Need to Dispose of a Lipo Battery?

Go to this link for directions. "Disposal of My Lipos"

Taken from Thunderpower Batteries.

 

Learning to Fly a R/C Helicopter

Fly the Simulator First

Following these guidelines when using a simulator will improve your performance in real life.
Our actual flying tips are based on the idea that you have used a flight simulator like the Real Flight or Fs One and have familiarized yourself with the characteristics of r/c flight. There are many unexpected things you will encounter if you don't have a simulator.  We list some of those here.  We cannot stress enough the usefulness of a simulator. You may think they're expensive, at $160 to $230, but we guarantee they will save you that much in parts as well as time learning how to fly.

• The simulator is not a game. Each time you crash could end up costing you hundreds of dollars. Yes, it is going to happen and it's fun some times to see what you can make it do, however, do not get into the habit of watching the helicopter fly into the ground. Fly it to the end and try to recover as hard as you would if a thousand dollars were riding on it. You are trying to form GOOD habits here, not bad ones.
• Don't let the helicopter hit you! This is a habit you definitely want to avoid.
• Don't let the helicopter get too far away. Even though you think it's too hard to see just because it's on a computer screen doesn't mean it's any easier to keep it close in the real world. This is definitely something to work on.
• Ok, so you can land your helicopter in the simulator now, but can you make it land where you want it to precisely? Work on this.
• Ok, so you can make it land wherever you want to, can you make it land pointing in any direction you want it to? Work on this also.
• Try flying with all the trims slightly off center
• Adjust the trims at random and get used to it, then do it all over again.
• Move all the sticks like crazy all over the place until the helicopter is in a precarious position... then level it out as fast as you can
• Turn the wind up to 10 mph and repeat all the above
• Practice flying from left to right back and forth, then practice flying in and out without hitting or flying over yourself
• The auto rotations in a simulator are usually way too easy. Don't rely on the practice to help you in a real life. Still practice them though. Just realize they will be a bit more difficult in real life.
• Experiment, if you haven't already, with loops and rolls
• You're ready to try the real thing!

More advanced simulator practice

• Turn the rudder trim half way off center so that the heli is doing a complete 360 once every 2 seconds or so. Don't touch the rudder now! Only use the collective. Try and slowly fly around without touching the rudder, to do this you need to continually be adjusting the cyclic (bank and pitch) since the helicopter will always be pointing in different directions. Try to land this way. When you get good at it, reverse the direction of the rudder. When you're good at this, land while slowly pirouetting.
• Practice hovering inverted and flying around inverted
• Practice flying around backwards slowly. This is very difficult
• Practice flying around backwards while inverted. Even more difficult.

The Real McCoy

• We suggest that you should wait to fly the real thing until you can confidently fly around in the simulator and land without crashing. You'll be much better off in the event of an emergency and learn quicker too.
• Put big training gear on your heli
• Have someone verify the linkages, reversing, and test fly if possible
• Practice doing small hops up to 6 inches, paying attention to how the helicopter is trimmed. Don't adjust your trim in the air unless you are very confident. Drifting to the left is normal and results from the tail rotor thrust which you can compensate for by putting a very-very slight right-bank in just after takeoff, but this is different than pitching. If your helicopter banks, yaws or pitches by itself you need to compensate with trim.
• Practice hovering from 6 inches to 1 foot. Be prepared for gusts. Wind will increase the effectiveness of your rotor blades and make your helicopter climb fast. Don't overreact and slam it into the ground. Slowly lower the collective and gradually bring it back down. Be prepared for the wind to stop and the helicopter to descend more quickly. Again, don't over-react and send it launching into the sky. Just take it easy and if it gets "on top of you" don't touch anything but a little forward cyclic for 1 or 2 seconds. Eventually it will fly out in front of you, level off and use back cyclic as needed to stop, and then level off again.
• Adjust gyro as needed to stop wagging or tail swaying when you adjust power.
• Practice hovering out of ground effect. At least 3 feet up, and hold it steady, the wind will really affect the heli at this level.
• Get used to how responsive the collective is.  You want to get used to NOT over-correcting with the left stick. This is hard, most people want to move the stick all the way down when they get in trouble, this is bad, this slams the heli into the ground. Get used to merely lowering the collective 1/4 way down or so.
• Practice walking the heli around. Follow at a safe distance behind it and make it go places slowly. Be careful not to step in any holes.
• Practice turning the heli a little bit to the right and left. Get used to the perspective in real life. The simulator experience helps with this.
• Practice flying the heli out and back (tail in both ways)
• Practice a little side to side slow-flying
• Practice doing left / right turns in front of you while flying back and forth. Almost like a figure-8, but always keeping the tail in a little. Basically, just fly the helicopter sideways to the left and right, in front of you, then start adding rudder so instead of flying sideways back and forth, the nose leads the turn a little. The helicopter will never turn with JUST the rudder or JUST the cyclic. You need to use both the same time.
• Practice turning the heli towards you a little more
• Practice doing small, very slow, circles. This is difficult
• Flying left to right is easier than flying in and out. Start doing this
• Don't fly with the sun near the horizon. It gets hard to see the attitude
• Practice hovering a little bit higher. 10 to 20 feet. Don't force it back down, lower the collective a little bit at a time. If it starts to sink rapidly, raise the collective slow at first and slowly raise it faster until it stops falling. Start lowering it again and do a slow, controlled descent. If you descend too quickly you will enter your own down wash and the helicopter will pull itself into the ground. You will need considerable collective to compensate. This is a bad condition.
• Practice doing a bigger circuits but keep the speed down.
• Your ready to take the training gear off. They're slowing you down and you're probably developing bad habits by using them for visual cues
• After you take the training gear off, start all over again, because it's much more responsive now and much more difficult to see, however, it will fly much better.
• Practice subtle 180 stalls and figure-8's
• Practice going faster and slowing down
• Practice transitioning from fast forward flight to landing. You will have trouble getting the helicopter anywhere near you by the time it is hovering.
• Practice in a little more wind... wind really makes a helicopter jump around.
• Practice controlled flight. Try to make the helicopter go exactly where you want it to. Take more authority of the sticks.
• Practice "baby-autos" where you hit the throttlehold at 3 or 4 feet. The helicopter will drop suddenly, but don't over react and pop it up into the sky or you'll use up all your momentum and it will really drop like a rock. It would be better just to let it land itself if you're unsure about how much collective. Start with a little and work your way up and try to use up all the blade speed touching down at the last second.
• Practice doing nose-in landing approaches and hovering at many different aspects
• Practice "fake-autos" where you don't use the throttle hold at all, just bring it in as fast and hot as possible with the collective as low as you can, to simulate a emergency decent. Stop the helicopter at 8 feet up in a hover and do it some more.
• Practice the "baby-autos" from 6 feet. You should have enough rpm in a hover to softly touch down from a 6 feet without power loss.
• Practice aborting autos, where you hit the throttlehold up high and "glide" on in, but abort at about 10 feet.
• You're ready to try a complete auto. Auto rotating in 10 to 20 mph wind is the easiest because forward speed makes the blades lift better. Start your auto with power and get 15mph of forward speed, hit the hold switch and keep the nose down 15 degrees and the collective so the blades have -2 or -3 degrees in them. If you have too much negative you'll actually loose rotor speed. Bring it in with as little cyclic and collective change as possible. As you get to 15 feet, gradually pull back on the elevator to slow down your forward speed. As you start to drop from your decrease in forward speed gradually feed in collective like you did from your 6ft baby-auto and you know the rest. Note: It's better to land with too much forward speed than to land on the tail, the helicopter will harmlessly slide like an airplane on skies with extra forward speed.

Moving on

• For looping and rolling you'll need to adjust your pitch range to include at least -2 degrees or more at the low end of the collective.
• For sustained inverted with some climb-out power you'll need to adjust the pitch range to at least -6 to +8 degrees.
• If you haven't already, you're going to need to set up idle-up on your transmitter so when you pull the collective all the way down your engine doesn't go to idle, but maintains a constant RPM throughout the pitch range. 
• Before you start looping, get used to very steep 180-degree stall turns where you practice the first 1/4 of a loop. Your goal is to get as high as possible so you understand how smooth to be on the elevator in the first part of the loop.
• Remember to enter the loops with a high forward speed, plenty of altitude and start the loop gracefully so that you don't kill your airspeed, as you reach the top of the loop your collective should be at about -2 degrees then pull more and more cyclic to return to a right side up dive and pull out while adding positive collective. Never add negative collective until you're at least on the top of your loop or you'll stop all your forward motion and start flying upside down backwards. If this happens, just yank back on the elevator to follow through with your loop. It won't be pretty, but you'll come out of it all the same.
• When practicing aileron rolls, try to time it so you have 0 pitch at the 90-degree bank and -6 at full invert, and 0 again at 90 then back to what ever at level. If you're used to airplanes and pull up prior to doing a roll you'll loose all your forward speed and end up with a helicopter flying right-side up but backwards in the end. I actually dive 5 or 10 degrees before I roll to maintain forward speed.

Tricks

• Add a pirouette to the top of your loop.
• In fast forward flight, climb 45 degrees, bank 90 degrees with 0 collective and do fast pirouettes, then level off and come out of it nose down 45 degrees as it would naturally.
• A tic toc is when you make the helicopter look like the boom is fastened to a metronome. You alternate positive collective and backward elevator with negative collective and forward elevator back and forth so you don't loose any altitude. The boom from the profile view looks like this motion: \ to | to / and back and forth.
• A death spiral is when you go from a high hover to a 90 degree bank with 0 collective and 0 speed, then give full forward or back elevator only for as long as you can. Correct any time by banking the opposite as you did to begin the bank. If you wait too long the tail may not keep up and it will dive nose down. Be prepared!
• The "moon walk" is when you go through the motions of a loop, but you make it look stretched out so it's not really a loop any more. Enter it as a regular loop, when your vertical from the 1/4 of the loop add lots of negative so it maintains it's forward momentum, keep the elevator steady the whole time. You'll end up flying backwards inverted for a second or two, but keep holding the elevator. As it points straight down start adding in lots of positive collective and level out.
• The Split-S is a half loop and half roll. You can choose if you roll first or loop first. If you roll to inverted first you pull out right side up with a half loop. To gain altitude, do a half loop to inverted, and then roll to right side up.
• Inverted autos are done by hitting throttlehold while inverted up high. You add positive collective to maintain rotor RPM and as late as possible you roll to right side up, regain your RPM and land in the last second. Hard to do!
• Fly inverted, and do all of the aerobatics you can do, inverted.
• Fly backwards, and do all the aerobatics you can do, backwards.
• Try doing big circles in front of you while rolling.
• Try doing big circles in front of you while pirouetting.
• Try doing extremely tight circles (10ft diameter at 75 degree bank) with near full collective.
• Combine pirouettes and flips to do strange looking "pirouetting tumbles"
• You will soon realize that there are endless tricks and maneuvers that the heli can do. Have fun!

 

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Introduction to Using Lithium Polymer (Li Poly) Batteries in Your RC Helicopter

Lithium Polymer batteries are currently considered the best electric power source available for use in electric rc helicopter kits. The reason for this is that lithium battery packs are significantly lighter than NiMH or NiCD packs, and have higher capacity for the same size. Over the last five years they have worked their way into the hobby market, and in addition to being used in electric rc helicopter kits they are also common in rc boats, cars, and airplanes. Their low weight and high capacity make them ideal for long flight times, while also providing more power.

Understanding Lithium Polymer Battery Specifications:

Lithium Batteries are also know as LiPo, Li-Po, LiPoly, and Li-Poly. What do all the lithium battery specifications mean? The values that are the most important are:

Pack voltage (depends on cell count; each cell is 3.7 V)

Capacity (mAh)

“C” rating (describes the rate at which power can be drawn from the battery)

Lipo Battery Cell Voltage

The nominal voltage of each cell in the pack is 3.7V, but this can go down to 3.3V during discharge, and up to 4.2V when fully charged. A battery pack is composed of two or more cells put together in series for increased voltage, or in parallel for increased capacity. A 2 pack with 2 cells in series would be rated at 7.4V (2x 3.7V).
The battery pack configuration is denoted by the number of cells in series and the number of cells in parallel. A 3s2p pack would have three cells in series, and 2 cells in parallel, using a total of 6 (3×2) cells. A 4000mAh 3s2p pack would have a capacity of 4000mAh (2 x 2000mAh), and a voltage of 11.1V (3 x 3.7V). It would internally consist of six 3.7V 2000mAh lithium polymer cells. The cells would be doubled up (the 2p part of 3s2p) to get 4000mAh, and there would be three in series (the 3s part of 3s2p) to get 11.1V (3 x 3.7V).

The “C” Rating

The “C” rating describes how quickly a battery can be discharged. A 2000mAh LiPo battery with a “C” rating of 1C continuous would mean it should not be discharged any faster than 2000mA or 2A, which would take one hour. A 2000mAh pack rated for 12C continuous would be able to discharge at 12 times its capacity (12 x 2000mA = 24000mA or 24A) at which rate it would discharge in 1/12th of an hour. Using a pack with a higher C rating than you require will leave some room for safety, and extend the life of your battery.

Continuous Current:

If you know how much continuous current will be drawn and the capacity of the pack you want to use, you can easily determine what C rating you require. If you are drawing 5A from a 1320mAh pack, simply take the current and divide by the capacity: 5A = 5000mA, 5000mA / 1320mAh = 3.8C.

Burst Current:

LiPo batteries are also given a C rating in terms of burst, which is how quickly the battery is able to discharge for a short time. A burst rating of 20C would mean a 2000mAh battery could supply 20 x 2000mA = 40000mA or 40A for a few seconds.

Selecting the Best LiPo Battery for Your RC Helicopter

To select a battery for your rc helicopter, you first need to know what voltage you require and how much current you will be drawing continuously.
If the motor in your rc helicopter is rated to work with 11.1V, you would need a 3 cell battery.
If you need to draw 20A, and you would like your rc helicopter to have a 10 minute (1/6th of an hour = 6C) flight, you would need a battery with 20A / 6 = 3.3A = 3300mAh.
This means you would need to put a 3s 3300mAh battery with a C rating of 6 or higher in your rc helicopter.

There is a LiPo battery for almost any electric RC helicopter.

Always Remember These LiPo Safety Instructions:

Remove the battery pack from your rc helicopter before charging.
Only use chargers designed to work properly with lithium polymer batteries.
Always place your LiPo on a fire-proof surface while charging or use a LipoSack.
Never leave your battery unattended while it is charging.
Never charge a lithium battery if it is below 3.0V per cell.
Never charge a lithium battery that is puffed up, or damaged in any way.

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TECH TIP : How to set up 120 Degree CCPM    (TREX and others)

This is a quick way to set up your CCPM heli with a JR radio. I am not sure if this would work with other brands but may?

1. The first thing we do is get the 3 swash servos plugged in. The left front servo can be plugged into the AILERON channel, the right front servo can be plugged into the AUX 1 channel (these two can be reversed if you want to). The rear servo will always be plugged into the ELEVATOR channel. Just to note……….left and right are as if you were sitting in the heli looking out the front windscreen……….just like your car.
2. Once the servos are plugged in, we now go straight to the pitch! Push the throttle stick of your radio up and see which direction your 3 servos move. You want all 3 servos to move so the swash would be moved up or down, doesn’t matter at this point. Use  the SERVO REVERSING function of your radio to make changes until all 3 servos move properly. Once all 3 servos move so when you advance the throttle stick of your radio, the swash would go up or down at all three points, we move on to making sure the pitch, aileron and elevator channels move correctly.
3. You now go into the SWASH MENU of your radio to get things moving in the correct direction. NEVER use SERVO REVERSING again! As you look at the SWASH MENU you will see the 3 channels, Pitch, Aileron, and Elevator. They will all be set at +60. Start with PITCH, increase throttle and if the swash does not go up, change the +60 to a –60. Then go to AILERON, if it does not move correctly, change the +60 to a –60. Then go to the ELEVATOR, if it does not move correctly, change the +60 to a –60.
4. There you have it…………….very easy to do. Just get the 3 servos all moving in the correct direction using servo reversing and then use the swash menu to get the 3 channels moving correctly.

For a excellent video of what this is all about, go to this link. The video is produced by Bob White aka “Finlesss”. Thanks much to Finless for all his efforts and help :) :).      CCPM Servo Setup

Lenny