Setting Up the ECO-8

The sensible way to start is to get an expert to setup your heli. No one has ever called me sensible and got away with it, so I decided to do it on my own. Progress was slower than it could have been, but with a greater sense of achievment.

I am no expert, but I found the following method worked OK for me.

The starting point was to set everything as the instruction manual said.

I set the mid stick pitch to about 6 degrees, min to 0 and max to 8.

Tail Rotor

If the pitch of the tail rotor increases the ECO will try to turn to the left. Make sure that when you move the stick to the left the tail rotor pitch increases, if it doesn't reverse the channel in your transmitter.

Next get the direction of the gyro right. Set the gyro to normal mode, with the gain at about 50%. Move the tail quickly to the left, the tail servo should move momentarily in the same direction as when you move the stick to the left. If it doesn't use the gyro reverse, if it doesn't have one just turn the gyro upside down.

Elevator/Roll

Ensure that moving the elevator stick forwards lowers the front of the swash plate and that moving the roll stick left makes the swash plate lean to the left.

Throttle Curve

We are aiming to get a near constant head speed from about 1/4 throtle to full throttle. So you need to program a throttle curve like this: Now we need to set the head speed to about 1300 rpm. Set the pitch curve to zero, and fix the helicopter down. You can run it up fairly safely and measure the head speed with an optical tacho. I propped mine up in a large sticky tape reel and placed it looking up near the outer edge of the rotor disc, it has large figures so I can read it from 8-10 feet away. Adjust the mid stick throttle curve to give the required head speed and then adjust the rest of the curve to give something like the picture above.

Pitch Curve

Set this initially with the helicopter switched off.

You can leave the pitch curve at its default linear mode, or you can flatten it around the hover position:
The mid stick pitch should be around the recommended hover setting.
We now need to set the pitch with the helicopter running. You can do this with just the training undercarriage, but a 6-8 inch tether to a 4 ft square board means there is less chance of damage. Slowly increase the throttle until the heli is just light on its skids, now adjust the pitch curve until this occurs at mid stick position. Recheck the rotor speed, you will find that the increased pitch has lowered the speed a bit. Alternately tweak the throttle and pitch curves until the heli just becomes airbourne at mid stick at 1300rpm. Check that the curves still have the shape shown in the pictures above.

If you set a high head speed the heli will be very sensitive, if the head speed is too slow you will find the heli becomes unstable and starts to nod.

Setup for Circuits
Once the heli gets up high you need a few degrees of negative pitch to bring it down quickly, so change the pitch range to say -3 to +10 degrees.

It is also worth setting up an Idle Up setting that can maintain constant head speed over the complete stick range, this makes fying in gusty weather easier, because the head speed will not decay when you descend.

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