......and as luck has it, I attempted to go to the local park a bit early after work and of course there was a pack of kids there already. I just turned around and left. I'm not up for unneeded distractions or moving obstacles.

 

sounds like you need to find a new field

 

Actually, that park is unoccupied more often than not. It just happened to be occupied today when I really wanted to work the 450 and see if I could shake the tail loose or hopefully not.

 

Yeah my favorite haunt is the swamp!!!. Long grass, snakes, crocodiles. Only the occasional passer by who never walk into the swamp area due to the higher than usual probability of being bitten by a tiger snake! so they allways walk behind me. Actually there are no crocodiles but it sounded cool! The snakes are real however.

 

What? No Drop-Bears??

 

Wooo! That didn't work well at all!
Went to the park despite some wind, threw a few pitch bumps at the 450.... good so far...... Then I pegged full collective and the tail let go and made a full turn before I backed off to hover. Okay..... then I went up and tried to back-flip into an inverted hover and the thing went wild looking like I had tried to do a piro-flip or something. I had fun for a couple of seconds trying to get back right again, but I recovered well enough and some lazy side-on runs and circled around the park till the pack started to cycle down.
So.... back to the default tail settings for now. Fortunately I save set-up files before I make changes.

 

Actually @Beaver the drop bears in the swamp were eaten by our killer possums! So we dont have to worry about the drop bears now. If we stay away from the trees and get home before nightfall its actually quite safe. But if you persist in flying into the dawn...

 

Tail holding is SOOOO important (as you found out ) Its one of the reasons i love my gobby so much. I can do ANYTHING to it and it holds. If you make sure your tail slider is free (the pitch slider should fall if you disconnect it from the push rod and tip the helicopter on its side) then it helps considerably. Also make sure the pitch slider is not bending.

 

yeah there's a lot involved for a locked in tail on a 450. Part mechanical, part electrical

 

The entire tail assy is new. I didn't think to run it up and check for vibration though. I'll go over it tonight. It might have only been messed-up Vstabil settings from a few days ago. Tail was holding before the "trailer incident" except for an annoying little kick-out during hard pitch bumps.

 

Hey! Wait a minute........ (Darwin moment)....... do possums have pouches down there??

 

I checked out the tail assy last night. Nothing wrong there, but I did move the ball a notch farther out on the servo horn to get less servo throw and more speed and reset the end points to match slider travel. Seems a bit faster now. I reset the Vstabi tail settings back to default and shortened the collective throw back to +/- 10* pitch..... I think I might have had it set a bit too hot at around 13*. Flight test this morning seemed to go well with no blow-out, but it was too windy and sun was in my eyes, so I didn't get to give it a good shake down. Will try again later today if the wind lets up.

 

Some have said that enabling Micro Heli mode helps a bit on the tail

 

I've heard that too. Might try that if I don't get it nailed down.

 

Meanwhile.....
I modified a small wi-fi camera from a small coaxial heli for use with the 450. It's small, lightweight, and runs on 3.3v so I can power it from the open sat port on the k-bar. It's not going to be anything permanent, I may set it up with some Velcro for quick install/removal. It should be a fun little experiment!
(Test is not under power)

 

very nice

 

Test #2 reveals a need for dropping the tail gain a bit to reduce the slight wag, and some vibration management is in order. Otherwise, a somewhat successful test.

 

I think I'll just get a better camera with higher resolution and frame-rate, internal battery and microSD card. ...... $10

 

yeah it looks like it needs something to protect it from the vibes. The jello video effect.

 

It's old and cheap. I robbed it out of one of these: