Edders
Senior Heliman
Location: Suffolk,UK
| First a word of thanks to Colin Mill (CSM) for answering all my questions, John for the technical help and Pete for the physical help (late one night)
As this was my first attempt at building / flying a flybarless helicopter I decided to use my raptor 50 which is the heli that gets the most abuse and is in dire need of a good service so I was happy to try this new system out without fear of crashing I basically used the old parts I had lying around here’s the list
Old plastic head (that I broke the top off many moons ago)
Old set of red dampers
Old plastic washout and arms that was replaced previously with a metal washout set
Old pair of fibreglass blades that aren’t in the best of shape to say the least
Old mast locking collar
Two linkages that fitted
Couple of new servo arms
And a special brass bush to lower the washout to remove the binding on the pitch cradle (thanks John)
And a servo Y lead for the gyro gains
Here’s a few pictures of the final setup (I did neaten the wiring before flying)
 
Things to note smaller servo arms with the balls as close to the centre as possible
The pitch cradle I use is a metal one with the ball set in place for 3d pitch ranges. But due to the small amount of movement now required for +-10 I had to reduce the pitch servo’s ATV to around 50%. Also the pitch servo arm is no longer set at 90 degrees so as to achieve a more linear travel (im going to put the old plastic one back on with the ball set on the outer most hole)
Once you have all the linkages set right and equal it time to start setting up the pitch curve this was a bit of a head scratcher due to the lack of a flybar at first me and Peter used a spirit level on top of the pitch gauge this worked ok but was not really accurate then john came up with this
 
For zero pitch use two pitch gauges both set to 0 degrees and align the tops
And for +-10 set the pitch gauges to opposite each other so one is +10 and the other is -10.
To set the cyclic pitch you need first find a datum line on a wall / desk that when your pitch is set to zero using the two pitch gauges it also is in line. From there you can use the CSM 720 quick trim setup procedure to get the cyclic pitch, remember to remove the gain lead of the other gyro that your not trying to setup. Also ensure that you don’t have any trim set anywhere (sub trim ect.) I went for +-10 degrees cyclic. Note that the servos travel adjust is done in the gyro’s (as im not using a cyclock) once done I double checked for near equal travel using the CSM 720 gyro software then I set each gyro using the guidelines on the CSM website, I set the servo speed which was .222
Filled the 50 up and went out into the middle of the field and began the spool up taking it nice and slow due to all the old gear on there
Head speed was around 1800 and I had set in 40% expo (the expo was a big mistake)
I brought the 50 into a hover and it flew just like a flybar’d heli flicked into heading hold and again no perceptible change in the handling kept everything nice and gentle and did a few slow steady circuits pushed the nose down and there was big delay in the heli responding then all of a sudden it responded (Told you the exponential was a bad idea) the next flight was much the same but with a few loops and rolls which didn’t feel right at the end of the tank we found out that the exponential was the problem took it all out and fuelled it up again and went out up until this point I wasn’t that impressed however the next flight this system really got to show me what it was capable of loops and rolls where a dream to fly, circuits it seemed to track on those proverbial Rails that we all hope for straight and level. The roll / flip rates are incredible.(adjusted on the transmitter travel adjust ATV’s)
So now where getting the feel of the thing and its potential decided to fill it up again this time pushing it a bit harder bigger faster loops rolls, pie dishes piroflips stationary and moving flips remember this isn’t really set up for anything more than rolls and loops the head is soft and has a pretty slow head speed. Occasionally the heli would nod but I think that’s down to the soggy head / head speed
I am defiantly a believer that this is the way to go that im now making a proper conversation for the 50 and will start looking into converting the N9
With this system I will be able to set up my 50 and 90 to behave exactly the same due to this new fly by wire system
Flying around in non heading hold was just like flying a flybar’d head however once heading hold was enabled it really does hold its heading (angle) so YOU have to level out the heli. Remember it doesn’t do anything that you don’t ask it to do.
I can’t wait now to get the proper mods done and start really playing with the settings
Heli Spec’s
Raptor 50
OS hyper 50
MPII
CSM 720 + S9256 (tail)
2 x ds8231 and CSM 720 gyro (cyclics)
ACE digital servo for the pitch
CSM RL20 + El cheapo throttle servo
First lift off
Some in flight pics
 
Edders |
