In the middle of 1999, I had been flying electric powered R/C
models for about 3 years. I began to feel the need to try a
helicopter. After reading a few magazines and a trawl of the
internet, I settled on an ECO-8, because it appeared to have good
performance with a duration of about 10 minutes.
After 20 years playing computer games, I had to have a simulator. I choose Aerofly because it comes with a model of the ECO-8 built in and I thought the pretty graphics would encourage me to use it. Here are my thoughts on the simulator.
I bought the simulator before the kit, so that I would not be tempted to fly until I had had some practice. After about 2 weeks I ordered my kit from Ikarus and was flying after about 1 month total. I got to the stage where I could easily hover tail in, move side to side and do figure of eights in front of me. I could also land where I wanted rather than where the helicopter wanted. I think this was a good point to have my first flight.
I decided to get everything from Ikarus so I would know
who to complain to if all did not go well. Here is the list of the gear I started with
and what I would have ordered with hindsight. Ikarus were pretty
efficient and everything arrived in about 10 days in one large
box. The first problem was the German instruction book, if you
buy in England you get English instructions which make life a lot
easier. Most of the instructions are in diagrams, so I scanned
them into the computer and used the Altavista translation page http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com
to translate the notes. This took a, while and was quiet tricky I
had to guess whether I should glue or use oil !
The kit goes together well and the set of tools from Ikarus made life very simple, well worth the price just for the lack of hassle. The only difficult bit was the canopy which takes some time and is quite fiddly. With patience it works out OK and looks smart when finished.
The first flight was in the garage, I used a 4ft sq 1/2 inch board with a hole in the middle to attach a 6 inch tether to the centre of the training undercarriage. This tether allows you to get the set-up with very little danger of damage, just make sure there is enough room all around and the tether does not come loose.
Having got it light on the skids you need to check the blade tracking, you have to get down on the floor and see if both blades are in the same plain. I painted one tip red and the other green. This is DANGEROUS wear some eye protection and do not get too close.
I just had a few flights in this manner, it is very difficult, but you can get some sort of feel for the controls.
I was using the Ikarus training gear that has 2 carbon tubes and 4 table tennis table balls. I thought it would probably trip up on grass, so the first flight was on tarmac. The first hop was tricky it shot off about 20 feet to the right, but I just missed the fence. I soon found I could hover with some control for short periods. In retrospect I was hindered by a very poor set up. My throttle curve did not maintain constant head speed as I reduced throttle, so when the wind gusted the heli would balloon up. With no negative pitch I had to reduce the throttle a lot which meant the head speed bleed off , this means there is very little pitch and roll control, that is required to resist the wind. Getting an expert to set it up would have saved a lot of time, but would have reduced my sense of satisfaction.
I wanted to fly at the club field that has fairly rough grass, so I decided to try a bigger training gear. I bought a standard IC heli gear and replaced the plastic tubes with carbon tubes that got the weight down to about 140 gms. I still got 8-9 minute flights. With this gear flying on grass was no problem.
By this time it was late December and with the winter weather, it was difficult to get much flying in. I found that I could fly in the local supermarket overflow car park, that was always empty and they were kind enough to light, so I could nip out in the evening with 2 packs and get 20 minutes of flying.
I was just getting the feel of things and starting to move the heli forwards and sideways. I was hovering at about 2 feet when the motor stopped. It dropped fast, it didn't seem to be too badly damaged just a broken u/c. As I walked up to it smoke rose from the canopy and then flames flickered. I managed to get the canopy off and the nicad disconnected before the damage spread from the speed control.
I sent the motor and controller back to Ikarus, but it took 2 months and many e-mails before I got them back again free of change. This is the only time that I have had poor service from Ikarus, I suspect the language barrier was part of the problem.
I flew for a few weeks with about 5 flying hours, when the same thing happened again, minus the flames. I decided that I could not trust this controller again so I did not send it back to be replaced. I thought I my try the motor with a sensorless controller.
Mean while I had been looking at Aveox's site and they recommended a 1010/3Y motor. I have used Aveox motors for some time, so I decided to try it with an Aveox L260 controller.
The first problem was fitting it, it is very narrow, I had to screw it to an alloy plate and then bolt that into the motor mounting slots. I used a 12 tooth pinion as recommended.
I was initially pleased with the motor, but as the weather got warmer I realised that the motor was getting up to close to 100 C. Aveox specify a maximum temperature of 80C. I fitted a small PC processor fan which that about 14gms and this keeps the temperature down to about 75 C. Also as I moved on to circuit flying I realised that the motor does not produce enough power to keep the head speed at high pitch values. I e-mailed Aveox about the temperature, they suggested an 11 tooth pinion. I tried this, but it did not seem to help the temperature much and the maximum head speed is too low.
I believe this motor is just not suitable, I think the 1015/2Y would be a better. This has the same Kv, but a much lower winding resistance.
I decided to try my X250-4 with a Schulze Future 45He sensorless controller. This worked very well, lots of power and everything stayed cool. There was only 1 problem. It has a very slow start that takes several seconds to reach the selected speed. This is OK normally, but a small radio glitch can lead to the slow start resetting and you have no power for several seconds. This happened to me twice and because I have not learnt auto-rotation yet I suffered hard landings. Luckily damage was limited to the u/c and tail boom.
I have contacted Schulze, they suggested a PCM receiver would help. They have also updated the speed controller software so that it will filter out short radio glitches and will disable the soft start if the rotors are still turning. I returned the speed controller and they updated it free of charge and it was returned very promptly, excellent service!
I have been using it for quite some time and so far I have not had any problems, so I am very pleased.