A beginners journey to successfully flying a Blade 450 3D.

[Andrew Cummings 2]

A beginners journey to successfully flying a Blade 450 3D.

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Hi,

I thought I'd share my route to learning how to fly a heli. Obviously I'm still learning but I'm now confident enough to fly my Blade 450 in figure of eights around the park. More importantly without any crashes so far.

I'm a moderate plane flyer but out of practice as I took a break for a couple of years.

My interest in Helicopters was ignited when a friend showed me his contra rotating indoor heli. I popped back to RC Groups and had a look at the recommendations of what to buy.

So I bought a MSRX which is a micro Fixed Pitch heli. I was blown away by how it flew. Compared to my friends heli it was in a different world.

If you have a the room 3 metres by 3 metres this is a great learning tool. I spent mornings learning to hover in all orientations. This took about a week of 30 to 40 mins a day. It did get a bit frustrating, at first, the way it just shot of left at take off. Slowly I was getting off the sofa less to reposition the MSRX after hitting something.

I was going to buy another MSRX and then discovered the NANO which is a Collective Pitch heli. I also purchased a DX6i radio. With this radio the NANO can be tamed down to fly very docile. But it was a learning experience again, It was back to square one hovering in all orientations. I recommend the Nano so highly to the beginner as it is virtually indestructible if you're not completely stupid. The Nano taught me about Throttle Hold and Idle Up.

To help my progression of flying a 450 sized heli I purchased Pheonix flight sim. This is a great tool, I know there are others sims out there which are probably as good. I like this one as you use the radio you fly with which helps with familiarisation.

I bought a Blade 450 when I saw them for £136. Practised hovering on a tennis court for 4 batteries and then took it out onto the playing field. I still get nervous as hell but I have progressed to flying circuits, seeing it fly out away from you can be a little scary but with the experience of the sims and nano I have the confidence to bring it back and land fine.

I love all of my helicopters but you could probably miss out the MSRX and get a Nano with DX6i radio and tone it down. The great thing about these helis is the amount of stick time you can get. And that helps.

I highly recommend this website for info. It's very informative without all of the differing opinions that can sometimes bog you down.

**LINK**

[Eifion Herbert]

And interesting read Andrew, I've just ordered myself a Blade 450. I used to fly a Raptor 30 back in the day, then took a several year hiatus from RC just after buying my house when mortgage and other commitments meant I didn't have the time or money for it. Then a few years ago with a bit more time and money to spare I got back into it, doing fixed wing this time, but last birthday was bought a Nano CPX, and I can now hover that through a battery fairly easily, but don't have the indoor space to start transitioning into forward flight properly. The Nano reminded me how much fun a collective pitch single rotor is, so gone for the Blade to have something a little larger to fly outside.

Not interested in 3D flying, just want to make scale-like sweeping co-ordinated turns.

[Eifion Herbert]

My Blade 450 arrived today, and has "flown". Quote marks are there as the flight was very very short, just a few mm off the deck and back down. But that counts in my book so I'm claiming it as a succesful maiden.

A few things I have learned while spooling up the Blade in my back garden:

Any skills I had developed flying the Raptor have long gone.

An outdoor-capable singe rotor colective pitch machine is a scary thing.

I need some training undercarriage before I fire it up again.

[SkippyUK]

Well done Andrew, I'll try to use you as a role model when I venture out with my T-Rex again.

Eifion, I've been playing with a T-Rex 450 size heli with training u'cart on for 3 years and never taken it off yet so there's no shame there..

I get a lot of pleasure when it lands still the right way up but give me a fixed wing for enjoyable flying without requiring my heart to be in my mouth

Skippy

[Eifion Herbert]

That's kinda why I sold the Raptor those years ago, I wasn't getting up to the flying field often enough to get enough practice in at the helicopter to progress beyond the "barely controlled panic" stage. These days I seem to have more time for flying so thought I'd give the whirlybirds another go.

[john melia 1]

i've got a trex 600 nitro flybarless, and i can't put training gear on , as the traininging gear vibrates and plays havoc with the gyro , the last time i had training gear on , the beastx went crazy and the heli just sucked itself into the ground , i was lucky it only snapped the skids ,and stripped the tork gears .

[SkippyUK]

John, that seems a hell of a beast to be training on... I admire your courage to do it and experienced heli guys I've known say the bigger they are the easier they are to fly and are very stable but if you do make a mistake, it costs more as there's far more energy involved.

Skippy

[john melia 1]

yeah skippy its all upgraded as well , the lad i bought it off upgraded everything , even the exhaust , the skids are just a spare set i had lying around , hence the horrible yellow i do take this out but only under the watchful eye of lee , and i can only hover it tail in at the minute , i also have a brushless mcpx , and of the two the trex is easiest to fly , or should i say hover

i suppose the helis are the reason i didnt find flying the planes to be too difficult once i had overcome the confidence thing , its the same with the black horse sedona trainer i have , its quite big 71 inch span , but it basically flies itself , lovely model the sedona , i'm going to put a camera on eventually.

[Eifion Herbert]

So I got some training undercariage and took the Blade up to the flying field this evening. Nobody else there so I could stand in the middle of the runway and try some hovering.

And she works really well. Coped fine with what I thought was quite a bit of wind, pretty much similar to how I remember my Raptor 30, even though that would have been a lot bigger and heavier. I did notice the tail wagged a lot at certain head speeds while spooling up. I wonder if this was a result of the training gear maybe digging in a bit, as she tries to drift left, and maybe the springiness of the gear causing a turning movement that the gyro compensates for but then springs back, so the compensation was too much etc? I'm reluctant to reduce the gyro sensitivity, it's set according to the book at the moment and is rock solid once she's in the air, no waggling but no drifting either.

And talking of setting things by the book, the Blade 450 manual has low rates on position "0" (switches up) and high rates on position "1" (switches down) on the DX6i. Is there a convention? I've had all my other models with low rates on 1 and high on 0, as on my older Futaba gear low rates were switchs "in" or towards you, with high rates "out" or away from you.

I found the Blade 450 settings odd, as all my other models, including the Nano CPX, also by Blade and set up according to the book it came with, has low on 1 and high on 0.

But anyway, after hovering through one battery on the Blade I took my Wot 4 foam-e up ( and did this by the way **LINK**) and boy after flying a copter the first thing that really strikes you is how little you have to do to keep something like a Wot 4 in the air!

[David Joyce 5]

Andrew could you send me the settings you used for your Nano cpx please?

[Ben M]

My journey is similar to Andrew's. Since I was a child I liked anything that could fly. When teenager I wanted to buy a helicopter but my budget didn't allow me so I forgot about it.

Last Christmas I saw a toy grade coaxial 3 channel helicopter in a shopping centre and I decided to give it a try.

After flying my toy every day for several weeks I started to get interested in understanding how it worked. My research brought me to the RC helicopters world. And here I am a few months later flying my ALIGN 450L Dominator. How was it?

Internet is wonderful source of information. Now a days saying “I don’t know how to do it” is just an excuse. Internet has the answer. If you do not find it directly you can find books and other resources where to get it.

After studying videos about the basics I decided to assemble and fly my own CCPM (Cyclic/Collective Pitch Mixing) helicopter. Before buying any helicopter I had to see which one should be best for me so I keep digging on Internet and reading all I could.

Before making any decision I considered all possibilities:

• Size
• Electric vs IC (Internal combustion)
• Brand
• Flybar vs Flybarless
• Belt driven vs shaft ('torque tube' driven (for tail rotor)
• Kind of flights I am interested in
• Budget

I also got information regarding how to learn to fly and where to do it. This was how I found this forum. I was researching about places nearby where I could fly the heli. I didn’t want to spend money to find out later that I could not fly it nearby.

With my research quite developed and an initial budget ready I started my shopping. What an exciting moment. My first shopping was the radio (Spektrum DM8) and the simulator (Phoenix V4) followed later on by a small Blade Nano mCPx helicopter for real world training (this was a very good advice I got from this forum). By then I didn’t know yet what helicopter I was going to buy although I knew that these three items were going to be useful to learn regardless the heli I chose later.

Playing with the little Blade Nano was very interesting. I realized how difficult was flying it but also how painful was charging the batteries one by one. I also saw the importance of understanding the radio settings. With the right radio settings the helicopter is much easier to fly! During this period I decided to get enough batteries to be able to fly for a while and to get the right equipment to charge them in a reasonable time. I didn’t want to spend hours to charge the batteries after each flying day. The project budget was increasing accordingly too.

After some time the moment of buying the heli arrived. Other exciting moment. Few days later I had the heli (kit), the power supply and many of the items I needed. The party was starting. What a nice sensation. My first CCPM heli!! Amazing

It took me several weeks to assemble the whole heli (the time I could spend was limited). Many things to consider: how to connect the electronics, where to locate the receiver with its satellite, how to setup the main rotor head and the flybarless system. Y found the wiring the most difficult thing because the helis’ manual explained how to connect the ALIGN 3D flybarless system but I had got the MicroBeastX one, which is different. This was the only thing I didn’t get much information from Internet so I decided to study carefully each component and do my best guess. I was lucky and I connected everything right.

Once assembled and “set it up” I tried to spool it up to track the blades. I had so much vibrations!! And I didn’t know what was wrong. It was time to research. I found a lot of information about the subject. I didn’t understand everything so I started for what it seemed to be “easier”: the blade balance. I got a precision scale and after several tries and days I got the blades balanced. New tests confirmed the balance was the reason of the vibrations.

The big day arrived. I was going to fly my heli for the first time! I already had got my BMFA membership card so I had all what I needed. I also had visit several flying fields to see where I could go to learn and practice. Everything was ready but me (I was so excited and nervous).

(MORE IN NEXT POST)

[Ben M]

(CONTINUING PREVIOUS POST)

That Sunday was very windy. Certainly not the best day for a first fly (for both the heli and the pilot). A reasonable person would have delayed the test but I was too excited and I wanted to take the risk. I found the heli more stable than those on the simulator. It was amazing! Although not all was good. It was having quite a lot of wagging. Also the ESC was getting too hot and the settings I had chosen for the radio needed some changes. And even with all that the heli has flying (hovering) so nicely! Amazing!!

I had to pay somehow the rashness and the wind was in charge of it. Not only it was windy but also the wind was not constant. In addition I was trying to keep the helicopter as near to the ground as possible and the wind was making the heli move up and down so much. The heli was also too tamed down so that I was not able to counteract those fast movements up and down easily. Finally, one of those movements was strong enough to make the helicopter touch the ground (a bit strong) for a second and since then it started to make a noise. I landed it and checked very carefully but I didn’t find anything so I kept flying (hover) “normally”. When I arrived home I disassembled it to see where the noise came from and I found the Torque Tube drive gear with some teeth broken. The issue was around £10, fair enough. It could be worse. The good news was that all my effort had given me the ability of repairing the heli.

The following flying days were much better. After the appropriate study regarding wagging I set the tail gain properly and the wagging disappeared (even with wind). I have also reduced the taming so that I have more control over the heli movements. I have increased the main rotor speed to try to low down the ESC temperature and it seems it is working (now it seems it gets less hot) although I am not completely happy about it. I have read that flybarless system doesn’t like low main rotor speed and the motors draw more current when rotating slower which in turn make the ESC get hotter. I am working with this.

And this is my journey until now. I feel quite happy about my progress. Now my main challenge is learning to fly.

[john stones 1 - Moderator]

Good stuff Ben

An enjoyable read, seems like your doing well and enjoying it first time you set off into circuits makes the heart go a bit quicker eh ? Been a while since I flew an heli, but I gather the flybarless ones are very good.

John