Zik

Hey there,

Could someone give me some tips on adjusting the "Proportional" and the "Gain" on the 4in1 controller of the honeybee CP2? Like what i should do when the heli makes a specific movement.

Because now i have something pretty weird. When i hover the heli up, it goes to the left, but the body leans to the right. Normally u can just fix the heli going to the left with the trim, but i allready did that. Thats why the body is leaning to the right, but it keeps going left. Im hovering inside my room, so no wind or something.

I hope someone can help me with some tips so i can finetune my honeybee.

Truglodite

what you noticed is completely normal for helis with tail rotors. they all naturally hover leaning to the right to counteract the force of the tail rotor pushing left. i suggest reading RADDs heli training. it will help you understand more of what's going on there.

my understanding is you have the cyclic trimmed all the way right and it still moves left when you're hovering above the ground. right? if so, you need to adjust your swashplate links (from the servo side). with motors unplugged and Tx trims and sticks centered, turn your heli on. now adjust the length of the 3 swash links so that 1) the swash is perpendicular to the shaft 2) the flybar is vertically centered in it's slot on the hub. once you're done you'll need to readjust the 2 long flybar links to get the correct pitch and tracking. when you have the pitch right the heli should liftoff slightly above mid stick. then you need to go through the usual trim/gain adjustments before you fly.

about gyro tuning:
first turn the gain all the way down (CCW). then adjust propo until you can hover with minimal tail correction (if heli rotates CW, turn propo slightly CCW). you must unplug the battery to adjust propo. once you're satisfied with the propo setting, turn the gain up as high as you can until you start to notice the tail "wagging" left & right, then turn it back until the wagging just disappears. gain can be adjusted with the heli plugged in, just be careful of glitches. more gain is better for beginners, but too much will make your tail wag.

btw, especially with a cp2, get in the habit of checking the tightness of the screws on the head, particularly the ones on the mixing arms. after a small crash, it took me hours of troubleshooting performance issues before i learned how sensitive the heli is to those screws being loose. do a quick check by holding the flybar still and twisting on the blade grips. if the hub or arms move alot, the pitch becomes sloppy, and you'll have issues. they come loose on me after about 40min of flight, so i check them every flight.

rpetot

I'm running a Blade CP, but they are basically the same helicopter.

The proportional adjustment is used to stop rotation of the nose by adding or removing power to the tain rotor.
If the nose is rotating right, then decrease the proportional. If the nose is rotating left, then increase it.

The gain (Gyro Gain) is used to adjust how "solid" you want the nose to stay.
If the nose rotates "freely" while hovering, then increase the gain. If you see the tail quickly wagging back and forth, then decrease it.
More gain equals less effort to fly the tail, and less equals more effort.

The way I went through the setup on my Blade CP was on the ground on a slick surface (e.g. the kitchen floor.
First, turn your gyro gain all the way down.
Start spinning up the helicopter and, while still on the ground, note which way the nose is rotating on its own.
Make the appropriate adjustments. You will go back and forth a few times until it feels like you are making mico adjustments, but eventually you will get it to where you can pick up a few inches off of the ground without the need to make any tail rotor input.

Once you get there, then adjust your gyro gain to your liking basically.
I turned mine up to about 3/4 of the way right off of the bat. I wanting it stable as possible without too much twitching.
I believe I may have turned it up even more than there once I started hovering a few feet in the air.

Now a quick question back to you.
When you say "goes left", are you talking about the entire helicopter, or are you talking about the nose rotating.
If it is the entire helicopter (as in an apparent cyclic input to the left), then that is a different animal and your proportional and gyro gain will do nothing for you to help.

Hopefully I at least explained that to you.

Good luck.

Zik

Wow this is alot of usefull information guys, thx alot. I will start to adjust now and tell you guys how it went. But i have 2 little questions.

1. While adjusting the propo, should i have my trim in the center?

2. My tail always wobble a bit when its on the ground and leaning on the training-landinggear a bit just before it wants to take off, even when gain is at its lowest. Do u mean i have to put gain higher untill it starts to wobble while iam in the air?


[edit] I removed my training landingsgear, to see if the wobble was gone while on the ground, and so it is. The wobbling was probally because of the landingsgear then. But i do notice something else now. Because now the nose is turning alot, and when the trainingsgear is on, it doesnt. It didnt move alot when i was like 1 feet in the air either. It moved a little little bit, but not as much as this.

Truglodite

1) yes, center the trim first.
2)depends. when we say wobble, we didn't mean vibration, we meant the tail moves left to right as if you were controlling it that way (purely left to right rudder movement). if it is a vabration the shaking will appears dependent on RPM. generally having your gain too high, you won't notice the wobble until you are airborn.

i always start making any adjustments (gyro, trim, setup, whatever) without training gear on, and on as smooth and flat a surface as i can find. i don't stick with any adjustment until i have it at least 2 feet high, since ground effect can mess with the adjustments.

also, with training gear on, the heli will appear to have less tail authority. so having the trainers on will make high gain wobble less obvious. this is why i adjust without them on; they make the heli less sensitive to my adjustments.

another pointer. if you take off your trainers, be very careful on the cyclic before takeoff, especially on floors with more friction. if the gear gets stuck (& it doesn't take much), it is easy to overdo the right cyclic since the heli won't slide to give you a clue what is needed. next thing you know, you approach full ground power and the heli suddenly wants to flip over to the right and chop up some ground. i found in my first few flights that i was overcorrecting right on takeoff. the heli would slide left, then when it got airborn, it would roll and move right. ideally you should liftoff fast enough so your heli won't slide too far left before liftoff. that way you're not overdoing right cyclic before liftoff to stop the slide. the slide will stop or slow upon liftoff if it's done right.

yeah i know, it's scary to adjust your heli without trainers on when you're learning, since you're going to be in ground effect most of the time. just make sure you're floor is smooth, watch the blades, and go easy on cyclic until you can get it into a hover.

[edit: make sure to center your trainers under the shaft if you can. also ensure proper balance once they are installed, otherwise your heli will behave wierd. also, do yourself a favor and get some flat bottom blades if you don't have them already. they make the cp2 way less squirrely.]

Zik

Thanks for all the info guys. I got my first pretty nice flies. I feel its setup alot better now, and the heli is far better flyable. I can finally fly some now. Normally i was too scared to make it take off more then 5 cm of the ground because the heli acts like its on acid and does weird things. But now i get longer flights every session. But sadly i broke my whole tail because my heli was in love with a tree and almost hugged it. So i made it go backwards and slowly turned down the throttle to make it land. But it was landing to quickly and it slammed my tail in halves, and some parts of my tailrotor are still somewhere out there. But nvm, thats part of the learning process. Trial and error. But thx again, it helped me alot.

Truglodite

no prob. congratulations on finding your heli's sweet spot. i remember my first good setup, it was like the heli was frozen in mid air compared to what happened before. it also motivated me to familiarize myself with every micrometer of my heli, since i learned precision means everything when it comes to heli's. i read it in some other thread. it went something like,

"you shouldn't have to fly your heli. your heli should want to fly itself."

edit: sorry about your crash. sometimes it takes time to learn what things will get you in a position where a crash is likely to follow. just remember to try and halt all horizontal motion before you kill the motor and send her in. it will minimize damage.