Belt n Braces Blog

Some setup and Disaster

Christmas Day finally arrived and I have unwrapped the Belt. Unfortunately the weather was awful, rainy and windy. Oh well I thought, I’ve still got some setup to check over, time to turn on the heater in the shed.
A couple of hours later, these are the following I found on this RTF from Ebay.

Swashplate not level
Flybar Distance unequal
Belt tension non-existent
Blade Tracking needed
Main Blades on Backwards
Several loose screws

Whilst doing these bits I also found two reasons for a blinking Gyro, by reading the forums, Loose Crystal in transmitter and Rudder trim not centered.

I have to say I enjoyed working on the model, but by now my confidence in this bargain was dwindling rapidly.

Boxing day dawned, bright and calm. So time for its first test fly. The family are all watching (from inside the house) as I slowly throttle up in the middle of the lawn. All is looking fine as it starts to get light, the next second its on its side chomping the mud.

I really have no idea how this happened it was on its side so fast, I couldn’t see a major cause. I know I didnt have training gear on, but this was just to test setup and I thought it may intefere. Even so I don’t think it should have tipped over quite as quick as it did.
If anybody has any ideas I would love to know, and I’m guessing it was probably me.

Anyway damage came to Main Gear, Feathering shaft and one Ball control assembly which has stripped a thread. I have changed the main gear and feathering shaft, but hadn’t noticed the ball control until afterwards, so am waiting for this part.

More Later

After ordering my Belt CP and doing some reading, I accepted all the advice and purchased the Phoenix Training Simulator.

It arrived quickly and I installed it onto my home 2ghz Pentium PC. It started up and all I had to do was calibrate my Esky transmitter.There is an excellent post in the Phoenix section about this http://www.heliguy.com/Forum/ftopic11535.php&d=yes?sid=8d68324faad001bf950849b103711f0c

As others have reported, I have had mixed success with this, it works fairly well but I sometimes get some twitching. I have also tried reversing the two little dip switches under the battery compartment. (http://www.heliguy.com/Forum/esky-hidden-switches-t9595.html) This seems to disable the ccpm mixing and works well although the idle up switch wont work. Which is not an issue for me at this stage. Just rember to put them back before real flying.

So after quite a few hours on Phoenix I have to say it looks and feels great, I had to reduce some of the visual effects to enable smooth running but the graphics are still very good.

I have got happy tail in Hovering and getting there with side in, and its great fun to relax and just fly around at the end of a session, I’m even starting to get it back under control and land afterwards.

How this will translate into the real world when I get the Belt out for its first flight, I will let you know.

A quick Auction and I’m the proud owner of a RTF Belt CP. Its coming from China so what do I do while waiting for it to turn up.

Existing knowledge about RC helicopters = zero, so lets start finding about this hobby. A quick google later, Heliguy Forums on Screen. An amazing amount of info. This is starting to look much harder than I thought. Oh well, lets start at the beginning.

RTF - stands for - Ready to Fly. The helicopter that is (maybe), definately not the person. Best advice seen so far, get a simulator and practice, practice. I have got the Phoenix Simulator and spent quite a few hours on it so far, How this translates to flying the belt I will let you know. I decided to postpone flying the real helicopter until I had managed to practice on the simulator and so the helicopter became an xmas present from the wife.

Finally the Helicopter turns up, about 3 weeks later, to be fair the seller was very helpful and gave me full tracking info etc. When it turned up I was allowed to give it a good checkover, just in case it needed sending back.

Happy to report, that it all works, but RTF it definately is not. A good look over and no damage etc. so lets check setup and electronics.
Cehck manual for reverser settings on the transmitter, recheck against forums, Throttle at min, along with throttle trim and turn on transmitter. Now we connect the battery, The connectors are really tight, so leave a bit of gap to help pulling them apart.
The servos all move, motor beeps and Gyro turns green, all good so far. Now I look at the swashplate which should be level at this point. It is nowhere near level. Oh well some adjusting to be done.
I give it a bit of throttle to check the motor and it starts to spin. Wow it looks and sounds great.

At this point I decide to put her away until xmas, I’ll carry on the adjustment and setup then (got to have some fun at Christmas), and report back once its done.

So, I’m fairly happy with the Helicopter, If I’d known Heliguy existed before buying it, I would probably got it from them as they do all the setup and test fly before sending out, but I am looking forward to playing about setting up.