vallon

Ok I for the first time today, got my heli in the air without my training gear. Now I am still hover training, but it keeps coming appart. I am geting new training gear from Heliproz. It is the one with the 5 white balls on the ends. The for and the fith one goes under the tail. I have the really cheap ones that have red balls and fiberglass rods with the wooden block that holds them together and it wont stay together worth a lick. I contantly have to shut the copter off and take the training device off and put it back together and put it back on then get the copter started again. That gets so tiring that once it comes off, I am done for the day. So instead I felt confident enough to just try it with out the gear and up the copter went to about 5 feet. It flew smooth at 5 feet in the air. Thankfully I sent it down on all fours, but just a little rough. Need to replace the skids. The skids aren't really bad, but they are cracked. Still want to replace them because the cracked side is loose. It is a lot easier hovering at a higher hight I am finding out because the draft is not as bad. Anyone have any better experiences with better training gear. Can anyone recomend anything better that wont fall appart? I also notice a lot of my fear of getting that thing off the ground is going away.

pilot77

i had one of the rods come out of the block whilst i was learning how to hover .needless to say when it landed it tipped over and scrapped the blade. with no real damage. i epoxied the rods into the centre block so it never happendd again. keep practising and u won;t need it for long anyway u can pass it to a mate who is just learnin

vallon

Yeah I think I got some friends excited about these helis. I hope they get one so I can help them. I am excited about helping someone else get started. There is this guy at work who told me to show him how to fly and he will get one. When I learn how to fly this thing pretty good, I will move up to a 60 or jump to a 90 and then keep my 30 for others to practice on. I will still be careful how I let fly it because I still would not want it wrecked very bad. On the training gear, I probably better use something else. I kept using woodglue to glue the rods in the wood. That is the only thing that comes appart. Just like you were talking about how one leg comes off and the heli lands woppsided with the blades kinda touching the ground. That is what happends to me a lot. But the blades are fine. I have not had to replace blades yet, but I will. They are still getting nicked a bit.

bls74

Vallon, Word of advise.... don't buy a training gear....
Purchase two wooden dowles make a X out of em Black tape em together, place wiffle balls on the ends.. screw em on!
and rubberband them to your skids... this set up will cost you maybe 3.00 pending on where you buy the dowels and wiffle balls.
You will never have a problem again with training gear falling appart.
you will save a lot of money.
and last but not least as you get more confident in your hovering all you do is trim the dowels down after every three flights or so.... or when ever you feel ready.
This way you will slowly get ready for the day when there is no trimming left on the dowels and you will just take the trainer off and you will not notice a difference.
This is how I did it and I learned to hover without training gear really fast.
And beleive me the heli is allot smoother with out that extra weight and yes you might be right about the draft statement. When I say extra weight I mean not only extra weight but weight that is hard to manage each time you fly/ hover. Keep up the good work. Seems like you are really enjoying your heli adventure. and remember always try to learn.....read read read on these reptors. look up everything and anything possible. you will be amased how much you can learn to make everything so much easier.

AutoMike

When I started flying helis 10 yrs ago it was the thing to go and buy wooden dowel rods that fit those mini wiffle golf balls from wall mart( balls epoxied on the ends). Had 3 bucks in the whole mess and crossed them in an "X" under the heli and zip-tied them to the skids. We all learned that way and never saw any problems you've had.

AutoMike

LOL..i took longer to type than bls74

vallon

Wow, BLS you said it. I have learned a whole lot reading and looking up info on these Raptors or just helis in general. This stuff is so much fun. I worried about so much stuff about my heli like is it set up right and other things. Now after today, after taking the training gear off and lifting it up. Still being uncomfortable flying without the training gear, the heli was not shaking quite so much on the ground in its skids, and after getting up to about 3 to 4 feet in the air, it was smooth and pretty easy to move around. I shouldn't have done that but glad I did. It did mess up the skids, but at least it landed straight on the skids and not on its side. Still need to work on nose in and side in landings, but that comes after I get the hover down. I am progressing each time I get it out. So far the copter is not getting away from me like it used to, but still moving around quite a bit. I would say it still shifts around about 20 feet in all directions, then I have it in one place for a few seconds, then it starts going around again. I am also going to take you and Pipers advice about the dowell rods. I am going to look for those tomorrow. I think thats a great idea and for SOME reason never did that. A friend of mine from the hobby shop that I went to uses those but instead of balls, he used a hula hoop. I may go that route too. I better get my mind back in gear instead of buying the training devices. I forget I can make my own. Thanks guys!!!

Ross 3951

My Feedback: (2)

Hey Vallon,

I also made my own set of training gear. The dowel and whiffle ball method worked real good and were cheap. I used zip ties to keep them in place after they were centered and balanced. The zip ties were a bit of a pain. I'd have to cut and replace them every time I had to take the gear off for maintenance. They did hold well and I had a ton of them for free. In retrospect I'd go with elastic band.

One of the guys at my local hobby shop told me to just fly without them and start some side in hovering. After some sim practice I went for it and totally trashed my Venture. During rebuild, I found some pontoon floats on line. I think they look cool and they are like a smaller version of training gear.

It took about 5 months to really get the hang of it but I'm doing forward flight and I'm working on nose in.

I keep the floats on now just because I like how they look.

Keep up the good work. The feeling of accomplisment and fun as well as total fear gets better as you progress. [8D]

Rich

Ps...check my gallery photos!

vallon

Ross that is cool! I looked at your gallery. Where did you get the floaty things? Those will work out really good for me when I start doing nose in and side in. But that would be an option. How much are they too?

TuNeD PiPe

Another idea which also happens to work brilliantly is using a plastic hula-hoop like the ones you get in toy stores or sport stores.You then take two dowel rods and zip-tie them in a shape of an X to the hula-hoop and then use rubber bands or even zip-ties to attach the hula-hoop to the skids.This is the method I used and many others at our club have used it and simply it works perfectly.It's not heavy at all and provides a 360 deg. support.Most important of all it is also cheap.

`3D

My Feedback: (1)

the wooden dowels break on not so gracefull landings.......look at the hardware store for those round driveway reflectors with fiberglass dowels...they work GREAT!

Sabot

flying without the training gear isnt a no no vallon i learnt without them, ive only just stuck them on to learn nose-in
keep up the good work

Paris

vallon

This is all cool stuff guys. I think I will go for the dowell rods and the hula hoop thing. A friend of mine did that and now I am going to finally try it. I like how you guys said it was cheap. It I am sure is a lot cheaper than the training gear that I bought. It breaks up easily and falls appart all the time, but it cost me $14. What a rip!

motofabio

Isn't a hula hoop going to be way too big and heavy?

homeunt

My Feedback: (3)

Uh.. I have a suggestion which is what I did.
Take the training gear off, get about 5~8 feet long fishing line
and tie it to something heavy but that heli can't crash into. Fly your heli and as far as you keep the center stick and high
throttle it doesn't crash.
That's what I did for a while to get rid of the training gears.
Trust me you want the gears off ASAP they stick into snow, grass etc.

I had 10+ crash with trianing gear on because of the training gear
and then I had about 5 crashes without the training gear

matty_p80

Vallon! please ignore the last post!

the last thing you want to do is tie your heli to anything! it is very dangerous and a complete NO-NO !!!

Matty )<>}}}}}]@>