dragon_not_fly
Heliman
Location: US
| NO's and RO's!!You might be asking yourself, what the heck is NO's and RO's and why are they important? NO's and RO's are not just some wackiness that I have concocted, but are nmenonics that I have come up with when using FMS to more fully fly the helis in there in the 2+ months of down time I have experienced with my own heli, more about that later. NO simply stands for Normal Orientation and RO for Reverse Orientation. What's all this ruckus about orientation? What is orientation? When my heli was broken and not flying, for the first time I used FMS to try and fly a model R/C helicopter around; that is, not just try and hover it in one spot over the ground, waist high with the tail facing me. When I started flying the actual helicopter I came up with this simple saying to try and cope with all of its craziness, that saying being: fly the nose, keep the tail. This means, watch the nose of the heli for turning it, but keep the tail of the heli facing you....this simple scenario forms the very basis of my nmenonic of NO or Normal Orientation, which brings us to orientation! Orientation is your perspective or view point when watching your model fly in regards to forming the basis for control inputs to control the model......it's all relative. After a few hours I was surprised that in FMS I was able to fly the hughes fixed pitch heli at full throttle in fast circles around the airfield and was even able to consistently pull off loops with it. In these "virtual" world flights I did crash, but got more proficient. When the model's tail was either facing me directly or for the most part, I noticed that when I pushed the transmitter stick to the left for roll, the heli's body or cabin would lean to the left and it would roll to the left. When I pushed the transmitter stick to the right for roll, the heli's body would roll to the right. The same basic results could be routinely witnessed for yaw(rudder) or pivoting the nose of the heli. All of this is basic knowledge and is intuitive. NO or Normal Orientation I thought could simply be stated or witnessed, either in the simulator or the real heli as,"rudder and roll fore/aft cyclic behave normally"......I know you are saying...so what!!!!; you just said nothing! Normally is defined as, "Move the rudder or roll cyclic sticks left and the heli's nose or body will go left". The same symmetry applies going right. This is extremely important to know, you must have this so INGRAINED in your head that it is ABSOLUTELY instinct......think about stick movements while trying to fly your heli and you are heading for a crash. RO, as you probably have guessed, is the EXACT opposite of NO. RO or Reverse Orientation is very tricky to the new time flyer. RO, I thought, could simply be stated or witnessed, either in the simulator or the real heli, as,"rudder and roll fore/aft cyclic do NOT behave normally". With the inclusion of "Collective" or variable pitch rotor blades, RO also applies as in "negative pitch" as well as NO. With RO you have, "Move the rudder or roll cyclic sticks left and the heli's nose or body will go RIGHT". The same symmetry applies going right with the sticks. Remember what I said before about it's all relative?; in a RO scenario, moving the roll cyclic transmitter stick to the left will make the model tilt or bank to the right from YOUR orientation, however, if an observer were watching this scenario unfold from the TAIL of the heli, he/she would witness the heli's body or cabin tilt or bank to the left from his/her perspective; that is, for the observer it would be a NO or Normal Orientation case. Confused yet?! Don't worry, it's perfectly normal to feel confused at first with all of this, I sure was and STILL am on occasion, even when flying my real heli! A classic example of a RO scenario would be the nose in hover. A nose in hover occurs when the helicopter's NOSE is facing you the controller/observer as it is hovering. If this happens, you are in a RO scenario and all control inputs from your perspective are reversed, except for throttle, this still behaves normally; that is, move the throttle stick up and the heli will go up into the sky all things being held constant. Another aspect of RO is fore/aft cyclic controls; that is, in a nose in hover, a classic RO scenario, if you push forward or up on the fore/aft cyclic control transmitter stick, the heli will move TOWARD you, NOT away from you! If you pull toward you or down on the fore/aft cyclic control transmitter stick, the heli will move AWAY from you, NOT back toward you! I ran into many problems when first exposed to these disorientating experiences on the SIM and realized that I was trying to REMEMBER too many things when trying to control the heli in RO cases. All you need to know is two things regarding RO or Reverse Orientation, when RO takes effect when you are flying your model and when RO occurs that everything is REVERSED!!!!!!!!!!! except for throttle, assuming you are not flying upside down. Probably the most challenging thing that I have witnessed with RO is WHEN it occurs, there are many different angles and orientations a model R/C helicopter can fly at and you must be constantly computing NO/RO INSTINCTIVELY in your brain as you are controlling/observing your model. Again, I have mentioned contoller or controlling/observing....remember when flying any R/C aircraft, you are BOTH a controller and an observer; that is, you must provide the correct control inputs to keep the aircraft flying and in order to do that you must be constantly observing what your model is doing, particularly it's orientation from you. A particularly difficult orientation that I have experienced is a RO case where the heli is flying close to you with the nose of the heli perpendicular to you, this has always been challenging for me since I can not directly observe the angle of bank on the cabin of the heli.....I would be quickly thinking to myself, is it level or slightly banked, I would usually assume wrong and then instantly forget that I am in a RO scenario and would move the control stick in the wrong direction actually aggrevating the bank to the ground!!!!! I hope this helps, I know I will be practising my NO's and RO's always.........and now for the next post which will be coming soon......"flying both sticks".
Last thought, a tough RO scenario or case:
The model helicopter is flying fairly quickly, however, it is upside down, flying backwards and banking to the right from your orientation or perspective; i.e, the nose is generally facing you and you want it to slow down, stop banking, level off and hover in place with the nose facing you, but still upside down. What control input sequence will produce the desired results?? |
I have recently purchased the tail motor that goes to the Colco Thunderbird heli under the assumption that the Chinese who make it would have placed in more robust brushes in it since the STOCK Thunderbird comes with a main battery at 9.6 volts as opposed to my heli's 8.4 volts. I also bought the GWS ICS tail motor and GWS 4530 prop combo from like90.com to combat the tail motor burn out problem in which this has not been tested yet. The one thing I have noticed with the Colco Thunderbird tail motor is that it is SIGNIFICANTLY more powerful than the cheap/weak replacement tail motors that are "designed" for the DragonFly.
