khimani_mohiki

i got my aero hawk about a week ago and so far ive broken the cyclic linkages and the swashplate, and the transmitter doesnt work properly. For somebody who has never flown anything before it seems like the most unsuitable thing to get. i can get the skids about an inch off the ground with the training gear on and even doing that it is very twitchy and vears off in all directions, i have managed to get it completly off the ground but then its just so hard to control it usually crashes into a wall or hits the ground. does anyone else have this problem, is there an inherant problem with the aero hawk, or is mine just a piece of crap?

mungo

mine is exactly the same ive done everything everybody suggests but it is still crap

VinceHerman

There are two aspects to starting out with these micro helis that need to be learned: How to set up and how to fly.
As you have probably figured out, setup is extremely important. Learning what changes you can make in the setup and what affects they will have is extremely important in how well the heli will fly. Learning to fly is a challenge as well, but doable on a properly setup heli.

If you read through the posts on this or any micro heli board, you will find dozens of posts titles "Brand X is a PoC" This is because any improperly set up heli or any heli with a mechanical problem will fly like a PoC.

So, let's fix that. Read posts here and find what advice has been given for problems similar to yours. Post a description of what is happening and what you have tried to do to correct it. There are very many people here who have faced exactly the same challenge that you are facing, and they really want to help you succeed. (Sharing the fun increases the fun I am having)

When you are only an inch off of the ground, every heli will be unstable. Inside of Ground Effect (IGE) you are flying through your own turbulance and it is very difficult to stay still. Once you get some basic control learned, punching up three feet or so, Out of Ground Effect (OGE) will remove much of that instability. It will still be twitchy, but not like it is IGE.

Radd's School of Rotary Flight is a good resource for any micro heli beginner.

Good luck. Let us know how you do.

dorme1

I know exactly what you're going through, I got a feda dragonfly and I've broken 3 tail rotor blades, a main blade and 2 sets of skids. The one thing that helped me out quite a bit when learning was to put the main blades inline withe the boom so the flybar paddles are off to the sides, with the nose of the copter facing away from you push the controls forward (NOT THE THROTTLE) and when it's all the way forward, level the left paddle, now push it all the way back and level the right paddle. It puts a little angle on your paddles, I've heard you shouldn't do this, but it makes for easier take-offs for me. just take your time with it, go slow...I'm a little embarassed to say this but it's taken me 3 weeks just to be able to somewhat hover...I'm getting there and so will you, it just takes time...

AERO-hawker

My aerohawk seems to be working great I have had tons of bad crashes and still have not broken a single piece. When I was first practicing I hit the main rotor blades and tail rotor blades on many different things and I was sure I had broken something but every time it was in one piece. It wobbles a tiny bit but I think that is because the blades are not quite balanced. Good luck flying

khimani_mohiki

yeah but even the quality of the mouldins is poor as well as the rubbish manual and cheap version of the pico-board. i thinking about maybe just getting a new airframe from a piccolo or something and then using the electrics from the aero-hawk.

turl

Im with AERO-Hawker on this one. Mine flies ok. I can manage 30 second hovers after about 6 sessions with it so it is possible.

Just pay extra attention to trimming & balancing correctly and lose the training rods & ping pong balls completely - trust me its easier without them!!

Persevere - it definitely hovers it just takes patience.



Good Luck

coltech

It sounds like you're trying to fly before you've mastered the controls. Before getting airborne you need to learn to control it on the ground. All of these helis are difficult to fly so changing models won't be of much use. You need lots of time and patience.
It can be done. Honest.
A flight sim is essential to learn. So is good instruction. Use the links from my posting "My favourite training sites" on this forum.
I agree the manuals that come with them are almost useless. But all the info you need is available on this forum or links from it.

Where are you learning to fly?
Indoors or out?
How much space have you got?

Keith Buckner

Coltech is right on the money. MOST posts about the AeroHawk I've read (including the Hobby Source XR-1) that I've seen (from guys who have flown before) say that it flys "right out of the box". The most important thing (besides learning how to fly, of course) is to trim and balance it. Without those two items correctly done, it will be near impossible to fly.

ihug007

I have had my Aerohawk for 2 days, flown it twice, and had no problems at all. I'm a total newbie to remote control toys so for me this was a big learning experience. What you need to do is spend about 2-3 days reading through a few hundred posts about micro heli's and how to set them up. I balanced my blades before i even tried to fly the thing, so when i did come to fly it, it spun up smoothly with no vibration at all. I still can't fly the bird properly (it was really windy outside and it's impossible to control these things in wind!) but it is not hard to set it up right if you're patient.

After reading so many posts, it seems that every micro heli, regardless of brand, needs to have alot of attention spent on it when setting it up.

Have fun!
Rob.

rødebaldakin

To the guys at the top.

I think you fall into the category of people who "hey! damns thats a cheap heli,, man flying a heli would be cool" and you think you are going to realize all those nice thoughts on screaming around with a heli and 100% kontroll. Becaus of the price you plung into it at the deep end, to furter compliment the bad experience you are headed for, these helis comes with scimpy manuals and you set about trying this thing with falce pretenses and less than optimal preparations. To bring it into perpective, any persone going at a larger more expencive heli would know and be told that he is about to embark on a pretty serious project, both a complicated building prosess and a steap learning curve in actually flying the heli, help from experienced personnes is almost a must, and still you have the dark cloud of hurting people, property and equipment hanging over your head. And you think you have good chanses flying this thing right out of the box??,, right after opening the box? hahaha!,, wel truth be told,, you actually can,,, well not right away. If thats what you expected and still demand you can throw the thing in the trash right away. Flying this is a project demanding some technical abilities, LOTS of patience and an understanding for physics and aerodybamics. Slowly you will see your efforts paying off, but this is never plugg and play, no heli is that.

randii

From all I have read and researched, Smartech's latest bird is a well-proven basic platform with the benefit of generational improvement. What the Skylark did, the Aerohawk now does better. [8D] The principal exception to this seems to be the crummy manual. Luckily, the 'web is only a few clicks away.

I'm certainly no expert -- my hours of stick time were on balsa plankers, and I just got my Aerohawk for Christmas of '03... but since then, I have immersed myself in hours of web-research. When I had a plan, I started practicing. I lacked the skills to fly this bird right out of the box (I think most everyone without a lot of stick time on a micro-heli is gonna have real problems hovering right out of the box!), so I followed the lesson plan from Radd's School of Rotary Flight: http://www.dream-models.com/h/ As a result, I'm ten batteries into this hobby and now I feel pretty confident scooting around on the floor, or staying in one place, or running simple patterns on the floor while turning (way harder than it sounds if you throttle up to where the skids are just touching and maintain control while turning). I was ready to punch it up a few feet for basic hover when I encountered my first problem with the Aerohawk: I fragged the mainshaft between the big gear and the rotor.

This is a cheap replacement part, and I have a couple headed my way from Raidentech. I'm tickled that this has been my only damage to date, and I'll attribute most of that to Radd's simple staged training steps. If I would have tried to hover it right out of the box, I am certain I'd have spent more than $5 in repair and less than 5 hours under power... which is where I'm at now. My best advice, from one novice to another, is to take a few steps back and start with the basics... Rushing will only cost you more money and more time (waiting for parts takes way more time than waiting for your skills to get practiced!).

HTH,

Randii

randii

Let me add to my post -- my Aerohawk has been quite robust. WAY more robust than I expected for $200, and WAY more robust than a couple of buddies' 30-series nitro birds. The thrashings I have delivered to the Aerohawk would have cost me at least $75 bucks (main and tail rotors) each instance! [X(]

I have rolled my Aerohawk on its side and nose more times than I can count, knocking the rotors out of line, and I have skidded the main and tail rotors into furniture at least a handful of times. All I needed to do each time as pull on their tips to straighten them! I performed *NO* optimization out of the box, and it would spin up without vibrations (assuming the main blades were straight). My main rotors are symmetrical and well-balanced (even after smacking furniture), and the heli trims out pretty well (my fixed-wing experience probably helps, here).

Since I have time (waiting for delivery of the mainshaft), I have disassembled the whole rotating assembly for inspection. I had no discernable excess flashing, but I have wet-sanded all the balls for extra-smooth performance. The only thing that I could see that needed work was the rotor head. The inner barrel had *slight* resistance to rotation in the outer frame (easily overcome by the gyro, but non-optimal). Slight sanding on the inside of the outer frame and on the outside of the inner barrel made this silky smooth in operation. Note that this is a small tweak, and that I was just short of hovering without it. My sense is that *all* rotorcraft will require this sort of incremental improvement/maintenance from time to tome.

HTH,

Randii

bluesilver30

like vince said, setup is as important as knowing how to fly.

take me for example. i set up my heli for about 3 days before my first flight. i wanted to make sure everything was perfect. on my first flight, never flown an rc heli before (though do have expierence with real heli's) i was able to maintain a hover with my hummingbird, and even land on a box i put in the middle of the room.

these things are not toys. you should know them inside and out before you even touch the sticks. it also wouldnt hurt to pick up a book on the physics of helicopters, this would explain some of the wierd forces you are expierencing. my favorite is called The Helicopter: History, Piloting, and how it flies.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=books

They have it at amazon. It's a good read if you want to know how heli's fly. I read for for my first time when i was 12, so you shouldnt have any problems with it.

LTEDT

Well folks its like this First you got to know your heli before you fly it then you got to have a nice setup and balance on the heli then you crash a hundred times and then you fly your heli.
Micro electric helis are by far the most difficult machine to fly and if you have had one for 2 or 3 weeks well get over it your gonna crash and your gonna have to buy parts for it.
Until you get a stable heli AAAAAAHHHHHHHH thats the trick getting a stable heli!!!!!!!
How do you do that you buy a heli that you can UPGRADE!!! yes upgrade.
I dont think thats possible with the Areohawk (I had the same thing only it was a Skylark)
And couldnt do anything with that so i got a Piccolo and after a few months with that its in the air and flying good! But the trick is upgrades...sorry you guys who got a good deal off the internet but now you got to get the heli you can upgrade and make something happen with it!



Live learn and get an upgradeable heli!!!

Matt

rødebaldakin

Ltedt

You should check up on your facts before you nail em up here. You can get buckets of upgrades for the Aerohawk. Secondly recomending complete newbies to embark on the upgrade saga is not a good thing for many reasons.

Firstly when you start out, your not flying anywhere the first weeks anyway, so it WAY cheaper to bang up and break stock plastic parts than expencive upgrade parts, secondly if you never gotten any resoults with the stock bird and have little or no experience with helis,,as many of the buyers of these helis are. You are getting into an alost guaranteed frustrating, expencive resoultless project trying to upgrade this heli without any knowlege or reference, just pure luck will make it flyable. Besides there is NO upgrades that is going to fix everything by magic if bladetracking and balancing is off,, wich is propably the cause of 90% of the trouble ppl have with these microhelis.

sherif

Hi, i saw you online and want to ask a question regarding aerohawk PCB electronic board.
i got a new board and have a problem with connections. now the board and the rcvr are togther
actually the board has two connectors going to rcvr. could you look at your bird board and tell me by looking at the heli from the front side, do you see the connector at the bottom has three wires or just 2.
thankyou

sherif

randii, are you still there, if you can help out would apreciate very much.
thnks

randii

Sorry I missed this.

Dunno if I know what you are asking, but I have the fuselage off my heli, so I'm game to try to answer... two.

Looking from the front, there are two boards, a smaller one on my left (the bird's right, if it had a pilot) and a larger one on my right.

The left board has four red connectors coming in from the outboard left. From top to bottom, they are:
- 3 wires (black, red, white); tail rotor inputs to PCB*
- 3 wires (brown, red, orange); forward/back servo
- 3 wires (brown, red, orange); left/right servo
- 2 wires (black, none, white), main rotor inputs to PCB*
(*it is difficult to discern the wire routing into the PCB and through the PCB, but the inputs and outputs of this section of the board are grouped vertically in such a way that it appears to be as documented, above)

To state it another way, perhaps more simply: the only open pin in those four connectors is the center pin in the one closest to the heli's landing skids.

Hope that helps,

Randii

sherif

thanks a lot, it helped a lot . i will try and let you know.
i think the new board is messed up.
thanks again

sherif

i connected the wiring thanks. the following happened:
1- the red light indicating calibertation comes on after normal time
2- no power at all to both the main and tail motors
3- left/ right/ forawrd/ back works fine.
4- my batteries are lithium 1200 charged to max
5- i tried switching the back and main motor connections
6- tried gain control, and the gyro mixer no effect
could it be the connectors are switched, but if so will the red button come on?
i have no idea what it could be. could use some help in this tragic delimma.
thanks

sherif

well, its alive again, but the tail is not spining fast enough to compansate the main rotor. i donot think the gyro is working on the board.
when i hold the heli and turn it to my left its supposed to get the tail blade going, nothing happen. i tried increasing the gyro gain, but nothing changes. it is either on all the time when turned to maximum. even though, it stii cannot comensate the main motor power.
can anyone help out, is it an adjustment, or the gyro is shot on the board??
thanks

quaker1

make sure after you plug the battery in not to move the heli until the red light comes on, this allows the gyro to initialize.


Dave

tamiok

Hi,

I had exactly the same problem with the tail rotor on my aerohawk and I thought it was the gyro too.
To test if the gyro works, just wait 15 seconds that it aligns itself without touching anything and then just move the heli a bit from left to right without ant throttle to the main motor, if youy tail rotor reacts, even slightly, it proves that the problem comes from the motor and not the gyro.
This gyro is really very, very solid !
Then, if your gyro works, just replace the tail motor for 10 dollars and you are all set up !
One more thing : I had to change the tail motor twice because the first one I got was faulty[:@], so just order two motors to be sure, the brushes of those tail rotor motors are very weak so in case of a hard landing your tail witt hit the ground and the motor will suffer.

This reply came a bit late I know but if was of any help to you I would be glad !

Have a good flight !

MasterAce

I'm a newbie to this helicopter thing . I have an Aerohawk and after about three or four sessions have gotten a short hover. Felt GREAT just to get it in the air. I have been practicing on the Real Flight Simulator. I would highly recomend this sim for anyone trying to learn to fly Helis or airplanes. The only problem I have encountered on Aerohawk is when the battery runs lows, evrything goes crazy. Full charge and everything is fine. That and the manual sucks!! I didn't understand it at all. It didn't even tell you how long to charge the battery. I am deffinatly addicted to this stuff already.

Gone Flying On Simulator