Basic flight setup

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Swashplate gyro setup

Basically the parameters slightly interact on each other. Additionally there is no absolute setup. Any pilot has his/her personal preference on how a heli should feel in the air. So by trial and error you have to find the sweet spot that is best suitable for you.

Dial 1 - Gyro gain

When flying smaller helicopters like 250 or 450 size it is recommended to reduce the gain before starting the first flight - approx. Pot on 8 o'clock Position (9 o'clock is the centre position).

Analogous to the tail setup adjusting the gain is quite easy: Rise the gain until the heli starts to oscillate on the swashplate. Normally you will see this effect on the elevator axis first. On bigger helis like 600 or 700 size it is possible that you will never reach this point. So how much is too much?

At first while in fast forward flight give some or full pitch stick input. If the heli tends to rear up you can rise the gain. Also when doing tictocs or stationary flips the heli should stop without hesitation when you release the stick. If it tends to oscillate after the stop, the gain seems to high. But this can also depend on the amount of direct gain and also the helicopter itself, like rotorblades, head dampening ...

So you will have to try different positions of the Pots 1 and 2 to find the best balancing.

Also if the gain's too high, the helicopter will feel very sluggish and you will have to give vigorous stick inputs to get a reaction of the heli. It's hard to describe, but you will feel it yourself.. You can think about rising the gain to get the heli very stable and also rising direct gain to overcome this sluggish feeling but as I said there must be some balance between these two adjustments, so this leads us to setup of Pot 2..

Dial 2 - Direct gain

Here again when flying a smaller heli lower the direct gain in the beginning. Also when the geometry of your rotorhead is not ideal (LED in setup menu J is only red, not blue) lower the direct gain.

This adjusts the response characteristic of the heli to stick input. The direct gain adjusts the amount of stick input that is directly send to the servos bypassing the control loop. So as I said before, you have to find the right balancing because if the direct gain is too high the control loop will not be able to compensate your steering. With a flybarless system you normally want the system to steer for you - you only give it the command to do this.

Is the direct gain to high, the heli will tend to be very sensitify to stick inputs in fast forward flight and will tend to pitch up and down when giving a command. Also when giving jerky cyclic stick input the heli will oscillate when stopping a little bit, see above...

By the way: If you need extreme response characteristic it is a good trick to rise the direct gain and lower the swashplate gain but accepting that the heli will not behave so smooth as it should. The faster and stronger the swashplate servos are, the sharper you can normally adjust the two gains.

Parameter menu Point C

This setting influences the dynamic of the control loop.
Fly fast forward and give jerky pitch inputs up and down. The heli should rise and descent in a elevator like manner. If its nose pitches up and down you should rise the adjustment at parameter menu Point C. If the adjustment's too high, again the heli will feel very sluggish and "synthetic". For me on most helis the best setup was red or blue blinking. When the LED is blue in most cases the heli will feel some kind of strange.. try it out yourself, this adjustment is not critical.
If this pitching up behavior can not be suppressed go back to the beginning. Maybe the swashplate gain is too low or the direct gain is too high.
When it's absolutely not possible to suppress the wobbling/oscillating it seems your heli is mechanically inappropriate. The servos could be too slow, the head geometry not correct, rotorblades have to much forerun, the head dampening is hard, head speed is too low, also try mounting the Microbeast unit with a harder pad ....

Parameter menu Point B - Control behavior

Last but not least don't forget to try the given different control behaviors if the heli is not crisp enough or too sensitive for you.

Normal and sport give a lot of expo to the stick inputs and the rotation rate at 100% stick deflection is very comfortable.

If you don't like the given presets switch to LED blue and adjust Expo yourself in your radio. Also the rotation rate in blue is nearly set to maximum and can be adjusted by Dualrate/servotravel in your radio. So 100% stick deflection is similar to round about 400 deg/s rotationrate. If your heli seems not to rotate this fast and also rising the servotravel beyond 100% doesn't change anything it is likely that your heli is mechanically not able to make faster rotations. Make sure that in Setup menu Point L the cyclic deflection is set to absolute possible maximum. You should have at least 10 - 14 deg of cyclic pitch there. This adjustment does not directly affect the rotation rate, but if you've reduced here too much the system is not able to go beyond the set deflection and so can not provide more rotation rate.


Rudder gyro setup


 Important: Tail setup has to be done in order. Don't try to tweak the tail stopping behaviour with dial 3 or play with the heading lock
 gain before dialing in the gyro gain. It is fundamentally more important to find the maximum sensitivity for any given heli first.


1. Dial 3 in center position. Set parameter menu Point D (HeadingLock) to purple.


2. Determine the maximum gyro gain (aux channel). Increase the gyro gain until the tail starts oscillating during wide turns in fast forward flight. Then reduce the gyro gain by about 1 LED on the Microbeast display. Those who are able can also set the gyro gain doing fast backwards circuits.


3. With the gyro gain dialed in, do fast forward flights again and start pirouetting slowly. The piros should turn smoothly without getting slower into the wind and faster against the wind. If there is a strong, steady wind at the field you can also try this in a hover. Is the piro speed not constant, increase parameter menu Point D and try again. Those who are able to do tailslides can also use tailslides from greater height with increasingly faster piros to test this. After this you may have to re-adjust the gyro gain (step 2) slightly.


4. Finally, the tail-stopping behaviour is adjusted using dial 3. To do this, perform fast piros while hovering and then stop the piro abruptly. The tail should stop cleanly without turning further and without swinging back. If the tail continues to turn after the stop or feels "soft" when stopping, increase the gain on dial 3. If the tail swings back when stopping, decrease the gain using dial 3. When tuned properly, the tail should not make much noise when stopping. If you can hear the tail when stopping, you're probably past the optimum setting.