chopperdudes, thanks a ton! that was a very important piece of info you gave me about the sweet spot on the rate gyro gain. good to know before i test fly it today. i just finished hours of work, and knowing how the gain is going to work will save me from a ton of frustration.
p01rogue, i feel your frustration with tail experiments. you might already be familiar with the countless hours i've spent tweaking with at least 6 very different tail setups, including 3 brushless DD's, a brushless geared, gws DD, & stock. i really enjoyed the extra right yaw power of the brushless, but they're just too twitchy & laggy for 3D use. lately i've had such a fun time flying my simpler planks lately that i finally gave up on experiments & i am ready to just have fun flying my blade, at least for now.
update on the blade surgery: the building/wiring is done.
the wiring was a tiny bit more complicated than i thought, since i forgot i had to split the throttle signal to arm the 3n1 (been a while since i've done 3n1's
). the 3n1 arming process also required me to reprogram my throttle cut program so it only kills the main (no more full left rudder when i hit the kill switch). my blade looks like a x-mas tree when it's initializing now with all the flashing leds (g90-blue, phx10-red/grn, 3n1-red/grn).
after i got it all wired up & programmed, the bench test went well, with the tail reacting as it should at 100%HH gain & a starting point of ~25% gain on the 3n1. i noted that the tail's response was very hard; ie rotate the heli one way past the center point & the motor is full on, rotate just past the center in the other direction & the tail is off (digital like on/off action). given this, i'm predicting some wag on my first liftoff. the only other major thing i noticed is the battery balances the heli about 2" farther back than before. this was due to my relocating all the components up front. woohoo, no more battery sticking out the nose, & that's a plus for inertia (battery much closer to the rotor axis). only problem i have with it is the rx wires stick out of a cooling hole in the canopy, which i had to widen to aviod chaffing the insulation.
after the first "electrical" bench test, i strapped up the wires, flipped my blade grips, and installed some "old school" eflight sym woodies. the blade easily passed the second "RTF" bench test, so i'm ready to test fly it.
sorry so long, but that's just my style: overly thorough. i'll post pics & update with a flight report describing, to the best of my novice piloting abilities, how all these mods work together.
[edit: if it works as well as i think it will, i'll have to spend some of my free time writing a howto guide for stock pro owners. i'll do it in the name of preventing frustration, including why not to experiment with other tail setups.
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