gj1803

Hi all,

just thought I would share my experience. I have been meaning to start learning/doing autos for some time now. I have put some time in on the sim and reckon I can land 60% of them. Whilst out at the field last night, my worst nightmare came true!! Up at about 40ft and the engine cut. Oh dear I thought, well words to that effect. At first I tried to fly the heli down, that wasnt working, so just put negative pitch on to get some momentum in the blades, waited till she was about 4ft off the deck then fed in the positive pitch.......it really works !!! sure, it wasnt the prettiest auto landing, but it was a landing and no damage

The moral of this story is, practice your autos before you are, like myself, forced to do one.

GJ

badazzbusa

My Feedback: (1)

Good deal, glad you got it down.

BarracudaHockey

My Feedback: (11)

If you're flying around, you need to learn how to auto.

Good job not panicking. Bad things happen when you run out of altitude and ideas at the same time

Big feet

Hi,
Nice save, prettyness is not marked in such circumstances. I learnt autos on the sim and used to do ten at a time and see how many I could land, when I started counting I was getting about 7/10, then it went up to 8, 9 and finally 10/10. Then I started hitting the throttle hold switch in worse positions, altitudes, etc, and this really helps you think how to get out of a bad position. The key is to think and not to panic. if you panic, you will more often than not crash. For a real tester try a low inverted hover and hit throttle hold. I still don't get 10/10 for these, but they are fun.

Well done, glad the helis ok.

archiebald

Good to hear.

I always say that if you only have to bend down once to pick up your heli, then its a good landing.

BTW, Phoenix sim has a random failure feature so you can have the engine stop at any time in a flight. Makes great practise for real life forced autos.

Big feet

Yup, G3.5 has that failure tool too, you can set random failures, sticky servo, failed servo, reversed channel (makes the take off interesting), engine cut, loss of radio range, etc. You can leave them all on and the computer will throw one at you, or you can select one to try, like engine failure. I love this feature and use it a fair bit. I'm not at all surprised Pheonix has it too, it really is important in my opinion for emergency practise.

The sims are getting so good that I think the next generation will tell you you can't fly cos its raining today.

Lins

Good job! Now, WHY DID THE ENGINE QUIT?!?!

gj1803

The engine quit because the glow plug gave up!!! The glow plug was/is a good one OS#8. The problem was that I had a fault on the remote glow wire and the plug was obviously only glowing very dimly. When I went for a hard climbout the engine bogged and cut out. When I got the heli back to the pits and started her to find out what the problem was, she would not run on tick over without the glow charge still plugged in. Further investigation and I found the glow lead was no longer still soldered to the adaptor that fits on to the end of the glow plug. All has been fixed now

GJ

Big feet

Hi,
Nice bit of detective work there. Now you have your problem fixed you can get your confidance in the engine back, and the ability to auto will make things feel even better.

Happy flying

gj1803

Hi BigFeet,

Yep as soon as the weather picks up I shall be out there, till then I will polish up on the G3

GJ

archiebald

Sorry but that only makes sense if you are relying on "in flight glow". Once the glow booster has been removed, the glow plug gets its "glow" from catalytic reaction with the methanol in the fuel. No electrical power is being used.

It may well have been a faulty plug, but can have nothing to do with the booster remote wire.

cameltoe

go to raptor technique. I leartnt autos that way he teaches and I was doing them as high as i wanted an in any atttitude by the second day.