One of the few problems that I faced when I moved to a flybarless raptor is the inability to set the pitch of the main blades. When setting the pitch on helicopters with flybars, the flybar is used as a reference line to measure the pitch of the blade. However, now that it is no longer being used, I have to find another line of reference.
Some methods proposed by the members of HF and RR includes placing the helicopter on a flat surface, and using the background horizon as a reference line. For me, I personally stuck a temporary flybar on top of my main rotor hub to act as the reference line. Although all these methods requires the helicopter to be on an absolutely flat surface, which means that a slanting table will cause the pitch measured to be inaccurate.
Recently, readyheli.com brought in stocks of a digital angle guage by Wixley. I decided to purchase one myself and attach it to my present thunder tiger pitch gauge. This digital Angle Gauge can also be purchased from Soaring Composites (recommended).
There were some suggestions posted by other users of this digital angle gauge to convert it into a digital RC heli pitch guage. Here some some pictures of it.
Here is my version of it. I hope that this will useful to all those flybarless pilots out there.
As mentioned, I am a proud owner of a Thunder Tiger pitch gauge. It has been serving me very well all these years, and I don’t intend to throw it away just because I’ve gone flybarless. Hence, I stripped it apart and stuck the digital angle gauge to the piece where it clamps onto the blade.
To make sure that the digital angle gauge is straight, i aligned the top edge of the angle gauge to the button of the “clamping mechanism” of the TT pitch gauge. And there you go! DIY Digital Pitch Gauge!
To use it, ensure that the helicopter is placed firmly onto the ground, or table top. You need to ensure that the helicopter will not wobble or shake while you are setting the pitch or zeroing the digital pitch gauge. Next, place the DPG (Digital pitch gauge) on the boom of the helicopter and zero it. This is on the assumption that the helicopter designed such that that the boom is perpendicular to the main shaft.
Now that the DPG is zeroed, you can now use it to set the pitch of the helicopter. Again, make sure that the heli is in the same position as when the DPG is zeroed.
Hope this helps!
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