop me a PM if you can use it, yours for the cost of the post.

 

[Heliman450]

Phil,
I did a 'stretch' on my 600 pro using cut down trex 700 parts, so i must still have the stock 600 boom, torque tube and tail control pushrod laying around somewhere. Just drop me a PM if you can use it, yours for the cost of the post.

Hey Steve, that's a great offer. I may be coming over to the UK soon to visit my son, sisters and brother. Edith sounds keen to visit Scotland again. Even if you sent it to one of my siblings, I could collect it from there if the trip to the cold north wasn't possible at the time. Can we leave it on ice, so to speak?

 

[Smoggie]

The parts are going nowhere so just give me a shout if you need them.