I understand the 1 foot box for the lesson in Radds. but unfortunately for me the only place I have to practice indoors is in my kitchen which shall we say is pretty cramped. the only real spot to practice is only about 4ft wide but about 10ft long. is this going to cause problems??? I'll start building up headspeed, keeping the tail where it belongs and at a certain point the heli will start drifting left, with nothing I do being able to stop it. The heli doesn't react much to aleron inputs. Is it the confined space or me????

I have the exact same problem: a very tight space and the helicopter starts to drift. I decided that I'll have to take my chances and see what happens in an open space before going to the entire set of lessons. Unfortunately, I've only the weekends to work on this. Please, keep us up to date on how it goes.
Regards,

Are you flying a coax or CP? If you are flying a CP I would recommend that you move your servo rods in a couple of holes on the servo arms. Go to www.cpbladecprepair.com for info on this etc. Just be sure to make a note of any changes that you make so that you can "go back" if needed.
Four feet is a pretty tight space for any heli and you may be having problems with blade wash or "ground effects" due to the limited space. Helicopters tend to get "sucked" into walls and the like when you get too close. I've been learning how to hover a CP in a 10'x15' space and it hasn't been easy.
I have now learned to take it up to 1.5 to 2 ft. so as to get out of ground effects. Also, it seems that most helicopters tend to drift to the left and mine is no exception. I have reduced this problem with some minor setup adjustments and by lifting the heli off at a faster rate. I think that lifting off at too slow of a rate was causing me lots of control problems. Good luck and good flying.

FYY, mine is a Blade CP Pro.

The issue could be one of two things...

1) Heli is not completely balanced and trimmed

2) the ground effect from a small space.


I had the same problem when I first learned to fly my CP Pro a few months ago. The heli was almost impossible to control. My first issue is I assumed the Heli was RTF out of the box. This is not the case. I found out how to properly balance the heli after reading www.bladecprepair.com. Which made it much easier to control. However, it was still very difficult to control and very unstable. I was following Radd's school in the entry way to my house a (5' x 5' room).

After realizing it was the ground effect making the heli very difficult to control, I continued my over practice in a single car garage. It wasn't until I could hover a full pack and moved outside to practice forward flight that I realized there was still a lot of prop wash and ground effect making it difficult to hover.

I found it much easier to fly the heli outside and at higher altitude. Less ground effect and more room to recover.


just sharing some of my experiences...

here's a link to a vid of some of my past weekend flights.

http://www.rcuvideos.com/view_video....190e2d8c029fa9

Enjoyed your video, your CPP seems like a rock compared to where I am with my CP. I was wondering if you ever used training gear and what the effect was, if any. It looks as though my gear is having a very unstable effect on the CP but I'm scared to death to take them off since I usually land more like an airplane than a heli !! Also were you using the stock rate gyro when you made the video or were you flying with a HH ?? The rate gyro on my CP doesn't seem to do a very good job. In retrospect I think I should have bought the CPP, if for no other reason that to have something that can easily accomodate a plug and play HH gyro.

I too work in an 8 x 8 foot area and have learned how to fly my CPP from scratch using training gear. Working in such as small area as taught me great control but it has taken quite a while to learn to fly. I can do tail in, left side in and right side in hovering 1 to 2 feet off the ground. If I go any higher I chance having the heli slip into some furniture during the decent and smash up.

One thing I learned early on when I had to repair the bird after a blade strike was too ensure that the swash plate was perfectly level which causes the bird to hover very well. The other big thing is spending the time setting up the proportional and gain settings perfectly to hold the tail. Sometimes this takes an entire battery.

These two things make all the difference in the world for confined indoor flying. The best guide for setup is this thread: [link]http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_3131294/anchors_3131294/mpage_1/key_/anchor/tm.htm#3131294[/link]

Thanks for the link to the setup information. I will go thru the whole thing and check the alignments. There has to be something out of whack..it is way too unstable to do much with. Even the gyro gain and rotation adjustments seem to change with every flight. My CX2 is so stable, by contrast, that I can lift it off, set the transmitter down and walk away..and it will hang in the same spot until the battery runs down. Now I don't expect that kind of stability from the CP, but total random behavior is what I have now.

cberster,

that video was with the stock CP Pro. no upgrades, no changes.... except for a complete balance and check folllowing www.bladcprepair.com guidelines. I would say 80% of flying the CP/Pro is set up.

Yes, I started with landing gear following Radd's. Once you feel confident hovering, and more importantly landing the hover remove the landing as soon as possible. there is a significant change in flying behavior. I've been flying the CP since Jan, so it's taken me about a month to get where I am now, and many $ in repairs.

I have both a CP and CP Pro still in stock form. I also have a modified CP Pro (with HH gyro, mH CNC head, CF main blades). The HH Gyro makes a huge difference in flight stability, but I would learn to hover before adding the gyro. At $80, that's a big chunk of change (given the cost of the CP) to be lost in the event of a severe crash.

In regards to the CP vs the CPP, the CP is much easier to learn on. However, as you mentioned not easily upgradeable. With the 8t pinion and NiMh battery the CP has much slower head speed, therefore a noob pilot is less likely to over correct.

I started with the CP Pro, but after several costly crashes invested in a CP, then went back to the Pro. I still enjoy flying both helis. And will start with the CP when moving on to Head in flying.

Just keep practicing, and BEFORE every flight follow a PRE-FLIGHT CHECKLIST.

Good luck with the flying!

very clear video and nice too.

Thanks for the info and the encouragement ..I have been lacking on the setup end of things. Good point concerning relative head speeds of the CP vs CPP. I do quite well on a sim so I think I'll do the complete balance and setup, and then go back to Radds School to start fresh. Thanks for answering a lot of noob CP concerns...

Wow... I go away for a few days and get all of this. damn e-mail notification didn't seem to work. ah well.. thanks for all of the advice. I have since chosen to not to practice in the kitchen since I have a friend with a garage and a local RC track that also has an indoor flying area... so I'm going to resume my practicing in those places.