Yeah, the smaller they are, they harder they are to fly. At the moment I have an MS Composit Hornet (true micro), an LMH 110, a 30 size, a busted up 46 sized and an XCell gas (big G23 powered mofo). By far, the Hornet is the hardest to fly, but also the least dangerous. The XCell is the easiest to fly, but the pucker factor and danger level are way up there. It all has to do with weight. At 12lbs, the Xcell is least affected by wind, less touchy on the controls, more responsive to control input, and has a crap load more power. The down side is the cost and the deep seated fear of it+dirt=very bummed me. I screwed up my 46 by putting the wrong plug in it and being in a bad situation at the wrong time, low and fast with no engine, and almost pulled off an autorotation but at the last second having a boom strike. too many busted parts, so it was a right off. Anyway, the LMH 100 I had was way tough. I had like 4 or 5 boom strikes before I replaced the rotor blades and boom (only because I was over that stage of learning). I'd just straighten the boom and check the blades for damage, of which there never was any on the blades.
What the gyro does is to control the tail. when you give it throttle, you increase the torque going to the rotor. The tail rotor compensates by applying a counter force to keep the heli pointed in one direction. It is possible to fly without a gyro, but it is nearly impossible. The gyro detects a change in yaw and then applies a TR control input to compensate and keep the nose from swinging. This change in yaw can be from cross winds, throttle (torque change), or pilot yaw input. This is a simple gyro setup. There are basically 3 different types of gyros. 1) single rate (like described above). 2) dual rate, so you can set two different gain levels for the gyro. This is a more advanced gyro for flying around without having the gyro making counter control inputs and making the tail less responsive than what you want it to be. The third type is a heading lock gyro. This gyro is a trip. You can set it to act like the first type in one flight mode, and then switch it to HL from the radio. Heading lock is just that. You set it and it will hold the heading no matter what unless you tell it to change heading (like moving the rudder stick), then it'll hold that heading. I have one of those on my XCell and it makes hovering in a crosswind a snap. The down side is that they're more expensive and a bit bigger and heavier than the other two. You'll probably want to go with a single rate when you start off. You'll be doing alot of hovering when you sart off. If you can't hover, you can't land, and that's bad. Take offs are optional, landings are mandatory.
Whitt...
