I had been doing small hops in the living room, progressing to short hovers as i tweaked each setting nearer the sweet spot. I felt pretty confident i was ready for a basic low level outdoors test flight.
I lifted it up to around 4ft and aimed for a steady hover. It became apparent that there was still some very slight giro tweaking required: when in hover the heli would tend to spin very slowly, very slightly counter clockwise. A little right-turn trim was a good "quick fix" for now.
I found the heli wanted to wander a bit, and given its size and the relatively small space in my back garden, it wasn't long before i had to do some beginner type stabbing at the controls (despite telling myself over and over "smoothly does it") to veer away from the fence and bring her down on the grass.
Success
Bumpy landing or no bumpy landing. I call that a success! It looks cracking in the air, and although the controls are a bit soft (i'll be addressing that soon) i was very pleased with the handling so far.
Next Steps
- Giro tweaking: very slight adjustments required to totally elimate the yaw
- Dis-assembly: I'll probably do this over the weekend. I plan to very slightly adjust the swashplates to give a very slight "nose high" stance, in the air and when taking off / landing. This is in tandem with my mix ratio twiddling earlier!
- While it's disassembled, i plan to adjust the hole on the bell crank arm that the the pitch rod (is that what it's called?) locates into, to give more responsive pitch control.
If any of the above ideas sound clever, i must stress they're not my own. I just learned of them from reading other folks posts!
Although tonight on the late shift i will be flying it about the office, just to get some more of a feel for the controls. I hope we're not busy tonight!
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