gwright
Senior Heliman
Location: Melbourne, Fl
| I did quite a bit of experimentation a few years back ('95 I think) with flybar length. I made flybars from 17" to 29" in 1/2 inch increments and flew all of them. At the time my focus was on F3C, and the shortest flybar would "sit" much better in the hover (drastic difference from the longest) but the control power for aerobatics was almost non-existant. The longest flybar didn't sit well in hover, but aerobatics were far better. After some head-scratching, I tried some flybar stiffeners. It seems that longer is better for aerbatics and "tracking" like a pattern plane in fast flight, but stiffness is the critical thing in hovering. What I ended up with was the long flybar, but with stiffeners. Once the long flybar was stiffened, it hovered as well as the short flybar,..but gave the long-flybar advantages "upstairs". Nowadays, I can't find the 4mm ID (really 5/32") carbon tubes anymore, so i'm not using stiffeners, but I'm not currently flying F3C, and hovering stability isn't a great concern. |
I put the longer flybar in during the rebuild, and I leave tommorrow for the NEAT fair in new york (not looking forward to the 1300mile drive either), so I'll get the setup there and fly some.
