Intrepid175
Heliman
Location: Texas City, TX
| Hi Larry,
If you're binding the tail control linkage at the extemes, you have to turn it down on the gyro. Turning down the EPA's in the transmitter won't do anything with the 401 gyro.
You may need to play around with the centering of the tail pitch linkages so that you get maximum possible tail pitch in both directions. Since the 401 only has a single adjustment pot, that means when you turn it down for one direction, you're also turning it down for the other. Once you get the linkages centered correctly, and the length of the servo arm right, you should be able to come pretty close to maxing out the tail pitch in both directions. You'll probably have to compromise a little. I like to do it in the direction that turning the fuse "with" torque. That is, make sure you're getting everything you can in the pitch direction that turns the nose of the model "against" the main rotors torque reaction. If you're not quite getting full pitch the other way, it's not a big a deal because the torque is helping you turn that way, anyway.
From reading your description, I'm thinking that you may have had the servo arm short enough that it was limiting the models tail authority. If that's true, the gyro might not have been able to compensate. With the longer servo arm, you probably are over driving the linkage a bit. I like to keep the gyro's end point adjustment pot in the upper 50%. If you're dropping below that then you'll need to shorten the servo arm a little. It can take a bit of futzing around with to get it right but the effort will be well worth it.
As for the gyro itself, once you get all this setup, the gyro will control the tail servo. By that I mean, if you hold the tail control over, just a little, the model will do a slow pirouette and it will maintain that pirouette rate regardless of what the wind is doing to the machine. You just hold the stick and it does the work of compensating for wind effects. It's really nice once you get used to it. As for the tranmitter EPA's, they control how sensitive the tail control is. The gyro doesn't know the difference between setting your EPA's at 100% and you holding the stick half way over or the EPA's set at 50% and you holding the stick all the way over. Most setups I've flown could be a little touchy with the tail control EPA's set at 100% in the transmitter. Try bringing them down to 80% on both sides and see what you think. You might wind up perferring 100% but you can play around with it and decide for yourself which you prefer and changing the numbers in the transmitter only takes a few seconds.
Sorry for getting a little long winded. Hope all of this makes sense.
Fly Safe,
Steve R.
PS: Oops, should have read it all. I missed the link for Chris' 401 setup directions. Looks real good to me! |
