Road to the Worlds - Part II
Simon Lockington

INTRODUCING THE NEW ZEALAND TEAM
In addition to myself, we now have two other pilots on the New Zealand team going to Spain, this will be one of the first full F3C teams that New Zealand has had. John Knox (JR Sylphide) competed in the 1991 World Champs held in Australia and Aaron Williams (Kyosho Caliber) has attended the last two World Champs (US and Japan). Aaron is going to act as our team manager as he is very familiar with how things are during the World Champs.

I'm pretty exicted about all of this as both John, Aaron and myself have competed strongly against each other and are fairly evenly matched. It will be great to go as a full team as well!

WORLDS ORGANISATION
I would be lying if I said I hadn't been wondering what the organisers of this year's Worlds were up to. For months now there has been nothing at all on the official website, and we're just on six months out from the start of the competition. I know I wasn't the only one starting to wonder what the story was!

However, in the last week or so, the organisers have issued another bulletin providing us with more information and actual entry forms so things look like they're back on track.

MY PREPARATIONS
Since my last article, I've acquired another Sylphide so I'm pretty much setup in terms of hardware now. However, the ideal setup still alludes me. Although the new helicopter is nearly identical to my existing one it flew a whole lot better. The differences is that the new one is wrapped in a Staysee fuselage, a YS 91 and it has the stock standard paddles on it. The existing one is pod and boom, has an OS 91 PS and has Funtech 45 gram paddles.

The newer Sylphide seemed to hover better and definately seemed to have more vertical penetration in aerobatics. For example, when hovering tail into the wind, the helicopter would roll off and move forward, yet nose into the wind, it was fine. During the loops, it would run out of momentum too quickly and it was difficult to do nice, large maneuvers. Why??? Can't have been the engine cause while the engine wasn't in full peak condition, it still had more than enough power to do the aeros properly. Can't have been the Staysee body cause it was flying just as good without it. Could it be the paddles?

It turns out it was. I swapped the Funtech paddles with the stock Sylphide ones and immediately the machine began to climb vertically again and also didn't load up the engine as much during the loops.

I've been keeping the newer Sylphide as a 'control' machine. It's the one that's flying the best at the moment, so I'm not touching it. I'm doing all the modifications on the old one. I modify the old one, test fly it, then fly it back to back against the new one to see if my mods have made a difference. Most of the the time they don't, but sometimes...

The new Sylphide had it's auto hub lock up and I'm just waiting on parts to get that assembled and back in the air again.

This week I've sent my Futaba 9Z back to Japan for a full inspection and service. I noticed that both gymbals had hairline cracks in them so I wanted these replaced and a full service undertaken. After over two years of impeccable service, I wanted to get it checked out.

OS 91 PS
My comments regarding my impressions of the OS 91 PS in my last article drew a lot of sympathetic emails from fellow pilots experiencing the same issues I'd been encountering.

In my last article I'd also mentioned that Steve Helms from the United States was sending me a new needle valve to test to see if that made a difference. I'm glad to say it made the difference between night and day. With the GV-1 engaged I had no lean spots during loops or rolls. I could finally lean the top out to where it should be and get power, without having to sacrifice the mid range. Pretty much everyone at the field noticed the difference.

Another improvement I made was to remove the Viperhead, and put the standard OS PS head back on, but this time with three 0.008 thou shims. This made the engine very smooth. While I know many people have seen great things out of the Viperhead, I have to say I haven't really noticed an improvement over the standard head. Could perhaps be the fuel I'm running, I'm not sure.

However, as one Sylphide has an OS and the other has a YS 91 ST4, I decided I wanted to run two engines the same so I had to make a call as to which one to keep. The YS in the new Sylphide has always impressed me, it's been smooth out of the box and never given any trouble. The OS on the other hand has been difficult at times. I've therefore decided to go with the YS in both machines.

The question is now, stay with the Funtech muffler or try a Hatori SB-16?

FUSE, OR NOT TO FUSE?
The second Sylphide arrived in a beautiful Funtech Staysee fuselage. I can't say enough about the quality of this fuselage, the fibreglass work and the paint work are highly impressive. The weight is also very low. The fuse is mounted to the machine via rubber isolation mounts. It's a beautiful looking machine and it sounds so very quiet. Especially on a Sylphide which is inherently quiet anyway.

While it all looks pretty and everything, how easy is it to live with, THAT'S the question... I've flown one competition with the Staysee and while it did well, I wasn't really thrilled with the way it did aerobatics. It seemed a lot more sensitive to elevator. Mick Warren, one of the Australian F3C team pilots has a Staysee on one of his Calibers and said he noticed exactly the same thing when he first got it. He put it down to the large horiztonal fin which I can believe.

There's also the issue of ease of maintenance. Taking the front of the body off to check or work on the mechanics isn't an easy task, so changing glow plugs can be a problem.

Then there's the issue of transporting the machines with fuses on. That means they can't be broken down to fit in a Curtis case, I'd have to get cases custom made for them, then there's the cost of shipping said cases.....

Can I really be stuffed with all that?

However, you got to balance all this out with the fact that nearly everyone else at the Worlds will be using a fuse and at a competition like this, every little bit counts!

God knows what I'll do yet, I haven't decided, however I can feel myself just going pod and boom, it's so much easier!

PRACTISE
Unfortunately the practise hasn't been as much as I'd like lately. Been playing with the Vigor just a bit too much doing 3D, however now that the events that required the use of the Vigor are pretty much coming to an end, the F3C practise is ramping up.

Certainly now I've got the YS installed and running well, the aerobatics are coming along much better. As always, I need to work on maintaining my flightline and not letting the helicopter move in or out during the aerobatic passes.

I'm still finding the double loops to be the hardest maneuver to pull off consistently every time. This might sound a bit crazy to non-F3C pilots, but doing two loops, superimposed, in the center of the flightline trying to maintain consistent speed and altitude is damn hard!

Another maneuver I've really struggled to come to terms with on the Sylphide is the autorotation. The Sylphide seems to fool you in it's descent. It can look like it's just drifting down going not too fast, then all of a sudden it's on you and you pretty much have to tail stand it to get it in the circle which is just plain ugly.

Now, I start flaring the thing from WAAAAYYYY out in the turn. Honestly, it feels like the machine should have retractable flaps on it that can spring out and wash some of the speed off! I've never had this kind of thing with either the Vigor or the Sylphide. My auto curve is -8 to 11.5 and I use every degree of that negative pitch to bring it down!

I've been experimenting with different headspeeds in the hover to see what works best. Currently I've got it running at 1500rpm in the hover, which I think is as high as I'd want to go. The blades seem quite sensitive to pitch at that speed so I might drop it back to 1480 or so. The YS seems really happy at 1500 and sounds just great.

Perhaps the maneuver that I really struggle with in the whole schedule is the nose in tail in figure eight. The part I find hard is hitting the far cones each time. Most often, I'm too far out. It's a depth perception thing.

Andrew Donaldson, one of the pilots on the Australian team is a member of my club and we've been practising together. One flies while the other comments which has been working great. I think it's just about pointless now to try and practise by yourself, for the hovering at least. Often what looks over the flag from the pilot's perspective is nothing like it from the judges point of view. It helps to have a helper!

One thing that we're working to acquire is a new invention by Mike Goza from the US. Mike is the US F3C Team Manager and has developed a sensor system that attaches to the top of the flags on the square, and another that attaches to the bottom of the helicopter. If the two sensors line up, a loud beeping sound is emitted from the sensors to let you know you're on target. Hopefully we'll have this ordered and in use in the next couple of weeks.

PLAN FROM HERE
The plan now is to get another YS ST4 for the Staysee Sylphide and run that in. I want to test a Hatori SB-16 to see if that will give me more top end power cause my gut feeling is the Funtech is slightly choking it on the top end.

I'd also like to experiment with trying the Hi-Products 700's as well. I think that the increased aerobatic capability could come in useful. Whether or not this comes at the expense of hovering stability, I'll have to assess.

Shortly, I'm going to need to get the canopies painted up in the colours I've used on the Vigor and the Tempest. I'm still trying to work out the best way of applying that paint scheme to the Sylphide. I might even hold a competition to see who can come up with the best scheme yet :).