Ironically though, when I had to auto either by mechanical problems or running out of gas (don't ask), I was able to land the heli successfully.
I knew I was kidding myself if I thought of myself as a competent flier if I couldn't auto properly, so it was time to fire up the 46 for another one of it's 'sacrificial lamb' sessions.
Do as I say, not as I do
One day I'd had a great days flying doing all sorts of inverted stuff and decided to give this auto thing a go. I brought the machine to a 3 ft hover and flicked the switch and the little Ergo settled down with a bit of a bounce. Tried a couple more of these then took it to about 7 or 8 ft with a little bit of forward speed and tried the same thing. The first two were mildly ok. The next one had too much forward speed that resulted in a boom strike and a tumble on the ground. Another boom, feathering spindle and a set of blades later and I was back in action.
A couple of weeks later and I decide it's time to attack autos again. So what do I do? Yet again I try some forward flight ones from about 8 or 10 feet which results in the boomstrike to end all boom strikes. I knew what I'd done wrong as soon as I did it. I was in too much of a hurry to get the machine on the ground and didn't have anywhere near enough positive pitch on at the bottom of the auto, plus I had a bit of back elevator on to arrest the forward motion. That combined with too much headspeed meant the blades came down and smacked the boom so hard that the blades were torn off at the root!
What was I doing wrong? A number of things, I wasn't high enough to start with, I panicked when I flicked the switch, I didn't have enough pitch on when I landed and I had some back elevator on. This is not the way to do autos.

Setup
You'll need to ensure that you have the correct ptich range in throttle hold mode on your radio. My helis are set up with -7 through to +10 pitch range in throttle hold. There are many different opinions about suitable hold pitch curves, but this is what works for me.
If you've got a driven tail (ie the tail rotor continues to rotate when the engine is off either via a slipper clutch or split gear mechanism), then you'll still continue to have rudder control during the auto, if your heli has a non-driven tail, you won't. When you're learning, it's not a bad idea to have the engine idling high enough so that the tail rotor is still slightly driven. This will mean that you've got a degree of yaw control as the machine is in the auto.

Next Page