darkfa8
Key Veteran
Location: Eatontown, NJ, USA
| Mike,
I have read Ray's book several times through and if you're keen about absolute perfection, then his book is the authoratative source for everything you can do to make a heli operate damn near flawlessly.
However, with my Century Hawk Sport $150 heli, I balanced the wood main blades, stuck in my radio gear, did my pitch/throttle/gyro setup and the thing flew vibration free, hands off hovering for several seconds at a time before any major cyclic correction was needed.... that's what a $150 heli offers out of the box today.
When Ray originally wrote his book the Raptor had just recently debuted, people were apparently still making there own main blades and the end user went through everything with a fine tooth comb.
But, here we are in the 21st century, the vast majority of helis that are obtainable in the USA are manufactured overseas, sans Bergen and M/A. Despite that, the processes, engineering, CAD and simulations, etc have provided higher quality parts that require little to no additional work to get them to operate.
My late grandfather was a industrial engineer, taught engineering at NJIT and he had quite a collection of slide rules. Today they're ancient pieces of operable art. Very precise and come in nice leather cases. However, pull out your calculator and it calculates the same results with less work, the electronics (instead of your brain) are now enclosed in plastic with plastic wobbly keys and yet it's easier to use, is just as accurate if not moreso despite it not having that same level of precise feel of a slide rule.
As you've discovered through actual flight experience, that despite the individual parts and/or sub-assemblies having a questionable amount of play when in operation they allow for proper, predictable operation.
I haven't, but if you have or get chance to fly a Freya, M/A, Bergen, Robbe, maybe even the Synergy you'll likely see all those tolerances tighten up, offer silky-smooth operation but all at a premiem cost.
I'd feel better about dialing in the entire clutch/start shaft assembly, balancing the entire head, balancing the tail output assembly, obtaining the proper gear mesh, weighing the blades/paddles, etc, but most of it isn't needed to obtain successfull flight characteristics from these kinds of helis.
In fact, all that "extra" work, despite pacifying my urge for making a silk purse out of a sow's ear, is likely a waste of time. I should be flying instead.
- Dan G. - |
