TomC
Veteran
Location: Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
| I’ve been playing around with my Helicommand Rigid flybarless system for almost 2 months now so I thought I’d share a few of my findings. Since I have not tried other systems, like V-bar or CMS, I cannot compare these. This is just my opinion about the Helicommand system.
I chose the Helicommand Rigid system over the Mikado V-bar for 2 main reasons. The main reason was that the HC offers stabilisation modes. I thought this might be useful while working on my 3D flying skills, so that I could have a ‘bail-out’ panic switch option. The second reason was that the HC set-up looked a lot less complicated. Price-wise, there was not much in it. The HC with software was only ~$50 cheaper than the V-bar (right now I think they are about the same price).
I initially tested HC on my 10s Tango 45-08 (w/12t pinion) Trex600 w/flybar, and Radix 600 main blades. This was a very simple installation. I just had to replace my Fut401 gyro with the HC unit, rewire it, set it up as per the instructions, and go fly. I tried both the horizontal stabilisation mode and the rigid mode. I did not try the position mode (holds a ground reference position but only good for up to ~2 metres) since I did not think that this was going to be useful for me.
In short, everything worked as advertised. The horizontal mode allowed you to bang the sticks, re-centre them, and the heli would then go into a nice level hover (with a bit of drift). The rigid mode worked much like without the HC but I noticed that the heli seemed to track a lot better, esp. in gusty winds. The tail seemed about the same, or better, than my old Fut401 (but this did need a few adjustments). So, no more excuses, time to try it without a flybar!
This was a very simple exercise (see picture below). Flipped the grips over, installed Vario ball’s (~14mm to centre), removed the headblock pins, installed a Mikado swashdriver, and replaced the trex600 inner swash balls with ones from an old clapped out Mikado swash. I brought the cyclic servo arms in to ~22mm (from ~28mm) and used a couple of 75mm Mikado rods/ball links that I had in my old Logo stock. While I had a most of these parts in stock, most will find it easier/cheaper to just go with the Mikado Trex600 head upgrade imop.
Only a couple of flying sessions were required to get the horiz and rigid gains right, and I had this heli flying fantastic. I upped my collective pitch from +/-12deg to +/-14deg and cyclic from 8deg to 10deg, all at 1950 rpm HS (I’m not a high HS junky) this heli was much more ballistic in climb-out, and very agile, with little or no bogging. I do not normally use expo on my cyclic but I needed to add 25% in this case. I flew the heli in very strong/gusty winds (grounded most of my flying mates) and it seemed to cut through the air with more authority than my larger/heavier Ion-x. By the way, the all up flying weight was 3.6 kg without flybar versus 3.7 kg with.
I tested both set-ups with Eagletree and found that both recorded about the same peak amps/watts but, on an average run, that the HC used ~12% less Mahr’s to do this. I’d estimate that the peak performance improvement with HC was in the order of ~20%. There is no doubt in my mind that the HC Trex600 is a much better flying heli, and I was getting ~1 min extra runtime to boot. I hated to switch it back to the flybar but I needed to go the next step and try the HC on my 10s single staged (10:1) Ion-x.
The Ion-x conversion was also very simple (see picture below). This was made esp. easy since Fredrick (MrMel) had already done it so I just followed his lead and got some K&S Raptor 60/90 metal grips and brought the cyclic servo arms in a bit (from 19.5mm to 15mm) in order to get a bit more torque and resolution out of my old Fut9252’s. The picture shows them before I brought the arms in. I used the Mikado Swashdriver and the stock swash-to-grip MA 2.6mm links.
To cut an already too long story short, the HC Ion-x, after a number of fine tunning flights (~5 times as many as the Trex600 took), is now flying very nicely. I’ve been able to up the collective pitch from +/-11deg to +/-14deg and cyclic from 7.5deg to 10deg without the heli bogging too much. The total flying weight with 2x5s Evo25 3700 is 4.3 kg versus 4.65 kg although ~80g of this is due to switching to lighter MA Razor landing gear. I recently replaced the PowerJazz esc with a Jazz 55-10-32 esc and have knocked down the weight to 4.15 kg. Not bad for a 90 sized heli swinging 690mm Radix blades!
My Eagletree recordings said similar things. That is, the peak amps/watts were about the same (at 1880 rpm HS) but the Mahr used during a normal run was ~10% less. However, the climb and agility increases were not as high as I experienced with the Trex600. I’d guesstimate that the peak climb-out rate is up ~10% and the agility is up ~15%, versus ~20% for the Trex600.
The only problem I’ve had is that I have not been able to get the horiz/rigid modes working together as well as I did with the Trex600. This is because to use both modes (= fixed mode) you need to hard-wire the rigid gains. The step size in the software is pretty course so it is difficult to match this if the gain settings required are pretty low. I’m sure I will figure a way around this eventually, or hopefully the software will improve. This is not an issue if you are using rigid only mode (= Extreme mode).
Still, I would say that this 10s Ion-x is much nicer to fly with HC. But if I could only have one HC unit, I’d put it back on my Trex600. I’m not sure, but I think that the 10s limit favours the smaller heli in this case.
My next step is to try the HC on a 15s Ion-x. I have an Actro 32-4 max ready to go to try on my SS Ion-x (waiting for new 111t MA main gears) and I’m finally getting back my Neu 1521/2y motor (~6 months in repair shop) to try again on my double staged 15s Ion-x. This should give me a good comparison on 15s.
Stay tunned!
Cheers,
TomC
CX2 2s
Logo10- 3D 5s
Trex600 10s
2x Ion-x, 1x15s DS, 1x15s SS |
