Little-Acorn

I'm a beginner who has flown a Walkera 4, but I understand it's pretty tough to put a heading-lock gyro into one of those. It's too small, the integrated electronics make it tough, etc.

I suppose any heli I get that can reasonably support a heading-hold gyro, will be somewhat bigger. I'd like it to be an electric heli.

Can anyone recommend a good beginner electric heli that can reasonably take a heading-hold gyro? Collective or non-collective, either one is OK. I've flow LOTS of fixed wing RC aircraft, glders, etc., but am a heli neophyte.

For that matter, if I strip ALL the elctronics out of a Walkera 4 (I have two, both with dead ESCs) and start from scratch, can I still get a HH gyro into it? I can either use the original servos, or put in better ones.

Any recommendations?

Thanx all!

Little-Acorn

BTW, how does a heading lock gyro work, anyway?

I don't mean internally, I hear they are piezo somehow. I'm more interested in what they control. Obviously they control the tail rotor somehow, to compensate for changes in which direction the nose points. I gather they control tail rotor thrust to pivot the nose back to the original heading. Correct?

My Walkera 4's have constant-pitch tail rotors, driven directly (well, geared) by a small electric motor. You speed up or slow down that little tail motor to change the tail rotor thrust and yaw the heli. Do any helis have tail rotors with variable-pitch blades? I'd guess such a thing would give more precise control - if you move the stick, the tail pitch changed instantly and the tail rotor thrust changes instantly. On one like the Walkera 4, I'd expect a little bit of delay - you move the stick, more voltage is delivered to the tail rotor motor, and it takes it a few fractions of a second to speed up and start affecting thrust.

But the reaon I point out the difference here, is to ask if both such schemes are available on electic model helis. And that's becuase I'd guess that they would need radically different gyro control schemes. With a tail-rotor-speed-control scheme, the gyro would have to control an ESC. But on a variable-pitch tail rotor (if there is such a thing), the gyro would have to control a servo that physically moves the tail rotor blades.

Are there two different kinds of gyros - one for constant-pitch electric-drive tail rotors, and one for variable-pitch tail rotors?

Or have I got completely the wrong idea of how these things work? I'm enough of a beginner, that the latter is probably the most likely.

Thanks all!

jaketrouble

i dont think you can put a hh gyro on a fp heli. they dont have a servo for the tail and that is what the gyro hooks thru in order to hold to help control the tail.. i could be wrong but i dont think it can be done... jake.

Little-Acorn

That's what I was wondering. My little Walkera 4 controls the tail by increasing or decreasing voltage to the tail rotor motor, via a small ESC. SUpposedly it should be just as controllable as any other method, though perhaps unsuitable to inverted flight.

But for simple beginner helicopters, is it ever done that way?

tippy

A "normal" gyro controls the servo by sending a SERVO command/signal ... a series of pulses where the pulse width represents a servo position.
In order to get this to work with a tail motor ... you would need some circuit to convert a servo signal to a voltage/RPM signal to the motor.
This is what the tail motor controller does ... less the servo signal part. It gets "stimulus" from the "gyro" and feeds the motor an appropriate RPM/voltage signal. It's like a mini ESC for the tail motor.
I've never heard of connecting a real gyro to a tail motor ... even via an adapter circuit.

You have to accept a tail motor system for what it is ... YAW control for toy helicopters.

joediamond

You can put a heading lock gyro in a Blade CP and it's got a motor driven tail. I've got a G90 gyro in mine and it works fine. The rudder lead from the 3 in 1 plugs into the gyro and the gyro plugs into the rudder channel on the receiver.

VinceHerman

Yes, exactly. It is called an ESC. This is done all the time. A receiver, 2 speed controls and a head hold gyro. The Logictech 2100t is light enough. But I think that you will need a 6 channel receiver, and possibly a heli transmitter to be able to drive the remote gain.
I used a Futaba gy240 on my FP Piccolo back in the day. No remote gain on that, so it all worked with a 4 channel receiver. But it weighed a ton (ok, an ounce, but that was a huge % of total).
I have flown a lot of FP helis, and the ones that had a proper head hold gyro behave far better than anything else. FAR better.

Arranjer

Saw your post and I'm curious about heading lock gyros but basically know nothing about them. I am at my wits end with the Blade CP. I think I'm a great CX2 pilot but I can't fly this D*** thing! Where do I buy the G90? I really want to buy the 400 3D soon but I'm paranoid about not being able to fly the CP first. Does the gyro simply go between the tail motor plug on the 4 in 1 and the tail motor?

Thanks!