Hi all, just received my second HBK2, don't ask. Well when I spin it up and try to maintain a hover my Heli drifts forward where my first one that is being repaired just stayed in one place with little hand movement on the controls, any suggestions?

Trim it to the rear.

Thanks I've been doing that but was wondering why that would happen with trim in center position

Oh, sorry.

It is because your swash plate is not level. If you look at it from the side, you will see that it is tilted forward just a little. Tilt that sucker back a bit, and it will hover well with the trim centered.

When you say tilt it back what is the adjustment to do that, servo rod?

You got it- the rod that connects the servo to the swash- give that linkage a few turns counter clockwise.

Thanks, I'll try that after work, off to the Casino to make money for this hobby.

lol, so thats why you have 2 HBK II's [)]

could be nose heavy also, if you are using a larger mah lipo

Thank you KCinNC........... for pointing out one of the myriad of possible causes for drift at hover. Ground effect may also be an issue. Centor of Gravity is a deciding factor and of course the swashplate being level relative to the CG. Before you just start cranking on servo rods, unplug the motor and arm the TX then the heli. Flip the switch to idle up and raise the throttle to 50%. Take a good look at
1) Servo horns on the servos.......... are they at 90*? Get all 3 of those as close to 90 as you can
2) Move up to the swashplate........ is it level? Adjust servo rods to get a decent level swash that doesn't interfere the upper head at full throttle and the main shaft collar at low throttle. (in other words.......a level swash in the middle of its travel range up and down the main shaft)
3)At this point you should have at 50% throttle the washout arms level with each other and moving up to the mixing arms they should aslo be level (to adjust those you lengthen or shorten the long links from the swash up to the mixing arms)
4) With the mixing arms level you should then also have the blade grips at 0* (remember this is at 50% throttle in idle up) You can test this by putting on 1 blade and checking with a pitch guage.
5) Check your flybar paddles for zero pitch also while still in idle up at 50%.
6) Flip back to normal mode, unplug heli battery then turn off TX and make sure the throttle is lowered all the way. Plug back in your motor leads and then check CG of heli with battery in place. (Reinstall blades, then turn them lengthwise along the heli bodyand lift the heli with 2 fingers by the flybar, one on each side of the head. The skids should be level with the surface you are resting the heli on. If not adjust battery position until it is. Mark the position of the battery for future reference.
7) Arm TX then heli, and spin it up to at least light on the skids. Check blade tracking and if off then spool down and adjust whichever blade is higher down to match the other one. Try it again and if okay the lift off to a chest high hover and note any drift, this should be easily corrected with only a couple clicks of trim.
8) Fly!


This is my method (abbreviated) for setting up any heli I have in my fleet. The link adjustments are particular to the HBK2 otherwise the steps are all the same. It is time consuming and sometimes many other factors contribute to getting a decent hover. (Blade balancing, Flybar balancing, alcohol consumption, ect.)


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