The Thunder Tiger Raptor 716 Gas flies very nice in auto flight and winds gusting to 15-17kts doesn’t even faze it.
1 Like
Very impressive. Do you fly with the latest 3.6.0-rc1?
I know you have only two hands.
Tripod or a camera man would be a bonus. I am just kidding.
Hi Fred,
No, this flight was flown with 3.5 just as a demonstration of what the helicopter is capable of. I tried an auto flight with 3.6rc1 and the heli flew very poorly. It missed waypoints, stopped and backed up, and generally was very “loose” and did not fly with the precision shown here.
Bill and I are working with Leonard to try and figure out what the problem is in 3.6.
I have a camera woman that I am married to. But I learned there was a problem with the wind and the camera woman’s hair. So I was forced to fly solo 
Chris, thanks for the answer. I will wait now for updating to 3.6.0-rc1.
Fred, you won’t have a problem with it. After loading 3.6-rc1 double check your position controller and Loiter controller settings. This is what me and Leonard came up with that works with heli’s. Very happy with the braking, handling and auto performance with these.
PSC_ACCZ_D 0
PSC_ACCZ_FF 0
PSC_ACCZ_FILT 20
PSC_ACCZ_I 1
PSC_ACCZ_IMAX 800
PSC_ACCZ_P 0.3
PSC_ACC_XY_FILT 2
PSC_ANGLE_MAX 0
PSC_POSXY_P 1
PSC_POSZ_P 1
PSC_VELXY_D 0.5
PSC_VELXY_D_FILT 5
PSC_VELXY_FILT 5
PSC_VELXY_I 1
PSC_VELXY_IMAX 1000
PSC_VELXY_P 2
PSC_VELZ_P 5
LOIT_ACC_MAX 500
LOIT_ANG_MAX 0
LOIT_BRK_ACCEL 125
LOIT_BRK_DELAY 1
LOIT_BRK_JERK 250
LOIT_SPEED 3000
Please note the speed setting for New Loiter is important to get the braking to work right for a heli. If you set the speed lower it will slam on the brakes like hitting a brick wall.
Here’s a vid flying 3.6-rc1
1 Like
Hi Chris, that looks 'Great!!
I think you will be happy with 3.6, Fred. Everything works after I got the PSC and Loit settings sorted out. The Smart Return to Launch is enabled by default and the spacing between points was 2 m, with 150 points stored in my installation. You may want to change that, depending on how you fly a mission, or how far you go. I got a message on the ground station shortly into this test flight that Smart RTL was disabled because the “buffer” filled up and the heli was still cruising.
Otherwise I did not change anything from the defaults (and my params that carried over to 3.6 from 3.5) and it flew very good with no problems that I could write home about. I designed the flight plan with varying altitude over the figure 8 test course. The altitude and position accuracy was spot-on over 14 laps. I’ve always considered an auto flight to be the ultimate test if everything is going to work right because it uses everything she’s got to see how the autopilot is going to handle it in the wind.
I think heli pilots can upgrade to 3.6 on this release with no fears of things not working right. The main thing is to check the position controller settings to make sure some “bad” settings didn’t carry over from 3.5 for New Loiter and the changes in the PSC. And the battery stuff for electrics has changed so may want to review your settings for battery failsafe, etc…
There is some new settings in the attitude controller for maximum angular rate (in degrees/sec of rotation). Those are turned off by default and do not affect the tuning of your heli. Bill is testing as well and he will notify if anything is found. But my opinion is that heli pilots can fly 3.6, and other than the above noted items to check, there is nothing that is critically dangerous that will crash your heli. I have also tested the auto landing, but don’t like to use that with a piston heli with a hot engine, because it just shuts it off when it lands and the engine temp spikes without a proper cool-down. But it also works fine otherwise.
I am not a big fan of auto takeoff with heli’s because I consider it to be too dangerous and it does not do a proper warmup for a combustion engine so there is danger of flameout with sudden opening of the throttle before it’s ready to to be loaded. But I did test that with an electric and it also worked fine.
Thanks Chris for the comprehensive explanation.
I cannot test immediately because I have a new Transmitter with color display to fiddle with. ( FrSky HorusX10)
My Align 700E is sitting now in a Jet-Ranger scale body and needs fine tuning. I got rid off the 3 blade head, not good with the Jet Ranger. Blades hit the tail and destroyed it during tuning on the ground, after a bit of a hard landing . I blame the long flexible scale blades from 'Der Blattschmied’
Is fixed now and back to only two SpinBlades.
My RJX has suddenly bad mechanical vibration. All shafts, bearings and servos are brand new and still getting worse. Still flying but not autonomously. Because there is something broken in the frame I will replace it with a new kit where all electronics can be used.
That RJX520 I have is now discontinued by RJX. I might be even jumping over and build Align 600E. As soon I have a flying Heli again I will try FW 3.6.0. Thanks again Chris.
Don’t ask Chris about the E700, but he’s loving it 
I will too when I manage to get some time to finish it…
The TT E700 is a surprisingly nice-handling helicopter. I think the 135 swash layout has a lot to do with how nice it seems to handle and fly. There is no interaction between elevator, aileron and collective inputs and the “pure” input and response makes it a pleasure to fly. The difference between a H3-135/140 vs a H3-120 where we are mixing servos at different ratios is only thousandths of an inch. But I can’t fault the design of the 135/140 swashplate layout for super precise control. The autopilot seems to like it too.
Everybody likes to see a new heli build. But it’s also good to know how they stand up to UAV duty long term. I have a little over 30 flight hours on the Raptor 716 (TT E700) now. I had a rudder servo failure (760uS centered tail servos that running hotter than blazes), lost yaw control on an auto flight recently. No way to land it in full piro at 700+ deg/sec. So I shut it down in flight to arrest the spin and autorotated it.
It got a new 1520uS centered tail servo. I got one more of those 760uS tail servos and I think I’ll put that one on the servo tester and burn it out so I’m not tempted to put it in a helicopter.
It was due for a 25hr inspection anyway. Not a single loose bolt on it, the linkages are just getting broke in so they operate really, really smooth. Few drops of gear oil on the main and tail gearbox bearings and let it soak into the bearings, and it’s good for another 25 hours.
I’ve been flying it with a Mapir Survey 3 + Walkera G2D gimbal payload and it consistently flies 30 minute flights no problem without aux fuel tanks on it.
I don’t know how it would fare as an electric version after you hung 10lbs of batteries on it to get it fly longer than 10 minutes. But as a gasser this thing rocks, and super cheap to fly.
I wasn’t 100% sure of how the ESC tray would work as a FC mount long term. But it works awesome. I wasn’t sure the tail drive could handle the power of a big-displacement Zenoah stroker. But it does. And I’m flying the biggest blades that can be put on this thing without stretching the tail boom. The path of the blade tips actually crosses the circle of the tail rotor blades, but I have the tail rotor timed so the blades don’t hit 
There’s no multicopter ever been built that can keep up to this thing if I turn it loose. It will easily hit 90 mph in level cruise - and sustain it for 22 minutes at 85% throttle on 660cc of fuel. It’s got more power left in reserve yet. And it’s stable as a flying slab of concrete in the wind.
IMO, if Thunder Tiger doesn’t offer these as a UAV version heli they’d be making a big mistake. Or maybe more like a huge mistake.
This is actually the first time I’ve had the canopy off it since I loaded AC3.6dev in it. I might even pull the microSD card out and see if it’s got logs on it, and load the latest dev build since I can get to the USB port now
2 Likes
huh, only $659 for the kit. That’s not bad.
No, but it’s not an Align Combo kit with everything in it. No main blades (tail blades come with it), servos, electronics of any kind, etc… Which I kind of like, because then you put in the heli what you want without having a bunch of low-grade stuff you don’t want pre-packaged with it.
I put Savox brushless cyclic servos and throttle servo in it. But I put in a MKS HBL669 tail servo, and I should’ve known better. At 32 hours, that’s the equivalent of 275 seven minute 3D flights and most of the 3D guys are happy if they get 200 flights out of a 760uS tail servo before it goes on vacation. I put another Savox HV cyclic servo on the tail and it works fine - don’t need any super-speed, high-frequency, hot-running tail servo on a UAV heli.
Yeah, I"m running Savox’ on my Soxos and have been very happy with them. Planning to replace the ancient servos on my Protos with Savox as well.
Unfortunately I work in a shared work space, so doing any kind of gasser conversion is not really practical at this time. That will hopefully change early next year.
How do do you rate this compared to the Synergy? (Didn’t you also do a Synergy Gasser?)
It’s not a Synergy 766. The 766 has grease ports on all the thrust bearings, actually has thrust bearings on the mainshaft so it can carry heavy loads for hours on end. And is built much heavier duty. The E700 is a light duty 700-class machine that’s more than adquate for camera work, and (with piston power) can still strap a DJI Inspire underneath and take it for a ride and show it how it’s done.
The 766 will lift full-size building cement blocks and fly away with them. It’s a different class of heli (and quite a bit more expensive).
Right, so the E700 is really a light 700 and the 766 is really full 800.
I’d call the E700 pretty much a normal 700-class. It has a 12mm mainshaft, etc…
Yes, the 766 is a 800-class machine. It weighs 17.25lbs minimum takeoff weight, no payload, no aux fuel. The E700, with basically the same engine, is 14.0 lbs. I mean, look at the swashplate and head on the 766 - it’s massive. With a fully serviceable swashplate with greasable, replaceable dual bearings. And can even take the swashplate apart and replace the ball and race.
Compared to the swashplate and head on the E700
Two different classes of helicopters.