wilco3

We're flying a Caliber 3 with the plastic blades that come with the kit. The hovering is great, nice and stable. The problem is when control inputs are entered, eg. elevator, aileron or pitch the helicopter develops a wobble. The boom moves up and down, it settles down soon after the sticks are returned to nuteral. The blade tracking is good and there's planty of head speed. As I said hovering is OK but forward flight and turns are not possible.

Could it be the plastic blades that come with the kit. They seem to have a lot of flex. Anyone out there flying their caliber 3 with these blades. Any suggestions welcome.

Cyberfyn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf0aEa-booI

Flys fine on the stock blades.... Not that I'd use them myself.

Re-check everything for any play or slop. and check the headspeed is up. Tail wag (side to side) is usually down to gyro gain, but up and down.... I take it the centre of gravity is right on the mainshaft?

Ian F.

wilco3

Thanks for that. Yep C of G is right in the main shaft and there is plenty of head speed. There does seem to be a bit of slop in the fly bar but with all the fixed linkages I dont really see how to remove it.

machdiamond

I have the same issue with the stock training blades AND with GCT X-treme carbons. It is a result of low head speed. Twice now someone has commented that my head speed is too high and that the head is going to fly apart. When I trim down the throttle curve I get the wobbles, with the higher rpm it settles down and is very stable and flys great, the only problem is that there is very little tolerance between good rpm and over-revving the engine which causes it to overheat. This in turn affects the ignition timing and causes the engine to loose power >> head speed drops >> back comes the wobble. I found running the engine (Kyosho 36, elevation = 5300ft ASL) a little rich and at relatively high rpm is best (Castor oil fuels not good in this motor, I now use Xfuel 15%, runs fine and change glow plug after every 5L !!!). Compared to my Freya there is a lot of slop in the Caliber setup but this is normal and does not affect stability much - the forces involved seem to "tension out" the slop in flight, I have found that the tail is not very sensitive so keep the gyro sensitivity low as well (about 65% in HH works for me). Hope this helps somehow :-) P.S. I tossed the fixed links out and fitted normal adjustable links and apart from increasing the amount of neg pitch that the fixed links offer, I have not been able to get rid of the "loose" linkage around the head (I could, however, tighten up the push-pull setup on the ailerons. That caused some mix of elevator at limits of collective???). Oh yes, watch out for the low range mixture needle in throttle body. It has just a loose fitting o-ring preventing it from turning and it screwed itself in once, during flight, and got jammed into the fuel nozzle during an approach which of course cut the engine - my first auto! A small drop of medium locktight sorted it out, a bit tight to adjust but wont give trouble again.

wilco3

Thanks for that. Only have 50% at the mid range of the throttle curve with 5 degrees pitch for hover. Will up the revs in the middle a bit and see what happens. Hope I don’t run into the over heating problem. Running a OS .32 engine.