freestyle
Veteran
Location: Redmond WA USA
| On the one hand, maybe it will give you a tiny amount of extra lift. On the other hand, with +13 and no motor, the rotor is basically going to quit working for you, and a slower rotor is more likely to hit the boom due to lower centripetal force keeping the blades from dipping down.
Also, the lower your pitch range is, the easier it is to work the collective control smoothly and precisely. It's like dual rates - if you have less control throw available, it's easier to be smooth.
A couple years ago I accidentally set up my heli with +/- 6 degrees or something like that. Having no idea what I'd just done to my pitch range, I shot a couple autos. I was disappointed in the climbout I was getting, and there was no reserve to the autos, but those were the smoothest autos I had ever done. It was fun so I did a couple more. Then I brought the heli back to the bench to figure out why the climbout was so bad... you can imagine my surprise when I found out how little pitch I had available. I was kinda bummed too... for a minute there I thought I'd just gotten good at autos.  You'd think that only 6 degrees on top would make things harder, but, since the heli was coming down more slowly than I was used to (probably -2 or so), and because I had such fine control over the collective (12 degrees pitch range instead of 16 is like having a 75% dual rate), the autos went great every time. I had no reserve, but I didn't need it.
Now, I don't recommend doing this - it was only a mistake on my part, and it could have ended badly... but it taught me something about pitch ranges and autos. If you do an auto right, you don't need that much positive pitch. If you have less pitch range, you have finer control, and that can make you a smoother pilot all by itself.
So, I don't run any extra pitch for autos.
Practice autos for a while and pay attention to how much collective you're giving it when you touch down. If the stick is all the way at the top, you're at risk of a boom strike (especially with 13 on top), so practice some more until you can touch down with just a little more pitch than you would normally hover with. With practice you'll probably find that you don't need 13 on top. So why not reduce the pitch range to +10 on top - it will probably make you about 15% smoother right away. |
