Build thread at: Paul's Goblin 500 Build
Maiden!
[video=youtube_share;eAPkF5iBl2c]http://youtu.be/eAPkF5iBl2c[/video]
Maiden!
[video=youtube_share;eAPkF5iBl2c]http://youtu.be/eAPkF5iBl2c[/video]
Paul's Goblin 500 Flights
- Thread starter pvolcko
- Start date
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- Tags
- 500 goblin goblin 500
It is the bane of my backyard heli flying existence. 
Half of it is gone. Fell down during the summer (root system rotted out). When I was first flying the 550 back here it was very annoying. But I've gotten better and I'm used to flying around it now. It's only actually gotten in the way of a heli once so far. I was flying from closer to my house all the way back there with the 300. Lost depth perception and ended up hitting it.
We'll see how it does over the winter. Might come down in the spring.
Half of it is gone. Fell down during the summer (root system rotted out). When I was first flying the 550 back here it was very annoying. But I've gotten better and I'm used to flying around it now. It's only actually gotten in the way of a heli once so far. I was flying from closer to my house all the way back there with the 300. Lost depth perception and ended up hitting it.
We'll see how it does over the winter. Might come down in the spring.
Graham Lawrie
Well-Known Member
Very nice Paul Good maiden I am still at the stage when I maiden after changes or repairs I still put my training gear on as I have low skills Keep the videos coming
Good maiden I am still at the stage when I maiden after changes or repairs I still put my training gear on as I have low skills Keep the videos coming
Ken Jackson
Active Member
Looks great!
Ken
Ken
Flight 3:
[video=youtube_share;76KXxHToDp8]http://youtu.be/76KXxHToDp8[/video]
Increased pitch gain on gov setting to attempt to prevent the obvious motor power drop on collective moves. It made the tail kick out issue worse. Still running 2450 headspeed on this vid. Still getting used to how sensitive the collective is on this heli. Slightest deviations from ideal on rolls and flips and they wander all over, as you'll see.
[video=youtube_share;76KXxHToDp8]http://youtu.be/76KXxHToDp8[/video]
Increased pitch gain on gov setting to attempt to prevent the obvious motor power drop on collective moves. It made the tail kick out issue worse. Still running 2450 headspeed on this vid. Still getting used to how sensitive the collective is on this heli. Slightest deviations from ideal on rolls and flips and they wander all over, as you'll see.
Flight 6:
[video=youtube_share;IVbKL1FDSek]http://youtu.be/IVbKL1FDSek[/video]
4 and 5 un-recorded at club field. While there I discovered what was causing the motor power issue: current limiter. The motor is rated at 80A continuous max. Figure maybe 160A spikes as a top end, right? I was seeing 170+A spikes on hard collective moves. So I used the pitch curve to lower min and max pitch and put it up again, worked like a charm, no more kick out and no more power drop. Logs showed spikes of around 110-120A which is reasonable for moment they last. So I have to go through ikon setup and adjust the min/max collective pitch to be more around what I have now via Tx. Then I can go back to full range pitch on the Tx. AS it is now I didn't modify the intermediate points on the curve so it is effectively an bit of inverse expo, making it twitchy around center, which is probably contributing to my issues with how sensitive this model is to collective "mistakes" while doing rolls/loops, etc.
So flight 6 is the next day and I'm starting to move some other settings, like motor advance timing, back to defaults or where I wanted them originally. I also tried out the high Idle up gov speed of 2700RPM. As you'll see, the tail kick out came back a little bit. Looking over the logs afterwards it was clear that it was a lack of headroom that was resulting in this. At 2700RPM the ESC is running about 93%. Without enough oomph left in the motor, it would kick out a little bit. So I've adjusted the top end gov speed to 2600RPM and will test in the next flight.
[video=youtube_share;IVbKL1FDSek]http://youtu.be/IVbKL1FDSek[/video]
4 and 5 un-recorded at club field. While there I discovered what was causing the motor power issue: current limiter. The motor is rated at 80A continuous max. Figure maybe 160A spikes as a top end, right? I was seeing 170+A spikes on hard collective moves. So I used the pitch curve to lower min and max pitch and put it up again, worked like a charm, no more kick out and no more power drop. Logs showed spikes of around 110-120A which is reasonable for moment they last. So I have to go through ikon setup and adjust the min/max collective pitch to be more around what I have now via Tx. Then I can go back to full range pitch on the Tx. AS it is now I didn't modify the intermediate points on the curve so it is effectively an bit of inverse expo, making it twitchy around center, which is probably contributing to my issues with how sensitive this model is to collective "mistakes" while doing rolls/loops, etc.
So flight 6 is the next day and I'm starting to move some other settings, like motor advance timing, back to defaults or where I wanted them originally. I also tried out the high Idle up gov speed of 2700RPM. As you'll see, the tail kick out came back a little bit. Looking over the logs afterwards it was clear that it was a lack of headroom that was resulting in this. At 2700RPM the ESC is running about 93%. Without enough oomph left in the motor, it would kick out a little bit. So I've adjusted the top end gov speed to 2600RPM and will test in the next flight.
Kinda lost track of my G500 flights, so I'm resetting at 10. This is my test flight after fixing my servo mounting (two screws backed out in flight on the elevator servo, resulting in a very tricky landing sans-elevator control). Also first non-FPV video with the new Hero3+. Seems to handle color balance much better than the Hero 1. Narrow FOV setting on this one which gave me more resolution after cropping in.
Flight was iffy. I'm definitely out of practice. Stationary rolls were wandering. Half piro flips were U G L Y. Slow/large tictocs were okay (little bit of drop). But it was fun and felt good to fly again after such a long break.
[video=youtube_share;lWSVDSC3XSk]http://youtu.be/lWSVDSC3XSk[/video]
Flight was iffy. I'm definitely out of practice. Stationary rolls were wandering. Half piro flips were U G L Y. Slow/large tictocs were okay (little bit of drop). But it was fun and felt good to fly again after such a long break.
[video=youtube_share;lWSVDSC3XSk]http://youtu.be/lWSVDSC3XSk[/video]
Last edited:
Island Breeze
Senior Rc-Help Member
Awesome Paul..
Ken Jackson
Active Member
Looking good Paul sure wish we would get a break in the weather here. Flew my 130x Tuesday but haven't flown my big guy in a month and a half.
Ken
Ken
Flight 20: (reset again, need to keep better track of my flights)
Large backwards loops. Half piro flips (need to work these a lot more, lost something over the winter, starting with the half to inverted and hold). Tic tocs toward the end (getting better, especially with the faster roll rates). Nothing too amazing. Still working on getting the Ikon settings dialed in where I want them. Need to increase tail piro rate. Roll rates are good.
Sorry for the fuzzy video quality. Camera was on my head at an angle. Rotating the video into proper orientation fuzzed it out big time. May try re-rendering to see if I can find a better quality setting for this case.
Large backwards loops. Half piro flips (need to work these a lot more, lost something over the winter, starting with the half to inverted and hold). Tic tocs toward the end (getting better, especially with the faster roll rates). Nothing too amazing. Still working on getting the Ikon settings dialed in where I want them. Need to increase tail piro rate. Roll rates are good.
Sorry for the fuzzy video quality. Camera was on my head at an angle. Rotating the video into proper orientation fuzzed it out big time. May try re-rendering to see if I can find a better quality setting for this case.
Last edited by a moderator:
So I was flying the Gob500 yesterday and about 2 minutes into it I'm going some elevator, tail down tic tocs. Practicing my left/right movement control with ruddering during the vertical phase. Went right across the field no problems and was in the middle of yawing nose left to setup to tic toc back across the field when it just loses motor power.
No warning. No soft cutoff. The mains just start spinning down.
I'm vertical, tail down, about 30 ft off the ground.
I managed to get it leveled out, upright, and heading in a nose left (heading across my field of flight) orientation. So, power to the Rx and servos is fine. Only the ESC is out for some reason. The rotors were slowing down quick. I had the presence of mind to go to a little bit of negative pitch to try to preserve some head speed for when it got closer to the ground. But at 20ft up and practically no forward speed nor headwind there isn't a lot of distance to preserve, much less build, head speed.
So it got down near the ground very quickly. I flared back a bit and put some positive pitch into it so soften the hit, but it was going in, so I quick hit a little forward elevator to relevel it for impact. It hit pretty good. Broke the landing skids and brackets. Tail boom and fin looked okay. No evident blade damage (though i didn't do a close inspection yet). No frame damage from the looks of it.
Ordered up the stuff I knew needed replacing (going with some lynx fiberglass skids instead of the stock SAB CF ones, little cheaper). Will take a look to see what, if anything else is needed.
No idea what happened. There was an unusual beeping pattern coming from it. But I didn't have the presence of mind to take note of what it was. The Rx sat had a solid light so no connection or power loss there. There is a small spot on one of the motor lead connections where the shrink tube rubbed away, but neither of the others was exposed and the canopy is fiberglass so it shouldn't have conducted anything to cause a short or issue with the motor timing/ESC. Nothing was obscenely hot when I got the canopy off it. Battery was at 3.85V per cell, plenty to go. I haven't checked the ESC logs yet. Maybe it overheated or there is something in the log to indicate what happened.
Only difference on this flight compared to many others this summer was that I was using the highest rolling rate setting I have setup. I almost never use it, and never for an extended period. This time I was really laying into the cyclic on tic tocs, using as little collective as I could to maintain height and keep that tail looking as stationary as possible in the sky as I could manage. Maybe I overstressed the drivetrain and power system in a way I hadn't before?
No warning. No soft cutoff. The mains just start spinning down.
I'm vertical, tail down, about 30 ft off the ground.
I managed to get it leveled out, upright, and heading in a nose left (heading across my field of flight) orientation. So, power to the Rx and servos is fine. Only the ESC is out for some reason. The rotors were slowing down quick. I had the presence of mind to go to a little bit of negative pitch to try to preserve some head speed for when it got closer to the ground. But at 20ft up and practically no forward speed nor headwind there isn't a lot of distance to preserve, much less build, head speed.
So it got down near the ground very quickly. I flared back a bit and put some positive pitch into it so soften the hit, but it was going in, so I quick hit a little forward elevator to relevel it for impact. It hit pretty good. Broke the landing skids and brackets. Tail boom and fin looked okay. No evident blade damage (though i didn't do a close inspection yet). No frame damage from the looks of it.
Ordered up the stuff I knew needed replacing (going with some lynx fiberglass skids instead of the stock SAB CF ones, little cheaper). Will take a look to see what, if anything else is needed.
No idea what happened. There was an unusual beeping pattern coming from it. But I didn't have the presence of mind to take note of what it was. The Rx sat had a solid light so no connection or power loss there. There is a small spot on one of the motor lead connections where the shrink tube rubbed away, but neither of the others was exposed and the canopy is fiberglass so it shouldn't have conducted anything to cause a short or issue with the motor timing/ESC. Nothing was obscenely hot when I got the canopy off it. Battery was at 3.85V per cell, plenty to go. I haven't checked the ESC logs yet. Maybe it overheated or there is something in the log to indicate what happened.
Only difference on this flight compared to many others this summer was that I was using the highest rolling rate setting I have setup. I almost never use it, and never for an extended period. This time I was really laying into the cyclic on tic tocs, using as little collective as I could to maintain height and keep that tail looking as stationary as possible in the sky as I could manage. Maybe I overstressed the drivetrain and power system in a way I hadn't before?
