FBL Gyro Align 3GX V5 Rudder input is super sensitive at spool-up

[JJL]

After having some problems with the tail snapping or kicking back every time I gave any rudder input on my Trex 450 pro during flight, I updated from v4 to v5 hoping to finally solve the tail problem.

After re-doing the complete 3GX setup, including the tail, today I tried to fly it for the first time after de v5 update, unfortunately when spooling up the tail was so sensitive that even the smallest movement of the rudder stick makes the heli do almost a complete 360 deg turn on the ground, specially if I move the rudder stick to the left, tail moving right.

Moving the stick to the right, tail moving left, has the same effect in regards to how much movement I get from such a small rudder input, but not as bad as when I moved the stick to the left.

After that first spool up I lowered the tail gain, on the Align software, from 70 to 50 and tried one more time to take off, but unfortunately I had the same results as before...one small movement of the rudder stick and the tail would react so violently that I decided not to try and lift off because I was afraid that I would not be able to control it if it reacted like that during flight.

Currently using a Futaba radio and my normal throttle curve is set to 0, 65, 80. 80. 80 using the align 450M motor with stock pinion.

The weird part is that I never had this problem with v4 of the Align 3GX software, I did have tail problems but during spool-up I was able to control the tail using the same radio and software configuration that I have now, the only exception is that in the software, the tail gain was left to 70.

Any help at solving this would be appreciated.


Regards,

JJL

 

[Derek]

Chances are, you'll have to go back through the DIR setup, the Governor setup, and all that. I had to go back through and redo it all and it really helped.

 

[JJL]

Chances are, you'll have to go back through the DIR setup, the Governor setup, and all that. I had to go back through and redo it all and it really helped.

Thank you for your input Derek but after the update I did everything as if it was the first time I was setting up the 3gx.

 

[Derek]

Are your travel limits and dual rates set where they are suppose to be?

 

[JJL]

Are your travel limits and dual rates set where they are suppose to be?

I set the travel limits according to the manual and not using dual rates, left them at 100% as I normally do.

I just remembered something I did that could have some influence on what's going on......After I updated and re-did my setup, I started getting some glitches on one of my swash servos, after investigating on the internet, some folks where saying that they where having the same problems after updating to v5 and that they had solved it by re-loading the update on the gyro so I proceeded to do it.

The glitch was gone and I did check that all of my parameters where not changed and they weren't, the only thing that I didn't do after the re-load was the tail set-up, maybe after reloading the software my tail config was reset on the gyro but then again, all my other parameters where unchanged so I have my doubts that my tail setup was modified.

Anyway, will redo the tail setup to see what happens and if I get a chance I'm going to try to spool up tomorrow to see if that was the problem.



JJL

 

[dwmoore]

I had that problem one day after having V5 dialed in. Nearly crashed, spinning insanely. I unplugged the battery and reinitialized the gyro, and while doing that found that my tx had gotten switched to rate mode. Before I spooled up I flipped the switch to HH mode and all was good.

 

[JJL]

I had that problem one day after having V5 dialed in. Nearly crashed, spinning insanely. I unplugged the battery and reinitialized the gyro, and while doing that found that my tx had gotten switched to rate mode. Before I spooled up I flipped the switch to HH mode and all was good.

Glad you where able to save your heli, it can be quite intimidating when it happens.

In my case when it first happened to me the first thing I did was to check the radio to make sure I was in HH mode and then verified the gyo to see that the green status light was on and it was.

JJL

 

[JJL]

Quick update on my situation..... I have re-done the tail setup on the 3GX, even moved the tail slider a bit to the left (looking from behind) to counteract some of the torque at spool up, set my endpoints, even lowered my throttle curve from 0, 65, 80. 80. 80 to 0.53.70.70.70 , rechecked everything twice and headed outside to test.

Outside when I started to spool up, about mid-stick and almost light on the skids, I gave the rudder stick just a little left input to straighten the tail (like to take off as straight as I can) and the tail moved 180 deg. so the problem is still there. No matter how small of an rudder input I give on the sticks, the tail over reacts drastically. Tested on both left and right input and I'm getting the same results.

Would appreciate any help I can get cause I'm almost to the point that I'm about to give up on the 3GX altogether or try software version 3.1 as a last resort.

JJL

 

[Derek]

WOW! This is terrible! I am totally out of suggestions. Sorry buddy! I hope someone here can come up with something.

 

[JJL]

WOW! This is terrible! I am totally out of suggestions. Sorry buddy! I hope someone here can come up with something.

Thank you Derek, really appreciate you trying to help me; the truth is that I have had this heli for over 3 months and it has been a big pain. I have built and flown about 6 different types of helicopters, 4 are FBL and 2 are FB. On the FBL helis I have installed different gyros, from Beast X to the the Beast X clones (Hobbymate and HK) and never had any problems with anyone of them. Unfortunately this heli is not new, it was a used Trex 450 Pro that I bought from someone that was leaving the country and man, what disaster this has turned out to be. I have spent more money on this thing than if I had bought a new kit, from having to buy cyclic servos to having to use a dremmel with a cut-off wheel in order to remove all the screws in the frame cause the guy who built it used red thread-locker on every darn screw.

Anyway, again thank you for trying to help my friend and will keep you posted to let you know how this all turned out.

Regards from the Caribbean,

JJL

 

[JJL]

Well I'm happy so say that I finally managed to solve the problem,very easy fix indeed, and no I didn't throw the 3GX in the garbage though I must confess that I wanted to on many occasions , at noon time today I took a longer lunch break than normal, came home, uninstalled the 3GX v5 software and installed the v3.1 software, connected my heli to the computer and upgraded or rather downgraded to 3.1 .

Since I had very little time, I only did the tail set-up once again since it was fast and easy to do.

Took the heli to my rooftop and voila, the tail held very well, perhaps there was a little tendency to drift slightly to the right at lift off but I think it is my throttle curve that is a little low, it's something like 0,40, 70,70,70, and there is not enough head speed to make the tail produce sufficient thrust..anyway I did take my gyro gain from 40 something to 53 or 54.

The thing is that the tail is holding, now all I need is to go into Dir mode and verify all my setup..but I'll do that when I have more time and before I go to flying in the weekend.

Big thanks to all that chimed in to try to help.

Regards,

JJL

- - - Updated - - -

Derek, thanks a million for your help and support my friend !!!!!

Kind regards,

JJL

 

[Derek]

I'm happy that you got it sorted out. It's unfortunate that you couldn't get it to work with v5, but as long as the tail is holding and you are happy, that's what matters. Just be careful on lift off. It's been a well known curse with v3.1 that the gyro wants to tip the helicopter over. As long as you are aware of it and you can get the helicopter off the ground quickly, the flight behavior is "spot on". I had 3.1 on my 450 Pro DFC and it was a bit spooky to get the helicopter spooled up but once it was off the ground, it was rock solid. I'm using v5.0 now and I'm loving it.

So....glad you got it worked out. I do hope that you'll share some flight video soon.

Best of luck to you!

 

[JJL]

I'm happy that you got it sorted out. It's unfortunate that you couldn't get it to work with v5, but as long as the tail is holding and you are happy, that's what matters. Just be careful on lift off. It's been a well known curse with v3.1 that the gyro wants to tip the helicopter over. As long as you are aware of it and you can get the helicopter off the ground quickly, the flight behavior is "spot on". I had 3.1 on my 450 Pro DFC and it was a bit spooky to get the helicopter spooled up but once it was off the ground, it was rock solid. I'm using v5.0 now and I'm loving it.

So....glad you got it worked out. I do hope that you'll share some flight video soon.

Best of luck to you!

Thank you mate and as for the curse of v3.1 I actually saw prove of it yesterday, heli was tipping sideways to the right at the moment of lift off..but was easy enough to handle, scary part was that since I was in the rooftop there was not much space and was really close to a wall..lol.

I have a feeling, in regards to software updates and why some work on some gyros and some don't, that it depends on the manufacturing of the gyros..maybe newer gyro's work better with the newer updates while the older gyros, because of the hardware, may work better with the older software version. It's a hunch, but it does explain why some people are getting excellent results with v4 and 5 and other's, like myself, can't even get of the ground.

I mean, the only thing I did to my gyro is install v3.1, never touched Dir mode, never touched the heli setup, nothing..just installed v3.1, did the tail setup as I did on v5 and everything was fine.

Odd huh?

Again, thank you for all your support and once I get this thing setup to my liking and flying style I will work on that video.

PS- In a few weeks I'm starting my first 500 build, unfortunately because of customs and duty taxes, need to keep each order under US$ 200 or I will end up paying a bunch of money in taxes, I'm limited as to what heli I can get, so will probably get a HK 500 and substitute just about everything with Align and Tarot parts..btw, the gyro will be a Robird .....lol

Regards and take good care of u ,

JJL

 

[JJL]

Derek...quick update my friend...today, if it ever stops raining, I'm planning to go to the field and see If I can do the finishing touches on my setup and perhaps be able to finally get some flights in..

During the past few days and as I mentioned before, I was able to get v3.1 installed and setup as best as I could since I was testing on the roof and had very limited space thus I was only able to hover.

Not being one at leaving well enough alone, something that happened when I downgraded from 5.0 to 3.1 kept bugging me, during the downgrade when I checking my setup and everything was the same way I had set it during v5.0, everything but one thing...during the tail setup I noticed the gyro correction was inverted so I had to change that parameter; what if I also had the correction inverted when I was using v5,0? that could very well explain the behavior I was having with the tail during spool up.

So I took out an old netbook and installed v5.0 , so now I have v3.1 on one machine and v.50 on the other thus making it easier to switch back and forth between versions.

I installed v5.0 on the heli and headed to the roof to try it out once again, guess what? tail held much better than the other times I had tried; was able to take off and do some hovering. Did notice the tail moved about 20 to 30 deg to the right, even-though during the tail setup I never put the slider in the middle as the manual says, I usually move it a few mm to the left (looking from behind) and that usually gets the tail to hold, but in this case I need to pull it more towards the left in order to stop the slight right drift I'm getting during hover, perhaps the head speed it not to keep the tail locked, currently at 0,53,70,70,70, but when I get to the field will try my current setup with one extra turn on the link to make the slider move more towards the left; If that don't work then I'll set my throttle curve to 0,65,80,80.80 as I had originally and work on the slider from there.

One thing about v5.0 is that it the standard setup parameters makes you heli more agile than v3.1, the latter is much more tame at those parameters. I did lower my flip and roll rates to about 15 and even added some expos on my radio,(for the first time ever) , -25 on aileron/elevator and -20 on rudder (I have futaba so I use negative values to tame down the input at middle); did not add any dual rates.

Will let you know how everything worked out IF I can get to the field or even an empty parking lot.

JJL-