Campgems

Two weeks back, my trainer lost an argument with a rail fence. I just built a new stick type fuselage using the trainers tail feathers and wing. I made it about 5" longer than the trainer and turned it into a tail dragger. As my Quickee 500 will do a donut as soon as you start to throtle up for take off, and as a local hobby shop was going out of business and having a 50% off sale and they had a gyro, I decided to put one on the rudder of the rebuild. I did some runway runs without a wing Wed and flew it for the first time today. The Gyro really staightens out the takeoff roll. What I think I'm finding though is that I'm fighting it on turns as I usually use just ailerons and elevator for turns. It might force me to learn cordinated turns with rudder and aileron.

Anyone have experience with the gyro on the rudder and did they have a change in handeling after installing it?? Any advise??

Don

beepee

Don,

I have on one of my birds and it does straighten out the ground handling. I fortunately have the ability to shut it off in flight, because it messes up handling in the air. For pattern work, it is not a problem, and learning coodinated flight is not the worst thing that could happen to you.

Have fun!

Bedford

Campgems

Thanks for the feed back Bedford

I was out to the field today and the club prez was there when we were talking about the gyro. He kind of went nuts, "no, no you don't want that, so and so had one and we couldn't turn the plane around and get it back to the field," Well, I know I can get the plane back, I've done it 2 for 2 now so I don't think it's anywhere the problem he was makeing it out to be. I think you are right about coordinated turns. Now if the Santa Anna winds will just slack off. We are on the out skirts of where they have been blowing the hardest and yesterday, we had dead calm but today it was blowing to hard to fly. The Prez took a guy up on the buddy box and I didn't think he was ever going to get the plane back on the runway. at about 2 ft off the runway, a gust hit it head on and it jumped up about 15 ft and then almost stalled. Great save by the prez. The roll out was about two ft when he finally got it down. He could have used gyros on all surfaces for that landing.

I think I might just cut the gain back a bit and see if that isn't a good compromise. I hate to loose the ground handeling improvement so I might just go for a compromise. Thinking back to yesterday, I think most of my problems were when I got into the turblance comming off the hills. Some times when you poke your head above, you find some really strong wind. The plane tends to weathervane and that may have been what I was seeing along with the gyro trying to compensate.

Thanks again.

Don

dasintex

My Feedback: (10)

What Gyro do you have; if you can turn it off once your in the air would be great; I have two planes with Gyros on the Rudders as well; they work great; mine have the ability to be turned off once in flight; turning the gain down may help, but then you would lose some of the Gyro's use on ground handling.

Rcpilot

My Feedback: (78)

Gyro? Airplane? Your cheating man!!

Gryos are for egg beaters (helis).

Learn to fly your taildragger without it. It's not that hard to learn to use that left stick. Roll the throttle forward and ease some right rudder into it in order to stear the plane. It's the same thing as when you had a trainer and it was on tricycle gear. You steared it with the rudder then didn't you? Why is it so difficult to stear it now that it's a taildragger?

Stop cheating and learn to handle the plane on the ground. If you don't have time to learn it right now--when will you ever have the time to learn to do it correctly. It's just going to make a bad pilot out of you. Dump it and do it right--with your fingers. [8D]

I'm not yelling at you or trying to put you down. Just want to make a strong point for learning to handle the plane by yourself and not rely on the gyro. You'll be a better pilot in the end if you get rid of that gyro.

Campgems

Humm Rcpilet, guess I shouldn't use channel mixing, end points, expodential, dual rates, etc either.

Don

Campgems

Dasintex, it a little cirus PG-03. Same as the GWS and others. Nothing fancy, just a gain pot. This has been an experment, and I like the results so far. I've got an orginal Quickee 500 that is all but impossible to get headed down the center of the runway, but it flys great in the air. My instructor flew it a couple weeks back, and he did three donuts before he had covered 20 ft of runway. And he prides himself on straight down the white line takeoffs. That one is really begging for a Gyro. Our field gets some really eratic winds and a lot of them are cross winds. Sunday, there was a guy flying a big Yak and the wind sock was hanging limp, but comming in for a landing, he had it crabbed about30 degrees to the runway. It is not uncommon to start a landing approach and suddenly have the wind change from a head wind to a tail wind. Go around and approach from the end and have it change back. Strong gusty cross winds are also a problem, I've had them flip my trainer on it's back before it got five feet beyoned the ready line. Just something we live with. If the Gyro keeps me from crashing on takeoff or landing, so much the better.

I'm going to have to look into one that you can adjust the gain while in flight. I wanted to try a cheap one first though just to see if it had potential, and it does.

Don

Villa

Campgems play it cool. You can do anything you want.

A fellow in our club crashes a lot. He has totaled many planes. As an interested party I naturally wonder why? I would like to help him. I have taught many people to fly R/C. Well, I found out that he does a snap roll with one of his planes using a computer radio he has programed. He hit s a switch and the plane does a snap roll. I don't have a computer radio yet. Maybe I have this wrong and what I described is not possible. I believe his problem in crashing so often is that he loses orientation. Having done that at least 100 times I know what that is. I do snap rolls the old fashion way. Rudder, elevator and sometimes aileron. Plus practice, practice, practice. I do them to the left and to the right. I sometimes let the plane spin many times so I can get used to the fear and learn to deal with it. Some planes are hard to steer on the ground. Usually there is something you can do to make it easier using the throttle, elevator and rudder. I enjoy learning to tame the beast, as it were. Ever fly a Flying Lawn-mower? I fly mine every weekend. It is a ball. It track true and I am always amazed. Even in high, erratic winds. Read the next to the last comment at

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_4379145/tm.htm

audiogod

My Feedback: (6)

I would have to agree with Rcpilet. He makes good points about learning the right way from the beginning. The saying, “you can’t teach old dogs new tricks” may not fit exactly, but its real close. Trust me, from experience, once you get used to relying or a crutch, it is MUCH harder to re-teach yourself to do it right with out the gyro.

End point and Dual rates are not “cheating” they have nothing to do with the proper or improper way to fly or learn to fly. In fact they are even recommended in most instruction manuals.

Channel mixing and exponential, I’ll give ya those ones. One can fly without them, and they do assist is much like a gyro in taking some of the thinking out of controlling the plane.

Campgems

Well, I took the gyro out and got two days of flying in without it. The first three attempts at take off resulted in running off the runway and dropping into goppher holes, killing the engine. That was last Friday. Monday, I got in three flights and landings with little trouble, other than landing to hard once and breaking off the landing gear screws, again. Wed got off to a similar start, on the second landing attempt, I balloned up and bounced hard enough to break off the screws again. For some reason, I thought that I had used 10-24 and when the hardware store replacement screws wouldn't screw in, I dicovered that I had used 8-32's. Project for tonight I though. Replace the little screws with a propper size. The next flight, good take off and I was up high and away giving another pilot clean access to the runway, something went really bad. My instructor thinks it was a bad case of dumb thumbs, but neither of us could pull it out of the dive it went into. I don't know how badly dammaged it is, after two days of looking, we havent found it yet.

Would the Gyro have smoothed things out at the beginning and prevented the loss? Probably not. Would a plane locator have helped me find the plane? no doubt, but recovering it is going to be a whole nother topic if and when it is found. It is down in a really deep creek bed between the vineyards behind our field and the mountain behind them. It is overgrown with posion oak and brush, in addition to the trees. Getting into the gulley from the field side would require scalling a deer fence, and then climbing down a very steep bank covered in posion oak. Getting in from the other side means hiking through the creek and about a 3/4 mile hike past that. Not knowing where to go into the bush makes it all kind of futile. Back to the building board.

Don

feep

Hey guys they don't pass out calculators to 1st graders to help them learn how to add and subtract do they? But they do allow college students to use them because it's assumed they know how to add and subtract. Gyros and mixing and all those fancy things you do with your transmitters have a place but you should really learn how to fly before you start messing with that stuff. You know, even before any of us could talk, we all knew enough to stand up before we tried to walk. And walk before we ran. What happened? Did you forget?
There' s a video of a guy crashing a corsair and he can barely get the plane off the ground because he doesn't know what the flappy thing behind the fin is for. DUH

Campgems

Feep, if you rewound back to say 1965 or so, would you be saying that you had to learn to fly a rubber powered escapment on a CW transmitter before going to the new fangled Kraft Proportional radios?

I owned a jewelry store in the 90's. I had a young lady come in and want me to replace the battery in her watch. I popped the back off and found springs and gears and such. No battery. I wound the watch for her, set the time and gave it to her and told her that it did use batteries, but just needed to be rewound. She asked how often she had to do that and I told her everyday. She was flabergasted. She had never heard of such a thing. You put a watch on and wore it. It kept time until the battery died and then you got a new battery. Winding a watch was not something she wanted to deal with. I was susprised because "everyone" knew about winding watches. Then I realized, even though she was in her 20's she had never seen a wind up watch. Times sure changed.

Isn't the "Gyros and mixing and all those fancy things you do with your transmitters", like the battery powered watch of today compaired to the wind up watches I grew up with, or the first proportional radios compaired to the CW transmitters and receivers with rubber band driven escapements?

Just some food for thought.

Don

feep

I'm sorry Don, I don't think that's the same analogy. I would say the battery is for convienienc but if she grew up back when I did ( back when you wore a sun dial on your wrist ) she may have been aware that some watches needed to be wound and tried it. A better analogy would be hicking or sailing. If you go out on the ocean bring a GPS, I would, but make sure you have a little knowlege of navigation in case it fails or falls in the water. THit's oll Eye hive two say about it. Know wwere is that spell cheek divis!!

RCVFR

My Feedback: (7)

Gyros and such serve a usefull purpose if it can help someone fly who is not able to fly without them. Not every one needs them, but if there is a need, why not? Go for it.