Affordable Quality Gyro?

[austintyler]

Hey, I am a pilot of a cheap chinese clone, the Hobby Lobby Falcon 3D. The Falcon is slightly smaller than the Trex 450, it was a clone of the Shogun. This past weekend I was making adjustments while setting up my new Futaba 7CAP Tx. after making one last adjustment on the gyro I began to lift off then the whole thing died. I tried re arming the gyro but it keeps flashing. Its a rebadged Telebee gyro. I know the 401 is the way to go, but I cant spend that much just yet on a gyro. I know there is the Align RCE500 which I noticed might just be a rebadged telebee gyro. So, anyone knowledgable of decent Gyros that wont break the bank? For example the Telebee Gyros from HeliDirect

Thank you

[CSpaced]

You could try the Futaba GY-240, its basically the same as the 401 except you cant change between heading hold and rate mode remotely. You could always look for someone selling a used 401 too...

[Nitrohuffer]

A good gyro is the best investment for making a great flying heli. You can get a used futaba 401 or 240 pretty reasonably

[Jungmeister]

This is for you gyro gurus. Is there any reason that I should not use a Futaba GY-240 in rate mode on the rudder of my 1/3 scale Bucker Jungmeister. It uses a single Hitec HS-635HB servo on the rudder. With the gear so far in front of the CG it can be pretty squirley on takeoff in a cross wind. Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Ken

[CSpaced]

Jungmeister,

On a helicopter, when a gyro is set to rate mode, as the tail turns the gyro increases or decreases the tail rotor throw to stop the tail movement.

When the gyro is set to heading hold, it will do the same thing only it will keep giving the throw until the tail is back to where it started.

Using it in either mode on a rudder I'm not entirely sure how it would affect performance on take off, but I have heard of people using gyro's on their rudders in the past. I hope this helps a little.

[Flyinfool]

There is one very good reason not to.
The GY240 does not have a TX switchable rate/AVCS mode, or the ability to turn it off, it is heading hold only or rate mode only set by a switch on the gyro.
Since you can not turn the gyro on/off in the air it will force you to make coordinated turns using the rudder correctly at all times.
Since you can not turn it off in flight, if the gain is way off you could have a real handful trying to get the plane back on the ground in the same number of parts that took off.

With the 401 you have the option of switching between rate and AVCS in flight, adjusting the gain in flight, or even turning it off altogether if you don't like what it is doing to the aircraft.

[Kiwi]

There are some very good airplane gyros available as well if you look around. I know JR used to have them and they were recommended with the H9 Sukhoi as an optional extra for those who do not have super dexterous thumbs and need help hovering.

The good thing about the airplane gyro is they are dead set simple. All you do is set rudder neutral and then you can adl\just the gain from your radio or have two settings on a switch. On and off. On being to what ever level you set the gain.

[Jungmeister]

Thanks a lot for all of the replies. I like the versatility of the 401 and that is what I might get. A good friend called me this afternoon and told me that he had just picked up a GY-401 for his big DC3 at a LHS. He is going to initially try it in his Sukoi. We should learn a lot from his experiment.

The last gyro that I had was an Airtronics, with the spinning motor, in my Ziroli B-25J. It was a rate only gyro and worked well until it started generating radio noise. Fortunately I got the plane down and removed it before it destroyed the plane.

Ken