You can see the Labor Day RC Heli Video by clicking the link to the left (or embedded below!)  More below the.. fold(?)

My helicopter is the Ace RC Mini-Titan 450 with the white canopy and LED lighting on it.  It’s got a Scorpion 2221-8 brushless motor on a stock Mini-Titan frame. (The only upgrades are the motor/ESC,  metal head block, mixing arms and the carbon fiber blades).  I’m running an Airtronics SD-10G radio with the 8 channel Rx, LT2100 gyro, Castle Creations 50ICE and HG-65mg servos for cyclic/pitch on the head and a Futaba 9257 for the tail.  Most of my packs are Turnigy 2200′s.  I have 1 Outrage battery pack left, and it still outputs a lot of power but is puffed like crazy and doesn’t balance well.

Ollies heli is a T-Rex 450 with carbon fiber side frames, an aluminum upper with a custom OT Model Fab upper bearing support for the motor.  He’s running a flybarless setup with the Skookum SK-720 flybarless module which is pretty awesome.  He’s running a Scorpion 2221-6 with a Hyperion ESC.  He’s reported the tail kicking out a few times, but I’m sure he’ll get it sorted it and overall the response is awesome.  He’s running a JR 8103 with a Spektrum 2.4Ghz module on it as well, and some INOtech metal gear servos for the cyclic/pitch. His machine is a freaking monster for a 450 and it’s gotta be seen to be believed.

Both helis are running the same carbon fiber rotor blades which are less than $20 a pair.  Ollie is running around 3200 RPM on the rotor and I’m running about 2500 on the rotor according to our heli-nut friends from HeliFlightCenter who are local and a couple of good guys.

The plane you see occasionally is Ollie’s ‘Tiny’ and older model which he flies with great skill and seems to enjoy quite a bit pushing it to it’s limits. I don’t know the exact specs but it runs a tiny brushless motor (pinky sized thickness) on a geared prop, it gets long flights and looks great!

About a month ago I was flying a bit late and lost orientation of the heli and put it in. You’ll probably see lights on the heli here and there in the video, but I’ll make another post on those. The lights do help a lot when the sun goes down and it’s hard to get perspective.

The video below shows my progress with inverted hovering over four flights.  I have practiced this only for about 10 minutes on my Phoenix R/C flight simulator, but the sim just never feels right compared to the real thing, so I just decided to practice with the real thing.  The first and second flights are pretty rough but you can see a slow improvement over the duration of the video clip.  My goal is to be able to hover a complete flight (4:30 minutes) inverted.

My accumulated RC heli experience before attempting this is quite a few years of semi-sedate stuff. I’m competent with hovering, fast forward flight. I’m comfortable flipping the heli forwards and backwards, as well as side to side. I’ve rolled the heli while pulling up into a vertical climb (kind of like a stall climb with a plane) and while not totally comfortable with it I can hover nose in alright.

Last week I spent about an hour practicing inverted blow-outs where I flipped the heli and hammered negative collective to push the heli up into the air to try and get a feel for the collective when inverted and the responsiveness, as well as trying to remember the right way to punch the collective when inverted.

Overall I would say in less than 20 minutes of flying (4:30 minutes x 4 flights) I’ve made quite an improvement on inverted hovering.  There is plenty of room for improvement of course, but I think at this rate it will come quickly. The biggest part of learning new skills when flying models, and in fact doing most things is to find the time to put into actually flying or doing those things.

Once I get good at hovering inverted nose in, then I will spend some time working on hover inverted nose out as well.  Hopefully in a couple of months I’ll feel comfortable in all positions of upright and inverted.

The video is uploading right now, and I’m about to go test out my new FPV Glider. I’ve set this post to auto-post at about the time the video is complete.

Update: The video is here or embedded below

Feel free to share below if you’ve recently been trying out some new moves with your RC heli or airplane.

I hope every had a great Christmas and New Years this year and kept plenty warm.  Things were good here and I did a little after the holidays shopping as well.  I picked up the Novus CP from my local hobby shop in Kingston and was admittedly an ‘impulse’ buy.

The kit is sold as Ready-to-Fly’ (RTF) and almost everything you need to fly is included. It comes with a 6 channel 2.4Ghz programmable transmitter, spare parts. The only extra thing you need to get flying is a set of 8 AA batteries for the transmitter. It’s a full collective-pitch helicopter with an idle-up switch on the trasmitter.

The battery for the helicopter is included, it’s a single cell Li-Poly 400mAh battery which uses an ‘HMX’ style connector. I’ve not seen this type of connector before but it may be more common with little electric aircraft. The battery seems to take between 20-30 minutes to charge completely and you should charge it right out of the box.

The Novus CP  is tiny, if you look at it compared to my Mini-Titan 450, you can probably grasp how small it really is.  The Mini-Titan in itself is a smaller electric helicopter compared to nitro-methane powered or gasoline powered helis that I used to fly.

The setup is pretty clean. There’s a small brushed motor powering the main rotor, the head is controlled by three nano-sized servos in an eCCPM configuration, there are no complex linkages in this little guy.

The tail rotor uses an even smaller motor.  There’s no pitch control on the tail rotor as the motor just changes direction back and forth instead.

The receiver, motor speed control and gyro are built together into one module which sits at the front of the helicopter. When you power up the heli, it centers the gyro so you should do that on a flat surface to ensure the tail rotor operates properly.

There are additional ports for tail rotor output and main motor ESC output if you decide to upgrade it to a brushless system later. Heli-Max does sell a lot of upgrades for this such as brushless motors, and CNC machined head components if you like hop-ups or bling.

The helicopter flies pretty good in it’s stock configuration, you should tighten the blades a little bit or it will ‘orbit’ while you’re hovering and other things. Once you get it a couple of feet off the ground the flight stabilizes as you’re not flying through the rotor wash.

This helicopter is a bit more work to keep in the air than larger size helicopters but it’s not extremely twitchy like some other micro-sized helis I have flown. I would not recommend it as a first helicopter, it seems the smaller these things get, the more work they are to keep in the air.

The radio is also programmable as well, although it requires you to remove a cover, flip a switch and then use the two knobs on it’s face to set new values. Once you have set the new values, you turn the switch back.  This allows you to adjust the throttle and pitch curves, the hover throttle, exponential(affects all controls) and other things you would expect to find in a helicopter radio. I was somewhat surprised by all the features.  Additionally since this is a full CP (Collective-Pitch) helicopter the radio also has an Idle-Up switch which will allow you to do a lot of the inverted tricks and some level of 3D flying as well.

I don’t have a large enough indoor space at home to try any stunts or 3D type maneuvers with, but I will try it in the warehouse at work next week.

For the price this is a very good deal, considering it comes with programmable radio as well.  It also includes a spare set of rotor blades and a spare one-piece tail rotor in the box. The manual is fairly straight forward about repairing the helicopter and changing the settings as well.  There is a manual update on the Heli-Max site, which is in references to tightening the blades before flying.

However fun this is it is considered an older generation of model product, so you should not pay a premium price for it.

There are newer versions of this heli out  under the Walkera name, the original manufacturer, that can be had for a fair price with newer features, such as the dual brushless motors and other things included for pretty great prices. If you can get this kit as a reasonable discount I would recommend it.

I’m glad I went, we got a couple of flights in each in about an hour and a half’s time.  The field was deserted as is to be expected in the cold weather. There are very few ‘hardcore’ all weather fliers out there.  In past years I’ve flown in the middle of snow-storms with my friends. We took turn shooting video of each other flying. Ollie took his Cypher 3D 450 sized helicopter and I took my GP Reactor Bipe EP and my Mini-Titan 450 sized helicopter.

Ollie had these blue rubber gloves that he said helped keep your hands a bit warmer, while still allowing you to fly.  It was around 28F out, so I decided to give them a try.  They do work somewhat better than bare skin, so if you see ‘smurf hands’ in the videos, that’s the deal there.

The Mini-Titan needs some more work, so I just packed it up rather than risking fate, but flew the GP Reactor Bipe a couple of times.

For people who can’t use the built in player you can see the videos of me Here and Ollie Here and for the rest you can view the videos below.

Then we froze and went home, the end!

The new setup uses metal mixing arms, green paddles, a Scorpion HK-2221-8 brushless motor, Castle Creations Phoenix-45 and a 13 tooth pinion.  The current draw looks pretty reasonable, on the high power climb outs you can see a large spike up to as high as 44 amps.

This helicopter climbs like crazy with this setup, very very fast!  The current is about 10 amps below the peak of the batteries capabilities though so I’m glad it stopped there.  Going too much further would probably result in LiPo (Lithium-Polymer) puffing!  The batteries are rated at 25C discharge and the pack is 2200mAh or 2.2 Amp hours.  with the 25C rating this is 25 * 2.2 which turns out to be 55 amps.

Anyways, check out the results from the flight data recorder in the gallery below.  The voltage is the green line and the numbers on the right, and the current is the purple line and the numbers on the left(in amps).

As always, if you have any questions please use the contact links on this website, they’re fairly visible.  As for the photos click on the photo and use the left/right arrows on the bottom right of the image to navigate through the slides. AND as always, thank you for your support, it makes this site possible!

The first flight was just getting used to things for the most part, the heli really sings and sounds smooth with this motor and gearing setup.  It’s quite a bit more touchy with the green paddles, and will take some getting used to.

On the second flight I went for flips and rolls and was simply amazed at the difference in the performance of the helicopter, the flips and rolls were great, relatively.  The last time I tried to flip this heli, it was more like a loop that ended up in a bush.  I was pretty comfortable flipping my Raptor 50, and my Raptor 60 (70) so I doubt it was pilot error.  I held off at first because I was afraid it would be a similar experience, but it was not anything like that, it was AWESOME.

I tend not to use exponential or dual rates when flying, I’ve personally found it an added confusion to have it flying in multiple different ways. Someone once said that mankind’s biggest downfalls is the failure to understand exponentials.  While I understand exponentials reasonably well in many things, I don’t adjust for them well.

Setting exponential in an RC radio is a way to make the sticks less responsive in the center, and more responsive the further away you get for center. For the most part this allows you to have your controls less re-active in the middle, making it easier to control the plane or helicopter with small adjustments in the middle.  The response is non-linear, which means the further you push the stick out in any direction(which has exponential enabled) the more responsive the control gets.  1/4″ of stick travel around the middle may only move the servo arm 1 or 2mm, but if you move it past 1/4″ the servo arm starts to EXPONENTIALLY respond, and an additional 1/4″ may move the servo arm 4-6mm, etc.

While I feel ‘expo’ is beneficial for most, in my non-linear mind it just screws me up, so I leave it out.

Dual rates serves a similar purpose.  When you have the DR switch on a ‘low’ setting, servo travel is limited across the entire movement of the control stick in a linear way.  When you are in high dual rate settings, the controls will move the servo more, across the entire stick range, resulting in more responsive controls for stunts or other thing.

Even ‘old’ radios have pretty high resolution for the stick movement that if you do not enable dual rates or exponential, you can train your brain to move the sticks slightly for fine control, and more extensively for those high-g adrenaline pumping maneuvers.

It all comes down to a personal preference.  I dislike non-linearity in my controls and I also do not like it when my heli responds differently depending on the position of a switch I may or may not forget to throw before a stunt move.  Currently the only switch I use is the idle up switch, and I’m sure someone will come up with a way to get rid of that eventually.   One of my great crashes (check The Carnage section) was due to forgetting to switch into idle-up.

If you’re interested more in my upgrades, check the related posts down below.

The good part is I was only about 3/4 way up the collective/throttle stick so it definitely had the power to lift this, though at a high current demand which is not good for batteries and other things.  I have been shopping around (window shopping mostly) for a smaller camera to mount to the heli so that I could record some more ‘natural’ flights than just hovering around.

While looking at cameras I found the Canon Powershot SD780 IS.  This camera is a 10MP still camera which offer tons of features, additionally it will shoot 30fps video at a 1280×720 resolution.  Additionally this camera weighs in much lighter at 5.6oz including batteries(.35 pounds) it’s quite a bit lighter than the Sony Powershot DSC-H10, by almost 1/2 pound.

Additionally I could strip weight from the helicopter with a few changes.  I could remove the flight data recorder which weighs about 0.7 ounces (not a big gain).  I could switch over to my ultralight(very light) Berg 7 channel receiver and use that instead of the 9 channel PCM receiver I use now.  The current PCM receiver weighs about 1 oz, the ultra-light Berg receiver comes in at 0.33 ounces which would be another .66 in weight loss, so with those two items I could loose about one ounce off the heli, bringing the overall weight of the setup to around 31-32 ounces.  Right in at 2 pounds not accounting for a custom vibration isolating mount.

By switching the current wood blades out for much more efficient carbon fiber blades and doing the same with the tail rotor blades I don’t think that moving a camera the weight of the SD780 IS would pose much of a problem. There’s also the possibility of re-gearing the brushless motor by one or two teeth on the motor pinion to lower the headspeed and experiment more with loaded flight over 3D flight.

I do know there are a lot of ‘mini’ type spycams and stuff like that out there, but I really detest low quality pictures and video those produce, and they’re really not much cheaper than a high quality point and shoot.  If I’m going to go through the trouble of setting something like this up, I’m going to try and get the best I can, within a reasonable budget, to shoot some fun or information stuff.

I always seem to do this with projects, what should be fun ‘day off’ kind of stuff, go fly the heli etc, turns into a big project and then every day out for fun turns into a project to shoot interesting video, or do something interesting, etc.  I still find it fun.  But it’s like building a new PC fun vs doing jumps on a motorcycle fun.   I may just have to pick up a second Mini-Titan at some point so one can be Wheee fun! and the other can be Tech Fun!.

The only unfortunate thing about shooting video from a helicopter this small is that they are not as stable as their bigger cousins.  When a friend and I shot video using our heli’s with 6 foot rotor spans (as seen on my heli page) they produced some pretty stable output.  Although it took quite some time to get everything set up right.  But I guess I can accept that loss of stability as long as I can isolate the vibration in the helicopter and in the camera mount, I think the quality will still turn out pretty nice!

As usual, the big problem will be comming up with the funds to do this. I just blew $60 on a new transmitter RF module for my Futaba 9CHP transmitter, the module died on my attempt to fly a second time yesterday.  Fortunately it died while I was on the ground.  It has very odd problems though.  If you take the housing off the module, the transmitter module still does not work unless you blow into it.  I suspect an output transistor failed, and airflow lowers the temp back down low enough for it to begin working again.

Then it struck me, I could mount a camera to the Mini-Titan and play around a little bit.  I’ve done this with my bigger helis when I had them and it usually turned out pretty well.  You can probably find some videos on my rocket site that were taken from R/C helicopters.  Back when those were shot though, a friend and I used a Bergen Intrepid gasser heli that was powered by a high end gasoline motor.  Similar to what you might find in a good quality weed eater, but with some modifications.  That heli also had a professional pan/tilt camera mount, etc.

So,  I’m sitting at home, I have an R/C Helicopter, the Ace Mini-Titan that I’ve recently modded with a scorpion 2221-8 and Castle Creations Phoenix 45 speed controller  and added a couple of shiny metal bits to.  Then I have my trusty Sony DSC-H10 8 megapixel still camera which can shoot reasonable lower quality video.  But how do I mount a camera to my helicopter?  I ran over to the dining room, which, truth be told, is our in-house tool and ‘project stuff room’ and started rummaging around for things to make a camera mount of.  I settle on a U shaped drive bay plug from an old computer case as the base of the helicam mount.

I then drilled the flanges of the drive bay plug so they’d slide over the helicopter’s landing skids and drilled a hole for a screw that would connect to the camera’s mounting point.  I mounted the bracket and with the careful application of top secret elastic and plastic compounds I firmly attached the bracket to the rest of the heli.  I then mounted the camera.  Here is what I ended up with.

Note: It is difficult to take a picture of your camera with your camera I discovered.  Unfortunately I did have to turn the work cell phone back on to take this picture, but I got it over with and it’s now off and away.

Because I needed more than one photo to make a ‘gallery’ and I am still figuring out photo sharing I decided to share with you my coveted picture of a turtle I took at the pond back behind work on the 25th.  I was actually trying to get a picture of the red fox who lives back there, but no luck.   Enjoy the slime covered turtle!  I love how they lift their heads way up when they’re looking around.

Click here to watch the Mini-Titan Heli-Cam Video

You can see it’s not the most fancy modification but it did work for the basic idea of a helicam.  Some things worth noting are that the Sony DSC-H10 is a pretty heavy camera for it’s size, I was surprised that the heli was able to lift it without too much effort.  The camera is also mounted to the right side of the helicopter which puts it slightly off balance, with just 3 clicks of left trim it was hovering solid with the camera attached.

In the video you can see there is quite a bit of vibration.   This is due mostly to the fact that the camera mount was directly connected to the heli skid.  To do it right you need very good dampers at all physical mounting points to isolate high and low frequency vibrations.   While it’s not the greatest video it’s kind of fun to watch and a good result for a little amount of work.

As a side effect my LiPoly battery was quite hot but the Scorpion HK-2221-8 motor and Castle Creations Phoenix-45 speed controller both stayed on the ‘warm’ side.  The LiPoly pack did puff up a bit, but since it’s cooled it’s flat as a pancake again.

The pack is 2.2Ah, rated at 25C so I should be able to pull around 55 amps from it!  I was a bit concerned that the flight with the camera may have drawn too much current, if only there were some way to know… Oh right, there would have been, but unfortunately my Eagle Tree eLogger v3 flight data recorder’s log memory was full so I didn’t get any of that information.  I am going to post some comparisons of my stock motor/setup vs the new motor/setup so if you wanted to see data, check that post instead.

I really want to get one of those tiny video cameras that weigh next to nothing and would be much easier mount and setup.  They’re not expensive so I might pick on up in a couple of months ones I get some cashola in the bank again. So if you have a small digital camera that shoots video, maybe you can just make some fun and setup your own simple aerial heli-cam.

The HK-2221-8 from Scorpion Motors was easy to install, it comes with some proprietary pin-type connector for the motor.  You can either desolder these and put your own on or use the included female connectors that are often included with electronic speed controllers.   These connectors seem to be decent quality.  The female connectors have a spring around the fingers to pull them tight onto the male pins, keeping everything secure.  They solder on just like your standard ‘bullet’ type connectors.

I mounted the pinion onto the motors output shaft using blue Loctite paste.  The Loctite paste comes in a tube, sort of like school glue, and it is a lot cleaner to deal with. You should make sure to push it into the threads of the screw or nut as it’s not a free flowing liquid and isn’t of too much use if it just sits on the surface.   I know that a lot of people are fond of the red Loctite for this task, but I really hate having to heat the motor shaft to pull a pinion, and the blue has worked out well for me.  I lined the pinion up relative to the old pinion’s position on the stock motor shaft and then cranked the grub screw down nice and tight.

The small size of the electronic speed controller from Castle Creations was a bit of a surprise for me.  I had forgotten how efficient they are with the size of their products.   The stock 40 Amp ESC that came with the Mini-Titan is at least twice the size of the new CC Phoenix 45 Amp speed control.   Prep was pretty much the same as any brushless motor speed control.  Trim the wires to fit your setup.  (Hint: Estimate the length you need, then add 1/2 to 1 inch to allow for bends, etc) solder on the deans and female pin connectors and we’re off!

I had ordered the metal washout block, fly bar control arms,  and the metal mixing levers to install.  Unfortunately I was not able into install the mixing levers because the stock ACE plastic flybar cage interferes with the metal levers (or the other way around).   This means I would need to order a new metal fly bar cage but  I’m going to hold off on that for now.  I want to leave some plastic components in the head as ‘break points’ so the expensive metal bits have less chance of being destroyed in a crash.

The washout and the fly bar control arms were very easy to install.  I already had a metal headblock installed.   I disconnected all the links and removed the head block from the main shaft, then I installed the washout block/control arm assembly down onto the shaft and reinstalled the headblock securely.   Pretty easy!

Bryn was kind enough to take some pictures for me of my slightly upgraded Minit-Titan e325

I also ordered a new motor and speed controller. The primary reason for ordering the motor was that I think one of my bearings on the stock ACE red motor is going out and I figured I might as well get something decent.   I ordered a new speed controller because I don’t like the setup on the stock one too much.   The stock controller and motor will get used in a less critical application, I’m not sure where, yet, but I have some ideas.

The Scorpion motors come well recommended and well reviewed. With the HK-2221-8 being what most people use in a Mini-Titan if they go with a Scorpion, and the HK-2221-6 providing extreme performance with the cost of possible excessive parts wear.  Even on ‘high end’ helis it can cause excessive wear.

And to finish of my binge purchase of heli stuff I bought a set of green paddles.  In reality I’ve seen people fly the heck out of a stock Mini-Titan, far greater than my abilities allow, so I doubt I’ll ever have to upgrade beyond this for quite a while.

I bought all of the parts through HeliProz, due to past good experiences.  You may be able to save a few bucks shopping elsewhere, there are many dealers for these kind of helicopters, parts, supplies and other things out there.  Don’t forget to consider shipping costs when buying parts.   Buying through 5 different companies to save on parts may end up costing you more in the end once you calculate in the shipping costs.

Shopping List:
(links open in new windows / tabs)

Motor:  Scorpion HK-2221-8
Speed Controller: Castle Creations Phoenix-45
Pinion Gears: Ace PV0729 13-Tooth
Metal Flybar Control Levers: Ace PV0807
Metal Mixing Levers: Ace PV0805
Metal Washout Base: Ace PV0808
Paddles: Ace PV0837

I’ve been a bit slow this week in uploading photos and updates on the new patch I put on the lawn on monday, 7 days ago.   The PatchMaster hasn’t sprouted up grass yet, but it should go in the next few days if all goes well and things should start to turn green.  I bought the 15 pound bag for around $25 to patch this area and some others.

There’s some thunderstorms moving in as I type so the lawns have been getting plenty of water.   There’s also a pick of the backyard lawn which we leveled and then planted seed with the use of a wood fiber germinating mat.  The areas that grew in seem to be doing well, but unfortunately there seem to be good size patches which just never sprouted, and I’m not sure why.   I mowed over that mat once, most of it stayed in place.  I suspect we’ll have to put more seed down once the summer is over.

The big lawn project however, on the peninsula is doing well as you can see in that photo (with the 4 sprinklers, next to the barn).   I trimmed back our Eastern Red Cedar on the peninsula (which is actually a juniper – Juniperus virginiana) so now it is not hanging on the ground.  You can see the before picture, with the moss ‘lawn area’  in the forground, and the after picture with the now grassy lawn in the foreground. It looks a lot better being opened up like that and will make mowing a bit easier.   I also want to cut back some branches from the acorn tree which are hanging over the front of the barn.

I also added a couple photo’s of a plant that I’m not familiar with. (Update: They appear to be Peonies)  It has these big red buds at the top of the stem which have not opened up yet, I guess it’s still doing something in there before it bursts forth.   There are a lot of tiny ants all over these buds that seem to be paying a lot of attention to them though.   Either they’re waiting for what’s inside, or there’s some sort of plant juices they like there.

The photo gallery is of myself ( blue shirt, mostly white Mini-Titan e325 ) and my buddy Ollie (dark shirt, white/black/red Cypher 3D with custom frames and small plane ) flying at the field this afternoon.  Once we got back we decided to to burn some more time with an old LiPo pack.  Unfortunately the pack had been sitting around too long and we couldn’t even get it to deflagrate violently.   So the next best thing was to fire off an Estes E9 model rocket engine in one of the planters.   We buried the engine and let it rip, here’s the video

Estes E9 Engine WMV Format

Estes E9 Engine Quicktime MOV Format

Here are the photo’s, please enjoy.  If you’re not familiar with the image viewer on this site, click on a picture below, it will open in the viewer.  Use the Left and Right arrows on the bottom right side of the image to move between images.

You can click here to see more pics of electric, nitro and gasoline powered R/C helicopters I own or have owned (new window) from my helicopter site.

The picture below is of a nitro-methonal powered helicopter I owned, provided as a comparison for the smaller electric one which is the subject of this post, and pictured in the gallery images below it.

A .50 Powered Nitro-Methonal Raptor 50

The smaller electrics, though, are great for a quick quiet flight in a small area where you wouldn’t want to fire up a nitro-methonal or gasoline combustion engine powered chopper.   Though they tend to have quite a few benefits, they are not really neighbor friendly, and it’s not really safe to fly them in tight quarters.

My Mini-Titan runs the stock motor and electronic speed controller included with the kit.  The blades, as seen in the photo, are Align 325 Pros.  They are wooden blades, but perform decently.  The stock kit blades are very heavy and not great.

My e325 Setup:

Radio: Futaba 9CHP 9-channel computer radio
Receiver: Futaba 149DP 9-channel PCM receiver
Servos: 3 Hitech HS-65MG metal gear for the cyclic and collective pitch on the main rotor
1 Futaba S9257 Digital Tail Rotor Servo
Gyro: Logitech LGT-2100T heading lock gyro (for the tail)
Flight Recorder: flight data recorder from Eagle Tree

The data recorder board records voltage and current used and allows me to graph out power consumption from the motor and servos on my PC so I can see how to better tune or improve the helicopter towards better performance.

The cyclic and collective on the main rotor is controlled using eCCPM (electronic Cyclic, Collective, and Pitch Mixing).  eCCPM allows 3 servos to perform the same function as  4 to 5 servos in a mechanically mixed system, but it requires stronger servos as the load from the head is the same as it would be with 4 to 5 servos.

Please check out the photos below for some pics of the heli’s internals, it is a bit dusty, I was hoping Sunday’s flight would help remove some of it, but I may just need to use some canned duster on it.

As you can see in the pic of the other side yard, it hasn’t been taken care of yet, I’ll probably work on raking out the dead wild violet roots, filling in the holes and sunken spots this week evenings and put some grass seed down.   I’ve started to cut back on watering of the peninsula lawn, I want to force the grass to start extending it’s roots down into the soil so that it will hopefully be decently established by the time our smoldering summer comes along.