Jim,

Head speed:

Your write up and description is execellent.

Imho, it's all relative to your flying style. Some like high head speeds others don't. Scalers will run a little lower head speed for effect, 3d guys love the high head speed, because of cyclic and rudder control. Keep that in mind, higher head speeds will give you much more tail authority, than lower head speeds. A rule of thumb would be to run 80 to 85% at mid stick, in idle up mode. The brushless motors are design to be most efficient at 80%, along with the ESC working in tandem.. Running lower head speed and higher pitch, will put strain on the motor and ESC and will have a tendency to run hotter. Same with running at 100%, motor going full bore and pulling every amp it can through the ESC, more heat. Actually, watching your videos, you should be flying in idle up all the time.. Use normal mode for the garage, on windy days.

In normal mode, I believe you would want it to be a linear curve. Example would be the gas peddle on your car, it's linear. A non linear gas peddle could be dangerous. Crusing at 30 MPH, then very light pressure on the peddle and all of a sudden your doing 100mph.. Not good.

As Jay(Mr.H) mentioned, he spent 2 days and 8 battery packs of trial and error before he found his sweet spot, again for his flying style. There's really no hard set rules, in settting the throttle or pitch curves. What you read in different articles is a great starting place, and are general guide lines. Just be flexible.. Another example, your swashplate doesn't HAVE TO BE LEVEL.

On some military and commercial helicopters, the main shaft isn't 90 degrees to the main frame, it's 89 degrees.

You've got the logic down very well, now you just have to apply it with a lot of trial and error until you find YOUR sweet spot.

Happy tweeking,

Dave

Da Vinci helicopter: