rockhouse

My Feedback: (5)

Found out that adjusting a heli engine can take awhile with hit or miss results. My Rapter 60 has an Os 70 engine with a 60K carb that has three adjustments. the only one I could set on the ground was the idle.

Then I saw a picture in a heli manual of a heli attached to a step ladder with a guy standing below it adjusting the carb. To tell the truth the setup looked very unsafe, but very effective. So I re-engineered the stand. I attached the heli to a 2 foot by 3 foot piece of MDF with 6 large wire ties (three on each skid). Then I attached the stand to my Ford 3415 tractor front loader with rope & raised the bucket to a height of about 7 feet. I was not concerned that I would accidently contact the rotor but that the heli would somehow break free on one side & swing around & contact my noggin. So before I fired it up I applied 15 lb of weight to the already 10lb test stand with no problems. So with the copter attached extremely well I fired it up & adjusted the high speed needle, then I dropped it to where it normally starts to hover & adjusted the midrange. Dropped it to idle & fine tuned it. Whole adjustment process took about 2 minutes (including a minute for warm up).

THIS IS DANGEROUS, DON'T CASUALLY ATTEMPT THIS!
This worked great for me because I was scared to death that I was going to cut my head off & engineered the heck out of it. If you attempt this make sure the heli is SECURELY ATTACHED to
a VERY STABLE support at a height 2 FEET OVER YOUR HEAD.

THERE I WARNED YOU.

BTW my heli has never run so good.

Charlie

That's not a good idea, strapping your heli down and giving full positive pitch at full throttle, it puts way to much stress on the head. The head on helicopters are not designed for that, you were lucky, "THIS TIME" (not to mention how dangerous it is).

That's not even a good way to tune your motor in a helicopter, the weight of the helicopter would never put that much of a load on the motor, so your going to still have to fine tune it when you get it in the air.

BarracudaHockey

My Feedback: (11)

You also risk ground resonance and your helicopter shaking itself into a boom strike or worse.

You are refering to Rays Helicopter Manual, there's several things in there to be taken with a grain of salt, the ladder tuning is one of them.

jsenicka

My Feedback: (79)

Stress on the head?
Full power with full collective against a static load versus pulling from full negitive to full positive in the air???
I cannot for a moment believe that a full power pull against a secure platform can even equal 1/2 the stress I routinely throw at the thing in flight.
Imagine the R60, wide open in fast forward. Pitch the nose up like the beginning of a loop. Then yank full negative to pull the chopper toward the skids but still in a forward direction. Then simply grab all the positive you can get to reverse direction of travel. No way Ray's method is causing more stress.......

P307

hi a stand is a good thing to set up with i made 1 with a bearing in it good for making sure gyro is set something like ok i set up my new 30 like this it only needed a bit of trim later and flys good its a good thing to be s**t scared when you do this it looks dam dangerous but a raptor 30 with a fault or poor setup can fly faster than you can run.

helicopters

My Feedback: (3)

there was a stand on the market for the 30 size and up that you strap to the table. you can move your heli like you were accually flying. it works well to fine tune the heli in the air. i worked nice with my 90se.

helicopters

My Feedback: (3)

they also came with 5 barrings so it move when you blew on it. i fyour training it would a good thing to look into.

Charlie

Something like this?

jddrumm

I wonder how well that would work? Have spent several tanks of fuel trying to get my motor broke in and running right. By the time I got all the kinks out of the heli and every thing set up the motor was broke in and then it was time to get down to buisness........... Flying flying and more flying.

helicopters

My Feedback: (3)

it looks like it is a good one but the one im talking about is a big swinging are with counter wieghts. that is a cool looking one.

Flyfalcons

Standing under spinning carbon blades = dumb.

rockhouse

My Feedback: (5)

Which way do you think those carbon blades are going to go? Down. I don't think so. Hovering a helicopter within 100 feet of you is dumber but we do it all the time. It's the blade path that will get you. In airplanes you never stand to the side of the plane inline with the prop but we routinely do it with helis.
Everything we do has risk. It's all in how you manage it. I made my test stand as safe as I could & would go as far as to say that it is safer than flying the heli anywhere near me or others. If you don't like the idea, don't use it.

Sorry I'm dumb. I'll try harder next time. Maybe I should try gliders.

Flyfalcons

If a part on the side of the heli breaks, it will instantly try to go up (as it is already trying to do so). Since only part of it will go up, the entire heli will rotate onto its side and if the blades hit you, you would die before you knew what happened. Bolting the heli down imposes stress on it that it was not designed to handle, and standing under blades that can do more damage than a lawnmower is lunacy.

Of course, you could just spend half a flight getting your needles set, but setting up an elaborate death trap works too I guess.

DebianDog

I have seen folks use a rod attached to a whiffle ball for a bench test. I would never attempt a bench tune with blades.

I have NEVER seen any professional pilots use a bench tune either. I think that says a lot. Learn to fly and tune your helicopter in the air.