i can't for the life of me get my gy401 setup properly. when i'm in idle up with head hold on my heli wants to drift left. not alot but its there and its constant. i'm using it with the 9650 digital servo. do you slide the servo holder towards the nose of the heli? do i increase my gain? or both? i've watched finnless bob countless times. and still can;t get it right. its like he's talking chinese. i'm not that technicall with heli setup. can someone explain in detail for idiots like me to understand?

Do you have some sort of revo mix enabled? What radio are you running?

revo disable. using dx6. the tail doesn't want to stay locked in. what should be the gain settings? is -70 and +70 good? everything is else is working flawless. just that dang tail.[sm=48_48.gif]

Bump the gain until you get a bit of wag then back it off a bit. Make sure your radio is in HH mode for idle up and normal mode. If you setup your bird according to finless I can't give you any info that he hasn't already given you about mechanical setup.

When you power up the gyro in heading hold mode, are you seeing a solid red light on the gyro? If it's flashing instead, then the radio is sending a rudder command which could be caused by revo mix, trim or subtrim. I'm not a DX6 user, so I don't know if the radio has subtrim or not.

I dont know what you are flying it on but my 401s all set up similarly. One switch position @ 35% the other @ 75% the higher being HH, these are starting points, adjust the % as nec to get a solid tail, carry these #s to idle up. I do find that a well trimed tail in rate will almost always yeild a good hold in HH. I have used this method on my 450s, and my .30&.50 with the same result, hope this helps.

Noob,

I'm having the same problems with the same Gyro... My bird is a 450SA with HS65HB's on the cyclic and HS65MG on the Rudder. But I'm using a totally different Radio is an old Futaba 8USuper. I have no subtrim or main trim on the Rudder channel and no REVO mixing and I have a solid Red light on power up...

I think my main confusion is what to adjust on the Gyro vs what to adjust on the Radio...

Your gain is adjusted via the radio, the 401 has only delay and travel via the "screwdriver". All of your holding issues are via the radio.

thanks guys for the input. just figured out the problem. before....idle up was combine with HH was setup with the align 35x esc. the programming for the esc is that at full throttle it will go into program mode. and to make the gy401 to work properly you have to start up on head hold mode. when i start up my idle up is engage and the esc thinks i want to go into programming mode. was that switch combo doesn't work. i tried to fly it start up in normal then switched to head hold with idle up and the tail will not hold because head hold didn't know where center was.

here's the solution.....change the gyro switch to a different switch. my gyro switch is now moved to the left switch used for elevator dual rates. perfect.
Now when i power up i'm in normal mode (idle up off) the switch i assigned the gyro is switched to head hold. just flew a pack of thunderpower and its holds beautifully. i still need to adjust the tail slider a little so i don't get any binding.

it all boils down to this boys and girls............you have to inititalize the gy401 on head hold for it to work properly.

so now my project is complete. EXI 450

equipment:

justGOFly 450F 11T
align 35x esc
HS65MG cyclic
s9650 tail servo
gy401 gyro
led carbon fiber 325's main rotors
carbon tail rotor
thunderpower 2200mah 25c
dx6

Noob, I was having the same problem. I found I was getting a slight creep in the servo when it was just stationary. When I checked the gyro the light was flashing. I did not have any trims set, no revo mixing, nada. Make sure you have a solid light on the 401 when you plug in the battery...I had to un-plug and re-plug the battery before to get the solid light on it. I did a re-bind on it and now it works great. If you are mechanically set up right then you might try that. After the binding, the gyro now initializes the first and every time I plug in the battery.

thanks edwin for the tip.. my bird now holds perfect. she is ready for 3d. I only have 1 more lipo to charge and then in the morning i'm taking her out for a spin. i want to try some flips but i should really feel how she handles the first few packs.

I lowered my throttle settings in idle up this evening...much better...I did my first back, forward flips and stationary rolls with my Trex this evening...wonderful power! No problems and easy to do compared to the Black Hawk....so much more power!
A nice breeze kicked up and I workeed on my orientations in idle up mode and forward flight trying to keep in a straight line....a great evening of flying!
I can hardly wait for tomorrow. It's suppose to be nice...I have 6 packs charged and ready to go![8D]

If you have a Spectrum radio you need to make sure the switch is in heading hold and re-bind when you are done setting up. The recievers give fail safe signals to the servos (and gyro gain) when the reciever is booting and waiting to link up.

What happens a lot is the gyro will boot before the reciever and if the fail safe is set to normal (rate) mode then thats what the gyro will get during initialization.

Rebinding sets the fail safes and makes sure the gyro is getting heading hold as its fail safe, that way if the gyro boots first its initialized properly.

The other trick, especially with Deans Ultra connectors is to touch the connector to power up the system and let the gyro boot, then seat the connector all the way. That way you arent moving the heli around while the gyro is booting, trying to get the connector seating, moving the heli during gyro boot up will cause drift.

thank you everyone! my tail holding issue is resolved. i however had 2 tail blowouts this morning. tail is rock solid then suddenly it blows out. what causes this? also how tight should my belt be?

It's hard to say what the cause is without knowing what your definition of the term "blowout" is and when it happens.

Setting a good tail belt tension is difficult to put in words. The main thing is you don't want it so tight that it robs the heli of a lot of power. You can get somewhat of a feel for it on the bench by spinning the head with your finger, letting it freewheel and then experimenting with different amounts of tension. What you should soon discover is that the belt creates a lot of resistance when it's tightened like a guitar string. Tension comes at some percentage cost in power due to friction. What you need to know is it's ok for the belt to have a soft wrap around the pulleys and that the belt doesn't need to be stretched straight to maintain a reliable link between the pulleys. Of course at some point it will too soft and, to some extent, this depends on your flying style. Hard collective pumps with lots of pitch range and stick banging will require more belt tension to keep the tail solid and the teeth from "clinking" (for lack of a better sound term), than for smooth, graceful flying. My own belt is set just tight enough that I only hear an occasional clink during aggressive flying...it is surprisingly soft to a lot of people who don't have the experience but it works. Experimenting, I have flown with the belt almost "fall off the pulleys" loose and while the teeth hold on the pulleys amazingly well under such conditions, tail hold and teeth noise issues do become too much of a problem to keep it that way.

Where do you live in Fla?

i'm in orlando fl. when i mean blowouts i mean that when i throttle up quickly the tail will blow to one side quickly then stop. the guy at the LHS told me to check the tension on the belt if its too loose. i think i have an idea what to do to fix this.

maybe my defintion of blowouts is different....what does blowout means exactly?

A blowout is when the well bore pressures exceed the hydrostatic pressures of the fluid in the well bore. Then the pressure starts pushing the fluid out of the hole and you have a full blown blowout. Hopefully when that happens you have had the proper well control training and you can close the blow out preventer. Therefore stopping the blowout. I have been working with blowout preventers for 30 some odd years now and if I have to put one on my heli I am gonna be mad. LOL. Thought I would throw a little humor at you guys and watch out for them blowouts they will get ya. The last one I had took out a Drilling Rig and lost a really good well. Happy Flying Guys.

gittle. now i'm really lost. [sm=spinnyeyes.gif][sm=75_75.gif]. what does fluid have to do with electric helis? i can't tell if you're serious or not.lol[sm=spinnyeyes.gif]

Gittle, you where not in Rainbow Lake, Alberta on an Aquitaine well back in Febuary of 1976 by any chance? I spent a week putting that fire out after a deck hand messed up the BOP's and burnt a service rig to the ground.

A blowout on these helis is a failure of the tail to hold against a strong airflow, such as when flying backwards or sideways. It lets go from the desired heading all at once and weathervanes into a follow-heli position, normally when the model is moving fast (slower if the tail is really bad).
In your case it's torque rather than wind that the tail is failing to hold against; that's not a blowout.

that makes sense. thanks 321.

made some major adjustments last night. and this morning took the exi450 to the park to see if it was right. every issue i had with the tail is now fixed. for the first time in this hobby i did 5 front flips and no crash. silky smooth.

i would like to thank each and everyone for contributing to my post for my problem. i will carry this knowledge to my next heli.

tthanks to you guys i was able to do this for first time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvuVZAYwJ2c