Heading Hold gyro on Piccolo

Is there any way to use a heading hold gyro on a Piccolo? The ones I've seen
all require a servo. Would this require getting rid of the Picoboard and
installing separate components, and could a HH gyro be configured to regulate
power to the Piccolo tail rotor instead of controlling a servo?

[pgoelz]

You also need to be prepared for the heli to swing somewhat to the left on liftoff. This is because upon liftoff, the gyro needs to sense movement and apply a correction before the tail motor comes up to the correct speed to counter the main rotor torque. After that, it flies fine. And the effect depends on the amount of gyro gain you have.... the more gain, the less the effect.

You also have to be careful when carrying the heli that you do not rotate it enough to cause the tail motor to come on at full power. The tail motor will not last very long at full power on 8 cells, even with the HF9 controller..... it simply was never intended for that kind of output power. I have not tried it, but someone made an excellent suggestion.... if you are using a heli radio, set a small amount of negative on the bottom revolution mix point and leave all the rest at zero. This will in effect be the same as holding left rudder at zero throttle, and shoul dmake the tail motor stop after a small delay even if you rotate the heli to the left.

I am also wondering if the tail motor life will be shortened with a HH gyro if you fly outdoors in left crosswinds or gusty wind conditions. Where a rate gyro will dampen wind-induced yaw, the HH gyro will do whatever it takes to hold the tail, and this could easily overstress the tail motor.

Do both of you not use the picoboard? Does replacing the Picoboard require two ESC's, one for the main motor and one for the tail? Do either of you have a web page showing how you have all your components connected? I'm fairly new to heli flying but I can hover the Piccolo pretty well now but am not happy with the way the gyro works on it. I'm wanting to replace the picoboard with separate components and will probably be going brushless sometime in the near future. I'm looking for some detailed diagrams of what all I need to buy to replace the picoboard and how everything is connected but I haven't found any yet.

[JJ]

Sean has such a collection at Helihobby , go to resources, information, then schematics

No problem, but the tail ESC should have fixed endpoints. Some of us use the GY240 / JMP HF9-32 combination, and it works very well. During initialization you must move the rudder stick momentarily to the left so that the ESC will arm.

JJ,

I looked at the diagrams on hellihobby about connecting separate components and
it looked too complicated to me. I don't mind soldering things but I was unsure if I could
get everything connected like the diagrams showed.

I'd think that someone would have a pre-made kit with all the components needed
to replace the piccoboard all wired together and ready to go. I think there's a market
for such a kit for people like me who would would rather pay a little more money for
something that's already put together.

Maybe Sean will decide to put such a kit together and sell it on hellihobby. I think he
could get a few sales from such a kit.

Paul, I'm curious about the comments you made below.

"I am also wondering if the tail motor life will be shortened with a HH gyro if you fly outdoors in left crosswinds or gusty wind conditions. Where a rate gyro will dampen wind-induced yaw, the
HH gyro will do whatever it takes to hold the tail, and this could easily overstress the tail motor."

It seems to me that regardless of whether you have a gyro or not you're gonna have
to apply the same power to the tail motor to control it. How would having a gyro cause
the tail motor to overheat more than just controlling it manually? Maybe I don't
understand how the tail system on the piccolo works? I thought I did but maybe I'm
missing something.

[pgoelz]

While the average power required to fly in windy conditions is proably about the same for HH and rate gyros, the peak power can be a lot higher for a HH gyro since it will counter ANY tendency to yaw by applying whatever power is required up to full power. A rate gyro will allow some yaw in response to a wind gust and thereby reduce the peak power demand.

And using a HH gyro will make it a lot easier to fly in a crosswind. If it is a left crosswind, this will require more sustained tail power than hovering into the wind.

Chrisptx: I don't know if I've mis-understood you, but don't you have a Piccoboard? If you do the HH module doesn't required anything but to be plugged in. [img]images/icons/confused.gif[/img]

With the HH on the Piccoboard the tail rotor whines like crazy. Now that Paul mentions that it could overwork the tail motor, I'm pretty sure that it's from the time I added the HH module that I have a tail drift through out a hover (with and without HH). Has any one else experienced this?