Hi Guys

I was wondering if anyone could help me setup up AFP on my JR9x. I'm new to the R/C Heli's and bought AFP to practice on. I'll tell that my local distributor has been less than helpful with me and please don't say try the AFP website. I'm sorry to say but the service there is none existent. Besides it being a great piece of software, I'm actually regretting buying this program, if I knew it was going to be this hard to get help out of them I would have chosen G2 which I did try out but AFP feels better for me. Its frustrating when you just starting out with R/C being totally cluless what to do, then you buy software that teaches you to fly these things only to find your question on forums go unanswered. Thats not to say I won;t get help here I hope I'm wrong......

I was wondering if anyone could help me set this thing up properly. I would like it setup as close to possible to the real thing if that is possible. At the moment I've got the basics setup on the software side (I think) but reading posts on this site things don't seem to be right, for instance when I activate my throttle hold button to do a auto they say I should give full negative left stick which I do but my chopper falls right to the ground and its hard to flair it out at the end, I can get it right when I bring the left stick to the middle that works fine...is this right ?. Also I would like to know how to setup my mode 1, 2 at the moment I'm just hovering around doing a few patterns and the basics that sort of stuff and doing very well. But something tells me I'm doing something wrong. There's actually so much I would like to know it kind of hard to know where to start.

Thanks in advance...

I can;t really help you in this reguard but maybe i can point you in a better direction. Most of the people who hang out in these forums are fixed wing pilots, so to be honest you probably won;t have as much luck here as you would forums dedicated to rotary wing'ed pilots. With that said, i think Gisbert is mostly into helo's and used to run AFP (now he is using XTR) and he might be able to help or point you in the right direction anyway. I think you'll get more hits in a helocopter forum (like the one in RCU, or runryder.com) because you are asking how to setup the helocopter as opposed to i can;t get this thing to work. You might get a few hits here, but I am sure someone in a helo forum would be more apt to know. That is not to say there are not plenty of helo guys in this forum, but just a suggestion if people are not responding.

I am not a helo guy but most of the stuff worked for me just fine. Just make sure you don;t need to reverse some of the servo's . . . sure sounds like you have a servo moving the wrong direction there, but then again i don;t know anything about helo's other than I plant em quick whenever i fool around on any sim. Probably would help if you detailed exactly what your setup problems are.

if you ever need some basic stuff, try this: [link=http://www.adventurehobbies.com/colin_mill.htm]Colin Mill[/link].

to your problem and i hope i got it right. before going deep please lets agree upon certain fact. mode 1 or mode 2 refer to different ways the radios are structured. mode 2 says that your left stick controls throttle (pitch) and tailrotor, the right stick controls aileron and elevator. mode 1 is different: the left stick controls elevator and tailrotor, the left is throttle and aileron. first of all, you should have decided what mode you are in cause that defining where the stick without the spring is (throttle) and most advanced radios need a mode definition for some software settings. throttle needs another trimming systematics than other sticks plus some mixing functions rely on stick definitions.

so you definitely have made that decision some time ago and you know what stick controls which function. lets forget the sticks for now. autos are pretty simple if you have an idea what is happening. If you stop the source of energy feeding the mainrotor, the helicopter will fall down. fact. but falling is just another energy source. we need to get that energy back into the rotor. for that reason we change the main rotor angle of attack to grab as much energy from the flowing air as possible. we do that with a lot of negative mainrotor pitch. the mainrotor spins up and preserves that energy in a form of a rotating mass antil we need it. lets assume you kill the engine at 60 ft. you have to react fast and put your throttle/pitch stick to minimum. That's the one without the spring, left in mode 2 or right in mode 1. keep it there until you reach 10-15 ft. now apply some positive pitch until you feel that the energy in the mainrotor starts working for you and dramatically decreases the sinking speed. at this moment, you will be able to have full control and you can fly pretty much as usual but only for a short time! so please make sure you find a nice suitable landing spot and put down your heli gently.

autos are similar to battery charging. while in a free falling state with max negative pitch, you store energy in the rotor head mass by spinning up the system. you discharge that energy in a very short time by decreasing the speed and performing some minor steering just enough for a safe landing.

for a start, apply max min pitch right after pushing the auto switch and provide positive pitch gently after 1/4 of the sinking distance to see what is happening. after 10-15 approches you will get a feeling about the right timing when to apply positive pitch and how much. gisbert