Venom Helicopters

[Ozzyeureka]

Hopefully this thread will become a 'sticky' for the Venom coaxial rotor helicopters.
Venom website - http://www.venom-aircorps.com/

Mechanically - very similar, if not exactly the same as the Vortex
At the moment in Australia we have in the LHS's the Ocean Rescue and the Bush Rescue which are the same except for colour (orange/white and army green/white resp) .

[Ozzyeureka]

I have been flying and crashing my Ocean rescue for about a week now and am now just able to control it reasonably. (I know, slow learner).

Things I have learnt so far: If you have any R/C experience, forget any shop assistant advice about learning the controls by 'skidding' (spinning the rotors just enough to make the heli light, but not fly, enough so the heli will side around on the skids easily) the heli around for a battery charge or three. The ground wash will give you lots of bad feedback and confuse the hell out of you. If you are comfortable with a stick TXer already, go fo full lift off straight away to get out of the downwash of your main rotors. About waist high (1 metre) is good. If you get into to trouble with drifting or getting too close to anything, just chop the throttle to zero. From 1 metre there is rarely any damage caused, these things bounce and recover well! I have done a 'chop throttle' crash landing from 3 metres (10ft) and the heli suffered no damage at all.

Do make sure you check the heli as per the setup guide included. My heli needed no adjustments out of the box. Later on (after I broke a main gear- see further down) I did find that the gear mesh for both of the main motors could be better. I loosened the two screws for each motor a fair bit and moved the motors in towards the main gears until the mesh was tight, and then backed the motors out until there was a very small amount of sloppiness able to be felt between the main gear and the motor gear. At the moment , if I hold the motor gear tight, the main gear moves about 1mm at the rim.

Do not 'flatten' the battery on the heli all the way , so that the rotors will not turn. That will kill the LiPo battery . LiPo's should never be left to go flat, they are chemically and permantly damaged by being discharged totally. If you go to full throttle and the heli will not take off, the battery needs charging. Let the battery cool down (about 10 minutes) , then stick the battery on charge for about 2 hours. I am getting about 15-20 minutes flying time on a full charge. The first couple of charges only gave me about 10 minutes. I fyou do not use the heli for a month or so, recharge the battery anyway every 6 weeks .

Buy some more rotor blades when you buy the heli, you do break them when you hit things. Thats the way they are designed. Rather than rip your furniture, or damage your tables, the blades break off. It takes about a minute (taking it real easy!) to fit a new blade. If a blade is ripped or cracked, change it!

If the air outside is dead calm, these things are fun to fly outside as there is no down wash to worry about. Inside, the downwash causes control problems. In my little lounge, about 5 minutes of continous flight causes enough air turbelance to make flying too hard for me. I land and give the room a few minutes to calm down and then I go again.. Other wise, inside onlyas there is not enough power or control to counteract any sort of breeze.

I have also broken teeth off the lower main gear (which drives the top rotor) in one crash. I have a Vortex gear installed , it was a direct fit, no ratio or gear pitch difference to the Venom original. I now have an original Venom replacement gear on hand as well, just in case I do it again.

After about an hour of flying, four blades (~$16 Au for a pack of 4) and a main gear (~ $20 Au) I can now hover pretty well, move forward and backwards, turn left and right as I wish most of the time. I have not tackled the slide right/left bit as yet though.

The only negative I have at all about this heli - the battery is not locked into the cage. So you can set the CofG, and then lose it as the battery slides backwards or forwards as you put the heli on the floor or when you crash land. And the battery position does make a notieable difference to where the nuetral hover position is.

And if you purchase a heli from China direct, make sure you specify that the radio is a 36Mhz system if you are in Australia, 35Mhz for Europe and 72Mhz for the US. I know that in Australia 72 and 35 Mhz R/C system are illegal. Plus 72Mhz R/C stuff gets interfered with badly here (it is a military freq I am told and they puts lots of PCM /digital stuff on it)

Just for the record, I have NO affiliation with any hobby shop, importer or sales company for these heli's at all.

[The Broker]

Hi Ozzyeureka,
The Ocean Rescue looks a bit like my E-Sky Lama after I painted it. The co-axials really do take a lot of abuse so there is no need to be afraid of lifting off and I agree the ground effect can be enough to cause a crash on its own. I fly mine outside but sudden wind can be a problem, I fitted a float set to my Twister Bell 47 co-axial, now that really does cause handling problems :lol:
Sue
http://www.smallrotors.co.uk/suepic/gallery/huey.jpg

[Ozzyeureka]

I agree Sue, if they are not the same heli, then they are kissing cousins!

If you need to you can substitute the lower main gear with the Vortex VTX-007 part.

I have also run my RXer aerialout onto the tail boom by weaving it along the main spars. It has made signal reception a lot better (it used to glitch in flight often) and a simple rebalance with the battery fixed the weight transfer .
I would say , as is usal Chinese practice, that one place makes these and then a couple of companies sell them under their own name.

They are great little heli to learn with.
Way too windy here at my place to fly these outside most of the time though.
Ron

[The Broker]

Hi Ron :D
I would say you were spot on with your comment about re-branding them under another name, but the good part is that the spares are all interchangable.
When I first bought the Lama I wrapped the aerial wire around the skids but I didnt like the gliches I used to get so thought it looked and performed better with the wire running through the tail.

I really love these little co-axials because they are great for learning on and also fun to play with when like most people you move onto something bigger.
I made up a course which started on a heli-pad and then the pilot would have to move forward to the next pad and land in the direction of an arrow painted on it then take off and move sideways to the next pad and hover for 30 secs then land, forward flight again to the next pad where the pilot has to land then do nose-in and come back to the first pad, if the pilot did not feel able to do nose-in to come back he could come back tail in but lose 5 points.
Scoring was 20 points for a correct manoeuver with 2 points taken off for a fault like not landing in the direction of the arrow or a skid off of the landing pad.
It was a great laugh and its amazing how much you can learn in that type of fun enviroment, its not like training at all.
Sue

[Ozzyeureka]

Hello Sue,
I have found having a challange/competition such as you listed is always a great way to learn and refine your skills. At the moment I doubt I would get more than about 10 points on your course :-) .

I have been thinking of hiring a school hall and setting up a comp with different challanges for different skill levels/types of helis.
The basic beginners would have four numbered helipads set in a square at about 20ft a side, flat on the floor and about 300mm (12") in diameter, all marked with an H.
You would be timed on flying to all four pads in sequence (the numbering could be changed for each event) , with a judge calling a landing succesful, before you can go to the next pad. The next level would be all landings having to have the heli aligned with H (much like your arrow idea)

The next level would be pretty much as you have described with prescribed nose in/tail in manouvers but with five pads arranged as a basic square with a centre pad, again numbered and having to be done sequentially.

The top level would would be again sequential, all landings having to have the skids aligned with H and the heli facing a prescribed direction. But the real challange would be one pad would be a flat floor one (airport), one would be a foam model of a back of a ship, complete with a superstructure just forward of the landing deck, the approach having to be 30 degrees off the stern (maybe even rocking the deck for the real advanced flyers). The next landing pad would be a model of an oil rig, complete with a sturdy derrick that will break the heli if you hit it, with the pad about 800mm off the ground. The next one would be a 1.25M high, 800 x 800 mm square pad to model a building top (aircon units anyone?).
For the finals maybe with a small fan blowing a breeze accross the pads. A crash on any of the pads at this level would mean a DNF for that round. And a minimum of three rounds being allowed per flyer. Aggregate time for all rounds would be your score, lowest aggregate being the winner. Maybe timed to 1/100th of a sec.

The start/ finish pad ( not one of the above) could have a optical sensor or a gate you have to fly through to start and stop the timer. And change the size of the pads based on the size of the rotors and class of flyer.

Now that could give you headache with the concentration required!

I have not worked out a grading system for the flyers/helis as yet. But I am thinking of 4 channel helis being the minimum spec for all classes, then:
D class = coaxial helis with <350mm rotor diameter being the minimum class
C class = coaxial helis with =>350mm rotor diameter
B class = single rotor < 400mm rotor diameter
A class = single rotor => 400mm rotor diameter

And then a 1,2,3 grading system for the skill level. So a pilot with an A1 grading would be a pretty **** good pilot!

Ron.

[The Broker]

wow !!!!!!!!! Your course sounds great. :D
My helipads also had an H on them it was the transitional ones that had an arrow because I was just testing the touch down ability, for pilots who didnt want to touchdown they could hover for a second in the direction of the arrow although it would lose them points.
I tried to make the course user friendly so that even if a pilot could only just fly they could take part.

I like the optical sensor linked to the timer idea and it wouldn't be difficult to rig up.

The problem we had with our course was that it was in a normal room and although the funiture had all been pushed back to the wall or removed we still got a hell of a lot of turbulence, your hall idea would solve that problem nicely.
We had raised platforms also but I must admit they were a bit of a nightmare for real begginners because if the landing wasn't spot on the heli fell off of the side of the platform resulting in damage to the heli, mind you I do believe it was made more difficult because of our wash problem.

Another thing we used to do was fly under and through a coffee table, my bro has one which is made of thick solid pine and the idea was to go under it from its side or its length, now we found that most who tried it had a kinda mental block so that they went to pieces when they were actually under the table and crashed, maybe you could utilize this idea in the form of flying under a bridge.

I really think you have a great idea about hiring a hall and once you got it going I think a lot of flyers would be interested because most of the ones I've met are very competitive and would love a go at something like that.

I saw a video on the web of this guy flying a kyosho in fact its the same as mine but he was doing this course for a tv programme and he was going vertically up inside a clear plastic shaft!!!!!!!!
I thought my kyosho was a demon to fly but I have to admit watching that guy I now know its me not the heli at fault.

Sue

[Ozzyeureka]

I like the bridge idea.

And the idea of an A1 class pilot only comp would make the hobby live a lot longer. Make it run along the lines of motorcycling 'trials' - ie extreme difficulty in negotiating an obsticle course such as your tube, with points given for mistakes.
But thats a bit far away for me as yet.

[The Broker]

I have put the video of the heli flying contest in beginner pilot guide and learn to fly section. :D
Sue

[Ozzyeureka]

If you run out of main rotors for your venom, you can use teh Vortex blades. The set I got was actually more efficient as they have a betetr aerofoil leading edge. That means longer flights and surprisingly, easier hovering! Plus they dont rip so easy if you hit things. There is nothing wrong with eth Vortex blades though. Its just that the LHS didnt have any when I wanted them.