Helitronix
Senior Heliman
Location: Marlborough, MA - USA
My Posts This: Topic Forum | I started with 3 degrees of DCP and made small adjustments from there.
The most important piece of advice I can give is that you perform small incremental adjustments following dynamic tests to balance out the forces acting upon the machine. If you have a test jig, this would make your life a lot easier. Otherwise, you'll need to make very short test hops and make adjustments as needed, and this will be a lot more tedious.
Specifically, you want to make sure that your front and rear pitch settings balance each other for a good lift off. This doesn't mean that they will have the same pitch as each other. In my case, they had to be different by about 2 degrees. I suggest starting with them equal, then making small adjustments as you do the test hops. As you adjust the front/rear pitch, you will probably end up inducing yaw in one direction or another. So, you have to stay on top of it and be prepared to make yaw corrections with the sticks. Take good notes and adjust the settings a bit at a time to get it balanced.
In some way, you need to adjust the yaw and the pitch at the same time so that the machine does not want to yaw, and it lifts off the way you like.
If you are using heading hold gyros, you might consider turning them to rate mode for initial setup so that they don't mask a setup error. The heading hold gyro mode can certainly compensate for an imbalance in the setup, which is something you need to be aware of if you are trying to achieve an optimal setup.
Also critical is your head speed. If the speed is too high, you'll get a lot more mechanical gain than if the speed is on the low side. My first take off attempt was a disaster because I miscalculated my gear ratio and ended up with a 1600 RPM head speed with my 2x1500mm discs. It was far too sensitive at this speed. I needed 1150 RPM for the right feel.
The setup process is quite cyclical. After adjusting one thing, you'll move to the next, and after that, you might have to revisit a parameter that you've already adjusted.
Best of luck.
Joel- |
