Gaui 200 tail wag is gone and is WAY more stable

[dmulligan]

As some of you may know, I've had a wag in my tail and found the Gaui 200 very difficult to control overall. It has been an interesting journey with some discoveries and many disappointments. I've tried 3 different gyros, I had a tail servo go bad on me, some poor setup issues and not knowing how this heli should fly to be able to know what was wrong and what was me. I've still got some setup issues to correct but I feel that I am out of the woods. Unfortunately I made a number of changes at once this weekend so I cannot nail it down to just one that fixed everything.

The first thing that I figured out that took away 50% of the wag was that the tail slider needs to be set up just so. I missed that the ball and pin need to be aligned. After that I haven't had much luck in at least 6 months of trying now and again. Over those 6 months I tried changing gyros from the G401B to the Logictech and finally settling on the ds760 realizing that the gyro had nothing to do with the wag. I also had a Hyperion ds09GMD tail servo start seizing on me. Kyle at RCSupersales.net took care of me and replaced the servo as it was the actual motor that was seizing and it had never been in a crash.

Then while talking to Shane from Helista magazine last week I found what I believe to be the answer to all of my remaining woes. A loose ball on the flybar cage. Apparently it is rather common for the balls that the flybar goes through to come loose. This would account for the lack of control that I was feeling as well as vibrations that would cause the remaining wag. A little CA and Bob's your uncle. If I were a betting man I would bet that this was the change that made the biggest difference this weekend.

I also found that although the Hyperion data sheet states that the default rotation on it's servos is 45 degrees each way, the default is in fact 50 degrees each way. So I programmed the servos to do 45 which I bet hellped a bit. I changed my tail blades out to lighter kdbb orange blades as well as my main blades to the Align 205d CF blades that are preferred by most Gaui 200 owners.

I have to go through my head setup both mechanically and in my radio to allow for the servo programming changes that I made and I have to set the end points on my tail but even without this I can fly this little bird in my basement without feeling like I will crash if do anything but a tail in hover. Don't get me wrong, I will not be doing much forward flight in my basement, but I think I will get away with a little very slow and controlled side in FF and maybe some nose in training too. The Gaui 200 is WAY more stable than I thought based on all of the reports of it flying like a humming bird on amphetamines. It is still squirrley but no worse than the HBFP I used to fly. I am finally happy with the Gaui and will definitely be bringing it with me to each heli night from now on.

David