Duration

[chia]

Again, I don't know exactly what time this trial was, but earlier it had been in the air only about 20-25 seconds, barely touching the ceiling and coming down very quickly with a lot of winds left. I'd guesstimate on 2 grams of 1/8 rubber in a 30-foot gym without killing itself on rafters, my copter could now stay up for a good minute 15 seconds. Pretty darn good for a heli I was ready to give up on, though obviously not going to medal.

[lllazar]

Interesting, was one motor fixed?

[chia]

Mhm. I scraped the fixed rotor off where it used to be on the wrong side of the motor stick and really high up and glued it to its current position. I noticed while it was on the ceiling that didn't really move around either - it wobbled very little.

[chia]

Whoa - I retested my helicopter again in my foyer, this time with 90 winds on the same motor (not a new piece), and actually timed it - and the time was 1:27!!!

[harryk]

I am only getting 575 winds on a fully lubed rubber band before it snaps. I am using about 1.6g of 1/8" FAI tan super sport, with armor-all as lube. Now this doesn't seem right when people are saying that they are getting 1000+ winds. Can anyone provide some insight?

That's strange... I tested 1.75 grams of 1/8 tan super sport, also with armor-all lube, and it hadn't yet broken by 1000. Hm... do you wash your rubber before? I dunno what else it could be... the package of rubber I just got was a little dusty, so I washed the piece I used with plain water before using it.

I'll try that
Are you using it as a single strand or as a loop? And how long due you soak it in the armor all?

[chia]

I use a single loop, to make winding easier and to use the most rubber possible. Armor-all... it depends - if I've made some motors beforehand, I'll just stick them in a bag of the lube until I use them. Other times I make it, rub some on, and then use it immediately. I don't know how much it matters.

[lllazar]

Our copter's having a little bit of trouble getting into the air, it hovers when we release it but it doesn't fly upwards. I don't know what the problem is because the rotors seem fine and im using 1/8 rubber with about 800 winds. How do you guys think i can get more lift to actually get it to go up?

[aubrey048]

Our copter's having a little bit of trouble getting into the air, it hovers when we release it but it doesn't fly upwards. I don't know what the problem is because the rotors seem fine and im using 1/8 rubber with about 800 winds. How do you guys think i can get more lift to actually get it to go up?

We had a similar problem. It was friction-related.Try to decrease the friction of the rotors against the body any way you can. (I actually put a bit of lubricant between the rotor shafts and the main body. This helped us some.

Oh, and how heavy is your helicopter? Decreasing the weight should help some...

[lllazar]

O all right, that makes a lot sense....ill just add a hella lot of graphite lubricant to that point.

[chia]

Ugh. Helicopter was a disaster for us. I had the helicopter which had been consistently getting times of ~1:30 wound (with less winds than usual, I might add), and was about to launch when the top hook came off (this is not the same copter I had been having that problem with before)... and then the back hook pulled out... and then the free rotor came off of the wire that held it to the prop hook and probe. Well. Um. My partner and I were pretty darn annoyed, but we went back and fixed up our other copter, since as we hadn't technically had any official flights yet, our 8 minutes hadn't started.
Surprisingly, the second flight ended up with a time around 30 seconds (much more than the 10 I'd had before), putting us in 5th place. -fail-
Also, I was really glad COD has no rafters. Not that it helped much because our copters barely touched the ceiling anyway