need help with blade 400

[nighthawk84]

okay to start off i had to replace all the servos cause they all stripped out on me.. during the process i hit the reset button on the radio but got it back to factory settings. but my issue is when i give it throttle it leans to the left and forward real bad. I checked the servo positions and they are correct and the wires are in the right place on the reciever. Any advice would help a lot. Ill try to upload a video of what happens as soon as i get the camera back from the wife. thanks again for the help

[jasmine2501]

Sounds like you need to go through the setup again... one of your servos might be reversed. Follow the procedure... don't just go and reverse things without knowing why...

See the second post in this thread... http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1074335

[nighthawk84]

k ill see what happens when i do that and let u know what the out come of it is... hopefully i remember to unplug the motor

[eclipso]

please be absolutely certain your servos are plugged into the exact slot on the rx that the old ones were plugged into and if so it may be your swash mix settings and servo reverse setting it takes a while to get the right combination of reverse settings but if you dont get it on the rx by illimination then try swapping 1 or two of the servo connections . p.s. first check for hardware issues. (blades, head links, ect...) dave.

[jasmine2501]

Originally Posted by eclipso

please be absolutely certain your servos are plugged into the exact slot on the rx that the old ones were plugged into and if so it may be your swash mix settings and servo reverse setting it takes a while to get the right combination of reverse settings but if you dont get it on the rx by illimination then try swapping 1 or two of the servo connections . p.s. first check for hardware issues. (blades, head links, ect...) dave.

No, you need to read the post I linked. It does not "take a while" and it's not a process of elimination. There is a way to get it right the first time without any messing around. And the beauty is, once you learn the proper method, you will be able to set up ANY CCPM helicopter with ANY radio, without guessing.

[nighthawk84]

surely have a point there its takes time to get this stuff right. this is only my second helicopter the first one was gas and the radio i had was old and it glitched on me during flight. my bigest problem is i dont have a pitch guide or any type of tools to work on helis and to be honest with ya i dont know exactly what im doing and i am afraid of messing it up more than it already is.

[jasmine2501]

Well you will need some basic tools - a nice screwdriver set with hex bits will really help. Also I couldn't live without my ball link pliers... but you don't really need a pitch gauge - you can eyeball it pretty close by lining up the blade grip bolt with the main shaft for zero pitch. It's pretty easy to see when the bolt is pointed at an angle. You can also eyeball the extreme pitches and see if they are the same, make sure there's no binding, and then simply fly it and adjust until the collective feels right. This takes some experience and you do have to be able to fly straight, but it's not impossible - with the price of these things, it's not always economical to buy a bunch of tools too. But you should be able to get all the hex bits and a screwdriver set for pretty cheap - I think my whole set was like $5, and it works on everything except the Trex 250 which has 0.9mm hex heads.

If you follow the procedure I outlined in the thread I linked, you should be able to do a complete setup in no time at all - might take an hour if you're a beginner, but I can go through that setup in about 15 minutes. I did it for a guy last week and he said his helicopter was vastly improved. It can make the difference between doing a lot of work to make it hover, and the helicopter hovering all by itself. But it is not magic and not trial-and-error... there is a procedure, and every step has a reason and will have a certain effect if it isn't done. If you go through the procedure in the exact order I put it, then you can't really make a mistake.

I wrote it, so I will copy it here so others can see. This is the procedure - there is no magic here.

Plug in the wires this way:
Right cyclic servo into aileron
Left cyclic into Aux
Elevator cyclic into Elevator
Gyro gain into Gear
Gyro signal into Rudder
ESC into Throttle

Now there's a few things you have to set up, in order. Look in your manual and figure out how to set these - it will do you good to learn.

0. Find an open memory spot, and set helicopter as the model type and give it a name
1. Set 120-degrees swash plate
2. Unplug the motor - you're going to playing with the throttle, so really unplug the motor.
3. Bind the receiver to the new model memory slot you just created
4. Take out the bind plug and plug in the battery again.
5. Go to your servo reversing menu
6. Move the throttle up and down a little bit - all three cyclic servos should move the same direction
7. If they don't move together, figure out which one is going the wrong way and use the servo reversing to reverse that servo only.
8. Go to your swash mixing menu - you'll see three options, elevator, aileron, and pitch.
9. Move the throttle up - if the swash moves up, you're fine. If not, change the "pitch" number from positive to negative.
10. Push the cyclic stick forward - the swash should tilt down on the front side - if not, change the "elevator" number from positive to negative
11. Push the cyclic stick left - the swash should tilt down on the left side - if not, change the "aileron" number from positive to negative.
12. Push the rudder stick to the right, the tail blades should move so that the tail would push to the left - think about this carefully - the leading edges should move left when pushing the rudder stick to the right.
13. Move the tail by hand - again, think carefully - the leading edges of the tail blades should push against your movement - so if you swing the tail left, the leading edges should push right. If they move the wrong way, then you'll need to reverse the direction of the gyro - ON THE GYRO - not in the radio.
14. Set your normal mode throttle curve to something like 0-50-75-90-100
15. Set your idle-up throttle curve to 100-90-80-90-100
16. Set your normal mode pitch curve to 30-40-50-75-100
17. Set your idle-up pitch curve to 0-25-50-75-100
18. Put the helicopter in idle-up mode (motor still unplugged!!!)
19. Move the throttle stick all the way up and down - you should have zero pitch on the main blades with the throttle stick in the dead center, and about 10 degrees positive with the full throttle, and 10 degrees negative with throttle all the way down. If you don't get this, post what you're getting and I'll try to help figure it out.

[jasmine2501]

Oh very important... on step 9, when you move the throttle stick up, on the Blade 400 the swash should move DOWN. The Blade is backwards from most helicopters.

[nighthawk84]

k i think im slowly getting it back to working condition but i do have a ? about doing the pitch do i put the stick at half way while setting 0 pitch. and when i give it throttle the swash plate goes up. tried reversing the servo but still does the same thing.

[jasmine2501]

Originally Posted by nighthawk84

k i think im slowly getting it back to working condition but i do have a ? about doing the pitch do i put the stick at half way while setting 0 pitch. and when i give it throttle the swash plate goes up. tried reversing the servo but still does the same thing.

These issues come up when you don't follow every step of the procedure from start to finish. Every setting builds on the previous thing. When you understand what everything does, it becomes easier to pinpoint the one setting that is off - but often times people get multiple settings wrong, and it becomes nearly impossible to figure out which ones are off.

If your swash goes the wrong direction, you don't reverse a servo because that only reverses one servo... the "collective causes backwards action" is fixed in the swash mixing menu - step 9.

[nighthawk84]

okay got that working the right way now. but i think i might have to finish this tomorrow when i had some sleep ive been up for 18 hrs or so.... gotta love the military. and ill post the outcome of what happens tomorrow and ty so much for the help and i learned a lot from it too

[nighthawk84]

took the bird out for a test flight and after trimming it out she hovered just fine i want to ty again for the help and i wrote everything down that was said so i wont have this problem again also wrote the settings down from the radio

[jasmine2501]

Oh that's good. You can download a form from Spektrum were you can write down all the settings. Still, I think it's better to just know how to check if things are working right - I do this before every flight. A guy today came to the club with a nice Bell 222 scale helicopter (looks like "Airwolf") - and he had some things going the wrong way... and I had previously offered to fly it for him, so when he showed up with some things going the wrong way, I was able to tell, and knew how to fix it. Then we took it for a test flight, and the tail case wasn't on tight enough and it moved at an angle... and I nearly crashed it, but I got it landed nice and soft. Eventually you will get to that point, where you just wiggle the sticks and check everything out, and can fly good enough to save a really nice bird from total destruction even if something is a bit off.