I have been flying helicopters for a while and recently bought an Aperture (Hobbyking) drone which uses a Pixhawk compatible controller. In the setting I found that it can be set up for a helicopter.
Now I have an older Trex 600 sitting on the shelf, I converted this to to a fbl head and bought a Bell 222 fuselage. I used a ZYX fbl controller and wasn’t too happy as the tail would go rogue once in a while. I put this on the shelf to work on it some day…
So my idea is to install a Pixhawk controller and ditch the ZYX unit. Would this controller be able to handle this? There is a superfast digital coreless servo on the tail.
I would not do any aerobatics or crazy stuff with this one, rather running a low head speed and set up for smooth scale flying.
Radio is a Taranis E, this should have all the functions I need.
Hi Oliver, and welcome to the world of Traditional Helicopers!
The Pixhawk will handle your scale model with ease, although it is probably a bit of overkill being the Pixhawk and associated firmware has full autopilot and waypoint flying capabilities. But on the other hand if you intend on competing in scale competions where even one wrong twitch or lack of smoothness in takeoff or hover will lose points with the judges, the Pixhawk will definitely make it fly like a real 222, properly tuned for scale flight
You are not the only person who has noted issues with the ZYX FBL units. They are sort of a low-end unit, their main feature being quite affordable.
You might loose some scale looks if you put the GPS-compass unit outside of the scale body. Also the Telemetry aerial will show. But you can keep it under cover if there is now interference.
I am just working on a Jet Ranger who has my TR700E inside. I don’t care about true scale and have even a 3 blade Align rotor head and tail. All my sensors are sticking out. Still looks like a Jet Ranger but on Steroids.
I hope I can keep everything inside the fuselage. My plan is to keep the standard canopy until I got it all dialed in. Then put it in the fuselage, It’ll probably be spring before I have it all ready, but looking forward to it.
