Duration

[danyalukin]

Ideally, about how much time should the helicopter spend in each of the following three stages: lifting, stabilization, and falling?

Thanks!

Mine goes about as follows: 30-40 sec climb, 60-80 sec stable period, and a pretty fast (20 - 30 sec) descent.

[illusionist]

My helicopter got 2:15 minutes at regionals, completely blew away all others.. NY is in general not to hot with flying events...
But then again, i didnt wind the rubber to its fullest because i was using some stupid orings which ripped before the rubber did
So realistically, my helicopter has a 2:30 - 2:40 potential, throwing it out there for the anxious competitive people to know.
Oh, and the flying cite - a regular gym - ~20ft

Wow... Congratulations! What was the ceiling like in the gym? If it had the beams, then that is trully impressive. Everytime I have flown mine in a gym, they have gotten stuck

[SFCMS]

Should the length of the motorstick be longer or shorter?

[smartkid222]

yes

[jander14indoor]

You do realize this board has NO official standing and probably won't help convince your coach?

That said, the rules pretty clearly seem to allow kits, no issue. But you should really ask this through your official NC state channels to get an official answer that MIGHT convince your coach.

In addition, if you have the time and money, buy and build a kit to learn from it and then build your own improved one from scratch. Not that hard, the available kits are good, doubt they are optimized yet in this first year. Might be easier than convincing your coach.

Jeff Anderson
Livonia, MI

[Mr. Cool]

Does anyone have any advice on how to keep the helicopter from rising too fast? We practiced in a 30 foot gym and it goes straight up to the rafters and ends pretty badly. We even got it stuck up there for over an hour before getting creative and managed to get it down. Is there some kind of trick to getting a slower ascent? Is it more torque less winds, or more winds less torque? I'm really not sure what type of rubber we are using...

Thanks for the advice!

[jander14indoor]

If you are quickly banging off the ceiling, you have MORE than enough torque for that site. I'd suggest trying thinner rubber, more turns to get back to near the current launch torque, but not quite.

Jeff Anderson
Livonia, MI

[Mr. Cool]

If you are quickly banging off the ceiling, you have MORE than enough torque for that site. I'd suggest trying thinner rubber, more turns to get back to near the current launch torque, but not quite.

Jeff Anderson
Livonia, MI

Our regionals is in one week. We can use what we've got right now (the site will have a much higher ceiling), but if you have any info on what we can do to use our current rubber effectively, that would be much appreciated. I'm assuming since we are rising too fast then we have too much torque? But then it would also need enough torque to stay airborn once it gets to a max height, correct?

[jander14indoor]

Like Wright Stuff, maximum duration is a subtle mix of matching rotor design to rubber. If you can't change your rubber, change your rotor, probably increase the pitch in this case to slow it down and reduce lift. Problem is, you'll give up lift later in the flight as the torque drops. That's why I suggested changing the rubber. You have enough lift, too much, use a thinner, longer motor and stay in the sweet spot longer.

As to torque to climb vs torque to maintain altitude, the first is always higher than the second. Think about it, basic force equation. If lift equals wt, you stay at same height. To climb lift MUST exceed wt, the only way to get more lift is to spin a given rotor faster, generating more drag, requiring more torque to spin it faster, and so on.

Jeff Anderson
Livonia, MI

[lllazar]

So our JV team is having trouble and i thought i'd act as some correspondence. I couldn't solve their problems or help them out myself, so of course this is where i turned

They managed to get the copter flying - it gets up to the ceiling (we were testing in the school hallway for this), floats for 10 seconds, and starts falling. I see the rotors hitting the ceiling a lot as they reach the ceiling - is this why it falls so soon?

Btw, specs on the copter:

1/8 rubber, full 2 grams is utilize of course
Copter is 4.13 grams
I won't indulge on the rotor design, but i will say it's fairly decent, and they are well balanced
It's the typically fixed rotor at bottom, free rotor at top design
Yep, that's about all i can think of. Thanks for any help!