alright i fell like getting a raptor 30 in the future after i spend some time with my micro electric helis, however there are a few questions that i have on my shoulders that i never been able to figure out, now dont yell at how nobbish these questions are , i am new to nitro helis and i dont know to much about them


first

how do you start up a nitro heli? what equipment do i need?

sacond

no i know how engine works at lease in vehicles but i dont understand how they work in nitro helis, first how does the engine suck the gas? its not gravity fed otherwise you couldnt do 3d flights

third

I dont get how you control how much gas goes in, for some engines like on a motorcycle you feed it gas by pulling the handle which release gas into the carb. However i dont see how helicopters do it, say if you trottle up what happens? and how does the engine connect to the other electronics does the engine just have a wire that connects to the reciever?

Lastly

So you need a reciever battery for nitros, how do you hook up the battery? do you just plug it into a specific channel?

there is a starter shaft one way usually connect to motor with a hex extension on a 12v motor called a starter hooked to a 12v dry cell battery turns the motor over the same way u start your car

2 pressure line from exhaust to fuel tank pushing fuel toward carb

3 the carburetor has a throttle on it like any engine you have a servo hooked up to the throttle opening and closing it

4 that 's right plug the battery into the receiver

all 5 servos are plugged into the receiver (rx) aileron, elevator, pitch, yaw(tail rotor), throttle

Starter motors, just like the ones for airplanes, are used to start helis, as Skyad said. They are big and torque real well, off of the 12v. The actual mating of the starter to the heli depends on the heli, i know mine uses a 6mm hex, some use a 5mm hex, and i believe some use cones (just like airplane propeller cones).

So you need a starter, a battery for the starter, and a adapter to mate the starter to the heli.

Heli gas tanks work just like car tanks, as you said, can be used inverted. A car tank isn't gravity fed, its just that the pickup is at the bottom, and the exhaust pressure is at the top. Helis have a flexible pickup, called the clunk, which can be at the top (inverted bottom) or the bottom, depending on where gravity puts it. Exhaust pressure still pushes the fuel into the pickup just like in a car.

Heli engines carb is pretty much just like a car carb. Unlike cars, heli carbs can usually completely close stopping the engine. Cars have a limiter so when you hit the brakes you don't kill your engine...

Depending on the radio setup, the reciever and battery should be just pretty much the same a nitro cars. The reciever has a bunch of channels (at least 6 usually) and a battery connection. You can either plug the battery right in to the reciever or through a on/off switch to the reciever. My radio has a on/off that can charge the battery when in the off position so i don't have to unplug anything.

Starting equipment (you need a 12 battery to run them). Thunder Tiger sell a complete field box if you want to go that way, or you can buy each peace individually.

ok thanks ppl

i use an 18 volt drill to start my heli.

Some drills don't spin fast enough to start engines. Some might, but it all depends on the gearing. Voltage isn't enough to know if it will work, as many drills go for torque over speed, and speed i think is more important to start a engine.

If it works, good, if not you are going to have alot of frustration trying to start it with a drill.

hey i have one last question whats the difference with ppm pcm fm and and all the other radio, can u use any kind of radio with the raptor or does it need to be a pcm radio?

you can use pcm or fm. Its your choice but the reciever and transmitter have to be the same. PPm im not sure of. I use that when im on my sim. Its an option on my pcm 7ch futabaT7chp

FM and PPM are the same thing with different names. At least thats how i understand it.

PCM needs a PCM reciever, and claims better signal control (less interference) and has a fail safe feature if you want.

Well they all use FM. PCM and PPM (what some incorrectly call FM) is how they encode the stick position. PCM is as you say better at interference rejection. The difference besides fail safe being available on PCM is how each handles interference. With PPM interference is passed to the servos and can yeild what appears to be unexpected control inputs or glitches. With pcm, when the reciever detects a bad frame it isnt passed to the servos, enough bad frames and pcm locks you out of having control and goes into fail safe, usually servos at neutral and throttle at idle. Both generally result in a crash if the interference is bad enough.

The short answer is get either one, most computer radios such as the Futaba 9c and 7c will transmit both you pay extra for a pcm reciever and if you buy fm and decide you want pcm in the future you just have to purchase a pcm reciever and set a parameter for that model when you program the radio.