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any currents in the air?

Nope, atleast none that I was able to find. This happened on both official flights... Oh well, I'll have to be better prepared for States.

Yeah I timed most the flights, and it seemed that most the people with the standard 2 rotor design, their helicopter either:
1 flipped over on the way down
2 went sideways on the way down
3 on the way up, not going straight up, alot circling up

ours went up pretty straight, with maybe a five foot drift to the west side, but otherwise stable. It did go sideways on the way down, even though we had weighted the bottom.

To my knowledge that's mostly due to a high CoG, adding ballast to the bottom of the helicopter will help with most of those issues.

Though I'm not sure if flat bladed helicopters circle more during their flight, ours did. Perhaps that is due to the fact that our flat bladed rotors had a very low pitch compared to our helical blades.

Edit: Also, maybe your rotors were not true and that could have an impact on your flight. Did you make sure that you attached them square to the motorstick and the pitch on both sides are the same? Also, were there any air currents? I remember at our states tournament the heating ducts were turned on so the helicopters behaved strangely but it wasn't very obvious.

no we were in the armory (HUGE room 90 foot ceilings) with vertually no current (not that theres any fan strong enough on earth to make a current in the middle of that gym from the sides).

I think peoples blades werent balenced or made to the same pitch

new horizon wrote:To my knowledge that's mostly due to a high CoG, adding ballast to the bottom of the helicopter will help with most of those issues.

Though I'm not sure if flat bladed helicopters circle more during their flight, ours did. Perhaps that is due to the fact that our flat bladed rotors had a very low pitch compared to our helical blades.

Edit: Also, maybe your rotors were not true and that could have an impact on your flight. Did you make sure that you attached them square to the motorstick and the pitch on both sides are the same? Also, were there any air currents? I remember at our states tournament the heating ducts were turned on so the helicopters behaved strangely but it wasn't very obvious.

Like kjhs said, we already knew the CG was high, and had added a good .2 grams of weight on the bottom (didn't want to do any more because we didn't want to make it any heavier). And I was very careful in building the rotors and assembling the copter - the pitches should be virtually the same and the rotors were squarely attached. As Steven said, the armory didn't really have any currents, since it's such a big space and the doors are farther away.
I kind of want to start building another helicopter now, but there isn't really any point until later, and I know I don't have nearly enough time to. Meh.
I think I saw a helical rotor design that performed reasonably well... I think it was some tall (well, everyone is tall to me ) blondish guy flying it. Was that anyone's?

chia wrote:

new horizon wrote:To my knowledge that's mostly due to a high CoG, adding ballast to the bottom of the helicopter will help with most of those issues.

Though I'm not sure if flat bladed helicopters circle more during their flight, ours did. Perhaps that is due to the fact that our flat bladed rotors had a very low pitch compared to our helical blades.

Edit: Also, maybe your rotors were not true and that could have an impact on your flight. Did you make sure that you attached them square to the motorstick and the pitch on both sides are the same? Also, were there any air currents? I remember at our states tournament the heating ducts were turned on so the helicopters behaved strangely but it wasn't very obvious.

Like kjhs said, we already knew the CG was high, and had added a good .2 grams of weight on the bottom (didn't want to do any more because we didn't want to make it any heavier). And I was very careful in building the rotors and assembling the copter - the pitches should be virtually the same and the rotors were squarely attached. As Steven said, the armory didn't really have any currents, since it's such a big space and the doors are farther away.
I kind of want to start building another helicopter now, but there isn't really any point until later, and I know I don't have nearly enough time to. Meh.
I think I saw a helical rotor design that performed reasonably well... I think it was some tall (well, everyone is tall to me ) blondish guy flying it. Was that anyone's?

well by that vague description it could of been... most of the teams lol

remember a sp time? I wrote down all the teams flight times


And I wouldnt start building until you know the rules for next year on weight, rotor span, rubber size and if they add a height limit

Blah, I can't talk. I meant elliptical rotor. Maybe I'm just blind, though.

And even if they change the specs around a bit, I could use the experience. I don't think I built nearly enough helicopters this year or actually tested the enough.

Wait, you said you wrote down flight times? So both top flights were over 2 minutes... and ours was fourth with 1:30... so what was in between in third?

chia wrote:Blah, I can't talk. I meant elliptical rotor. Maybe I'm just blind, though.

And even if they change the specs around a bit, I could use the experience. I don't think I built nearly enough helicopters this year or actually tested the enough.

Wait, you said you wrote down flight times? So both top flights were over 2 minutes... and ours was fourth with 1:30... so what was in between in third?

ok sorry, let me correct that: I timed MOST of them. whatever 3rd was I didnt get... sorry.
I can imagine it was in the range of 1:40-1:50