Video of my 550 Flying at the Silent Electric Flyers of San Diego (SEFSD) Field

Eric took a vid of me practicing side in hovers and slow forward flight today at the SEFSD field on his new iPhone 5!  Thanks Eric!

Repair and upgrade parts for my 450!

I crashed my 450 a few weeks ago due to the tail belt slipping causing me to lose control. So I decided to change the tail drive to a torque tube. Let the rebuild begin.

5 Blade heli! Updated!

Another guy showed up with a 5 blade head scale heli! Cool!

UPDATE!

Added a vid of the heli that I shot with my iPhone 4s.

Another great day for flying!

At the field again. This time trying some different throttle profiles to get certain head speed, which I will measure using my optical tach. Hmm. A little hard to measure the head speed with the sky tach. But my iPhone app says I'm at about 2200 rpm at 80% throttle.

Going back to normal throttle curve as a few times I almost shut the motor off while I was trying to descend. Also I don't think I got a full charge on my batteries for some reason, as my lvc turned on with about 30 seconds left on my timer. Or the batts have a large voltage drop under load, since when I checked them later, the still had 65% capacity left?

Day 2!

At the field again trying out some different speedo programming and throttle curves. Way more power and response than yesterday! Happy with the setup now :)

Update: Hmmmm, now that I've thought about it some, I think I'll try governor mode in the speedo again, but this time turn up the throttle percentage until I get the pop and power I like. This way the cyclic control will feel more consistent. Now I need a shutter style tach to get an accurate head speed reading.

Maiden Flight Day for my Align 550e 3GX!

Today was the first day of flying for my 550! This was the first time I've flown such a big machine. On the first spool up I checked the blade tracking and it was spot on due to using a digital pitch gauge during setup to make sure the pitch was equal on each blade. On my first attempt to lift off, the tail was reacting weird, so I shut down right away. Turns out I got the rudder movement backward during setup. After reversing the rudder servo, resetting the sub trim, establishing the gyro limits, and verifying the gyro response, I was ready to try again.

This time everything was responding the way it should, so I lifted off! The heli was super stable and needed very little input to keep in position. I just hovered, looking for wagging of the tail or swash plate, and getting a feel for the controls.

For the second battery I increased the flight time by one minute. I also tried some collective climbs. The response felt slow compared to my smaller 450 heli. I think I'll reprogram the speedo and redo my throttle curves for next time. I may also get the bigger 550 mm blades.

Ready for first flight!

Completed the setup tonight! My 550 is ready for its first flight! The last step will be to set the gains for all the gyros, which I have to do by test flying. I also need some heavier batteries to set the CG correctly without needing to hang it so far off the tray in the nose.

All wired up!

Finally done routing all the servo and receiver leads. Now comes the hard part. Completing the mechanical setup of the head and tail, then programming the radio, gyro, and speed control :-/

Back together!

Closed the frame back up and put the battery on to see how it mounts and the wires will route.

Motor and Speedo Are In!

Had to take a side of the frame off, but it's in :-/

A little closer!

Finally got the servos and main gear in! Also the tail boom is now attached to the frame. Before it was just mocked into place.  Next I need to figure out how to route the wires for the speedo, motor, and battery before mounting them in the frame.