Question about tail servo movement

[orbitalgolem]

I just added a V200D03 to the hangar and as part of pre-flight prep, I inspected the movement of the tail rudder servo with my Devo 7. I noticed that, unlike my V120D02S, the rudder limit is reached on either side with somewhere between 75-80% stick movement. I checked the rudder extent pot setting and it's allowing full rudder movement. With my V120D02S, I reach full rudder limit at the end of stick movement.

Rudder sub-trim is set to zero.

Is this normal for the V200D03 tail servo? I've dialed in a bunch of positive rudder expo because I'm concerned that it might spin much faster than expected.

[majic1]

That is actually normal. Mine does the same thing. This heli has a lot of torque and it doesn't take very much rudder imput to get the tail to move. As you said, it does spin much faster that you would expect.

Have you taken it out and flown it yet?

When I first flew mine, I set the D/R's to 80% and set the Expo's to +20 to get a feel for how the heli was going to respond to stick inputs. Then slowly reduced the expo's and increased the D/R's.

[orbitalgolem]

Thanks for the reply!

The maiden flight was a fair success - no crashes, though the tail began fluttering back and forth a bit near the end of the battery. I was happy to get her down safely. Had to adjust the swash a bit to eliminate some backward drift to the right. Several quick questions:

• What are the stock elevator and aileron gyro settings? Any recommendations beyond those?
  
• Does the tail start to flutter a bit when the battery is near the end?
  
• What is the best tail gyro setting? The tail was wagging a little with 80%. Would 75% be better?
  

[majic1]

If you're getting tail wag, it usually means your gyro gains are set too high.

Not sure what you mean by stock elevator and aileron gyro settings. Are you referring to the trim pot settings?

The 'Mix' switch is your gyro gain select and the default settings for the Mix switch on the V200 are:

Pos=0 (all the way up) = 75%
Pos=1 (in the middle) = 70%
Pos=2 (all the way down) = 40%

If you have your switch settings correct with the Mix switch in Pos=0 and still getting tail wag try kicking the switch down to Pos=1 to reduce the gyro gain a little and see if that helps.

Since every heli is different, what works for my heli may not work for yours. The Mix switch settings are adjustable so I would tell you to turn down the gains until it stops the tail wag.