iFlyHelis

I hear a lot about how fragile collective pitch helicopters are.  Now don’t get me wrong, they definitely don’t take crashes well, but can survive a lot more abuse if you just use throttle hold.

The Align T-Rex 450 Pro is a very popular heli, but a lot of people advise against it because “you will easily strip the torque-tube gears.”  I’ve even seen “don’t try to land it in tall grass, you’ll strip the tt gears if the blades touch it.”  Even worse than the warnings to newbies are the people who must be wasting a lot of money that own one saying things like “I have to replace my TT gears every few flights because of a rough landing.”  This isn’t necessary!

Exhibit A:  My 450 Pro

It's had its fair share of rough landings, but it keeps on trucking

If you look closely, you’ll see that the landing gear is missing a chunk, and the canopy is cracked.  The canopy is cracked because my RX failed when it was 40 feet up.  It plummeted straight down, and well, my canopy didn’t enjoy that.  But because the throttle cut out and the blades lost most of their momentum, I literally only broke the skids, the canopy, and the blades.  My main shaft didn’t bend, my feathering shaft is fine, and luckily it landed with no damage to the tail.

Exhibit B:  Yes you can get grass on your tail blades

You can't land in tall grass you say?

In regards to not being able to chop some grass with a TT tail, just take a look at the stains on my tail blades, and understand that I have yet to strip a gear.  I always kill my throttle at least a foot of the ground, and descend slowly so I don’t have much rotor inertia by the time I land.  At one point I flew in a field with really thick unmowed grass.  It was so tall that when I landed in it, it get tangled into the tail rotor and quickly pulled the whole drive train to a stop.  No stripping though.  The other important thing to do is to keep your tail blades loose.  That way if they hit a little grass they just bounce instead of trying to fight the rotor’s inertia.

So if you’re worried about breaking your heli, remember throttle hold.  It will save TT gears even in the roughest of landings, and even a 30 foot drop won’t cause too much damage if the rotor is slow enough.

The name’s Church, Dan Church.  A year ago, my friend brought a small co-axial helicopter to work.  Within 24 hours, I’d ordered one for myself.  Within 10 days (and before the co-axial even arrived in the mail), I’d ordered my first collective pitch heli (the pile of junk it was).  It wasn’t long before I upgraded to another, and a year later I have far too large a collection of helicopters, the ability to actually fly them, and a bigger addiction than ever.

Along the way, I’ve hit some weird weird issues.  I’ve had some zany ideas.  I’ve had plenty of crashes, and needed to use some clever problem solving to get my birds back in the air.  I’m going to share all of the knowledge that I can here, so that you can hopefully learn, or at least laugh a little at my expense.