RE: Eclipse 7 and GY401
Ace I've set up a buncha helicopters, from no gyro to avcs. Everyone I set up, once you get the tail stable in rate mode you can fly it around without the tail kicking around w/o revo mix. You probably can't punch or chop the throttle but I dont try it.
The literature that I have read indicates that transmitter mixes are more important with gas helis vs. glow. I would assume it has more to do with size and weight rather than fuel.
After that set it to HH mode and forget it. You dont have to worry about heading hold mode failing in flight. Either the gyro or the servo is going to go or its not. In either case it will be over before you have time to pucker your butt cheeks.
That might depend on elevation when the failure occurs. If the failure occurred at 100 ft for instance, I would have to flick two switches at most, one to turn on copilot and maybe one more to commence normal flight mode which can turn off HH. And then hope for the best because it is sure to spiral to the ground. I have to say that I have never experienced a servo failure (knock on wood) and I use that cheap Hitec brand exclusively. The failure is most likely to come from the gyro because of some outside influence like vibration or rf interference or an actual system failure. Because the gyro is outside the transmitter / receiver interface, failsafe can not be call upon for rf interference. So my copilot will not save me automatically. I have to have enough wits to turn it on and deactivate the gyro.
Throttle to rudder mixing or REVO is all the same thing. An attempt at mechanical or electronic mixing to automatically ofset torque by giving more or less tail rotor pitch when the power setting is changed.
Ah, you got it backwards. It’s rudder to throttle mixing and it is not the same thing as REVO. R>T mixing is used to compensate for the loss of power (not torque) from the main rotor when the tail consumes power in a pirouette, specifically in a hover.
As to your sim dilema, if you have wind turned on, a rotor system is more efficent with wind blowing over it then not. If you catch a gust or turn into the wind the heli will gain lift and go up, if you turn down wind, or compensate for a gust then the wind slows down or stops, the heli wants to drop until you get the power back on.
Hey, this could be another reason for oscillations in elevations while hovering if the gyro is set in HH and there are changes in wind currants. The transmitter is divorced from the gyro control when it compensates for wind gust. So even though you may have R>T mixing to compensate for power loss at the main rotor it is not in affect because the stick doesn’t moved. That would mean that if the gyro was fighting a cross wind while you were hovering and the wind all of a sudden slowed down, power would decrease at the tail and instantly increase at the main rotor causing the heli to puff up. Now think about the opposite affect (scary huh?). What is more interesting is that this scenario is the opposite affect of the increase in lift concept with an increase of wind velocity on the main rotor blades. I wonder which one wins. My bet is on the loss of power because of the tail rotor.
Now those that fly bear back (no gyro) will not experience this behavior because the tail will just weather vain and not rob any power from the main rotor system. My conclusion to all this is that cranking that gyro gain up to get a rock solid tail doesn’t come without some negative effects when you are trying to land. And maybe it is not a bad idea to switch to rate mode when you enter your landing sequence. It wouldn’t eliminate the effect but it should dampen it some.
Something to think about…
Ace