Well, I had to try it. I'm placing blame (with good humor of course!) in two places:

1) FMS, the free sim is bull$h!t. I can do loops all day long. Not realistic, although I already knew that and should have known better.

2) AeroDave, for the encouragement!!!! See: http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=6136460

I got all the way up, over and back right-side-up. At that point I had lost almost all forward momentum, and was losing altitude fast. I had given it a touch of negative pitch at the top of the loop to sustain altitude. Unfortunately, on the recovery, I was not mindful enough to goose the positive pitch and recover my hover. I slammed the ground pretty spectacularly with blades, etc., flying several feet.

I'm crossing my fingers that the frame, head, servos and gyro and OK. I think I might get away only replacing the boom, horiz stablilizer, blades, gear and maybe the shafts. Great experience and I can't wait to try again!!!!

THIS is how it turned out, AeroDave:

Come now, don't give Dave all the credit! I was encouraging you too. Regardless, I don't know that it's our fault you forgot to give positive pitch

Eh, looks better than my first crash... I was working on inverted hovering in Idle 2 when I lost my orientation. I pulled hard back on the cyclic without minding my pitch and drove the whole thing in hard at 2600 RPM's. It was about 4 more seconds before I realized why the throttle wouldn't kill when I hit down the stick

Like my buddy says: "If you're not crashing, you're not pushing hard enough". I am sorry to hear it happened, however. I was hoping you'd come back telling us it was such a marvelous and uplifting affair that has changed you forever. The good news is that you now know your heli is capable of it! Now you just have to get there as well.

There's a famous quote (I can't recall the name) that says something to the effect of, "We all fall down, but it's whether or not we pick ourselves up that determines our character".

On an aside, I would highly recommend Gorilla Gear and the carbon fiber tail boom now that you have an opportunity to do some upgrading!

Good luck!
- Chaz

OK, Chaz. You can have some blame for the encouragement too!

As I look at these pics, I'm glad I installed the tail servo and gyro where I did. They escaped damage from the blades. My boom got whacked in 3 places!

And I agree ... if you don't crash you're not pushing it. I was cruising around and getting very comfy in FFF. It was time to step it up!

Give us a description of what you did to perform the loop, maybe I can give you some pointers on where to adjust your stick movements so this does not happen again. Start from forward flight.

Before you give us your description, I'll give you my technique.....

I start by flying fast forward at a comfortable altitude. Then Where I want the loop to start, I start feeding collective pitch and start giving the loop it's round shape, notice that I have not used elevator yet. As I near the first 1/4 point, I start feeding elevator, and start bringing the nose up. As the heli nears the top, a little negative to "keep it up there". Keep pressure on the elevator and quickly bring the pitch to zero if you want the loop to be round. If you are slow on the pitch, the heli will push backwards. Bring the pitch back up to hovering pitch and finish out the loop. There is really no reason to "goose" the pitch on recovery. Maybe you were going for a flip?

Rafael

Excellent description, thanks! Yeah, I fed elevator too soon. Reading your technique, I think I would have been able to maintain more forward momentum had I increased collective before feeding elevator. My loop was more like a yellow ribbon shape than a circle. I did feed some negative pitch near the top. I don't think I came back to positive pitch nearly soon enough. You're right ... given a smooth arc, there should be no reason to goose the pitch at the end. I just needed to, in this case, to save it!

well, how i do it is that i go into fff, pull back, ease of alittle bit of collective, and just pull through. for the most round loops i don't think you'll even need to go into negative pitch, but make sure you pull up slower upon entry and pull up abit harder on exit. that's how i do it. basically be smooth on the collective, don't jam the elevator, and you'll get a smooth loop. and i don't think i go into negative pitch at all...

sheesh! I don't know how you could think I said anything about how to do a loop in that post..... But it was a pretty good description of how to setup idle up. I did a 200 foot loop last night with my Knight 50 without ever going into negative pitch. Nice and round, looked great. Sorry you crashed, and I understand you're funnin and not blaming us. It usually takes awhile to find what works for you in these moves. Keep at it, you'll get it!

I wouldnt waste your time on a CF tailboom, they are hopeless, the alloy ones are sooo cheap for 2 of them and in most cases you can just straighten them, CF ones splinter and then own your tailbelt too

porocks01
My rex has looked like that once or twice....
I find you don't need much negative pitch at the top, zero degrees or just reduced positive will do, depending on how fast I'm going when I start and how round the whole thing must look...
Anytime my heli looked like yours I had both main and feathering shafts bent, the main gear stripped, one or two main blades broken, one or two blade grips broken. The tail has always been saved. I don't even bother checking the shafts anymore, I summarily replace them. They have ALWAYS been slightly bent.
I second the use af the aluminium booms. Bend straight, shove a wooden dowel down it to push out the worst dents, away you go.My CF tail boom is still in its wrapper!
And my final word: If in trouble PUNCH POSITVE PITCH, all the way. As long as you are even partially right side up this has often saved me. Worry about orientation once you are clear of the ground again. Do one or two circuits to let the heartrate calm down, then carry on.... Trex rocks.

Excellent guys ... thanks for the advice and encouragement! I did a little investigation lastnight, and the feathering shaft is bent. Main shaft looks OK, but I'm going to pull it out and check anyway. Main gear survived. Belt stripped a little so gotta replace that. I'll see if I can get the tail boom straightened out. Otherwise I'm grabbing new alum ones. Metal blade grips are cool.

Can't wait to try again!!!!

rule of thumb, feathering shaft pretty much "Always" bends when there is rotor strike on anything, i replace featherings and mains on most crashes, rolling them across a plate of glasss will tell you if they are bent

poprocks01...I was doing a loop/flip yesterday and dumb thumb sticked it into the ground, not as bad as yours but nonetheless it happened. Well I'm off to support my local hobby shop, again :-(.

look at That...still in 1 piece.

if it were Any other model besides a SE v1 or v2, it would be Totalled. the SE paid for itself already.

a spindle, mainshaft, some new blades, struts and the thing will be ready to fly for like $30.

if you put in an SA, it would probably need an entire head and possibly tail assembly. XL frame might crack on impact.

so I think I'm ready to try my first loop with the TREX 450.

I have the DX7 and would appreciate some good ST1 curves to make sure my Idle up is set properly before stuffing my bird into the dirt.

thanks guy!

hopefully I'll have some vid of a perfect loop by the end of the day....
or at least a nice good crash....

I could not tell you any better than Finless Bob does on his video on the subject. I'm assuming you've seen some of them by now? If not, we'll point you the way.

Dont feel too bad, I just crashed a couple of hours ago doing similar stuff. Ive been doing stall turns and FFF in all orientations for a while and decided to try some inverted stuff. I did a couple of aileron and elevator flips at high altitude, they were ugly but no crash yet. I then did a loop, again, ugly but no crash. Two more ugly loops later and all is still well. Hindsight would have told me to land a take a break, my nerves were a bit shot, but one more loop attempt and somehow i kicked in rudder at the top!!! yeah, no idea how the hell that happened but several wrong control inputs later and my heli is not enjoying life too much. Interesting crash though, I broke a blade grip, bent the flybar, snapped the end off of one of the seesaws and broke the landing gear. No blade damage whatsoever, they are both fine, only a small nick in my boom, and a broken horiz tail fin. I cant figure out how i broke so much stuff in the head without doing anything to the blades. all in all, it was about a $40 crash, however, I have the SA and took the opportunity to get some aluminum bits, along with an all aluminum tail. Should have her fixed up in no time!!

Yep - Don't feel bad - No guts - No glory!

Next time you will do better!

I did my first rolls last week - was awesome! Maybe try the rolls instead.. I was tossing up between a loop or a roll to attempt as my first ever 3D and
I decided that a roll is a little easier and requires less altitude that a loop...

Don't give up!!! I can't wait to try again - lol