Sloping Off - September 2004
The Robbe Eolo Saga
(Or how I learned to love Helicopters)
by Clive Spencer
I have finally done something, which I said that I would never do. No, not that! I have purchased a model helicopter. I know, I know, I did say that they were inventions of the devil, were boring, only being seen going up & down, needing the reflexes of a cat to control & the bank balance of the Getty's for repairs. In my defence I have been seduced by the plethora of small electric models invading our indoor meetings. I have also been mightily impressed by the way Neil has learned to fly these miniature machines in the last six months, & has moved on to bigger & better things. So when Keith Dalton said that he was selling his Robbi Eolo at a very reasonable price, & before considering the consequences of my actions, I had raided my piggy bank and purchased said machine.
The Eolo is an sub C eight cell machine of about a metre span, do you refer to the rotor diameter as the span? This is ideal for me as all my electric models run on these battery packs. Having got my hands on the Eolo I needed to fit the receiver, gyro & speed controller, Keith had kindly left the servos in the machine for me. I had a spare receiver but had no idea which gyro or speed controller to use. Looking in that fountain of knowledge known as the Internet, it appeared that other Eolo owners where using a CSM HLG200 gyro & an Ikarus400 speed controller. A trip to Channel 4 & the depletion of more pocket money acquired the requisite items. Having rewired the motor & fitted the speed controller & gyro I was ready to go.
This is when the real trouble started. The servo centring was different to the original JR set up of Keith's & some were reversed. After much playing I managed to sort this out but the cyclic controls were doing some very strange things. When I opened the throttle/collective the swashplate moved half way up & then returned to its original position. Now I'm completely baffled & need help from someone who knows about these things. I really need someone who uses the same transmitter make as mine & has knowledge of setting up electric model helicopters. This reduced the candidates to one, Trevor Hewson, whom I rang & whined pathetically about my trials & tribulations regarding the setting up on this model. As usual with all our club members, help was immediately forthcoming and a time & place agreed, namely Trevor's house, to which I readily agreed, as the tea & biscuits are always excellent there.
I arrived with model & tranny in hand only to get no reply at the door. Had Trevor forgotten, not likely as he is probably the most organised person in the whole club. I thought that he must have had a sudden urgent appointment; you know the type you get when some idiot wants help sorting out his model helicopter. Rather disappointed, I wended my way home. A phone call later & it transpired that he & Mary had gone walk-about & lost track of time. That's what he told me anyway. Trevor spent the next two hours methodically setting up the Eolo, the only problem area being the heading lock gyro. The transmitter manual requires the gyro to be connected to channel 6 & the tail servo to channel 4, which I had already done. This was patently wrong for this type of gyro and caused us some confusion. Having finally plugged the gyro into channel 4 & the tail servo into the gyro things improved rapidly although the gyro was now reversed. This was corrected by the simple means of remounting the thing upside down per the instructions. The throttle & pitch curves, whatever they are, were set up similarly to Trevor's Logo 10 helicopter. All that remained to do was to tidy up the wiring & mount the receiver & gyro securely. I did these using self-adhesive pads & Velcro, plus some foam padding between them.
By this time I was running out of excuses to fly, so when Neil rang up & said that he was going to Howard's that evening I charged up the batteries & toddled off the flying site. On arrival I was confronted by the same motley crew who butchered my Extreme wings the week before in an attempt to make the retaining bolts fit. To make a short story long they decided that my carefully constructed radio installation left much to be desired & ripped it all apart. Apparently you do not mount gyros on Velcro touching other components. Steve Morris produced a receiver pack, which avoided connecting up the main power pack. Neil ripped off all my nice Velcro & remounted the gyro & receiver. A discussion/argument took place as to the gyro orientation. Trevor & I stood back; we had been there before. The consensus was that it was upside down so once again it was repositioned. Finally we were ready to fly. Neil at the controls, first rudder input & model turns viciously in the opposite direction. Gyro wrong way round, Trevor & I hide our smirks, it was correct all along. Gyro repositioned & another attempt to fly was made. Wonder of wonders, the little Eolo lifted off very smoothly & sat in the hover without any extra trim being required, a tribute to Trevor's original set up. Neil the went walk-about with Eolo about a metre in front of him, chatted to Phil Wheeler on the flight line & then walked back still with the Eolo flying in front of him, a most impressive piece of flying. After landing it Neil handed the tranny to me. Shock horror, what have I done? It suddenly dawned on me that I have now got to learn to fly the thing. But that's another story.
(Click here to go straight to part 2 of the story, published in the December 2004 edition of Sloping Off).
