High Altitude Performance

[HeliSmelly]

Hi,
I'm just starting to fly electric helis. My CX2 is being flown at an apartment I spend time in down in Memphis, TN. I'm there about two weeks a month.
The rest of the time I'm at home in Colorado. My house is up on the Continental Divide at 11,200'. I'm assuming that helicopter performance is going to be a lot different up there.

My question is this:
As I trade up to a more advanced helicopter for flying at home, are there any specific things I need to consider? I would like to fly both inside my house and outside when it's calm conditions. I haven't bought anything yet.
Thanks,
Tim

[nellster]

Hi Tim,
I'm no expert but, as far as electric heli's go, an increase in pitch and possibly head speed to compensate for the thinner air. Also if the weather is cold, the battery life will decrease, so use the battery when it is still warm from charging.Other than that I can't think of anything you would need for the heli except a snow board
This is only a theory but it makes sense to me.

Neil....

[chaos]

High altitude certainly is going to affect performance. Airfoils, whether wings or rotor blades, are affected by "density altitude", which takes into account both air pressure and air temperature. A Bell 206 can hover in ground effect (HIGE) up to around 13,000 ft, but it can hover out of ground effect (HOGE) up to only around 6,000 ft. Model helis are generally pretty much overpowered compared to full size helis, so you might be ok. But before attempting anything radical you'd want to see how much residual power you have when hovering out of ground effect. I have no actual data but conceivably, depending on the model, you might not be able to get a HOGE hover going. If that's the case, you'd want to slow it to a hover only when you're low enough to hover. Otherwise, if you were to stop higher up, it will immediately begin descending and by the time you get into ground effect it may be going too fast to stop. That would eliminate the tic toc maneuver, for one.

Since you plan to fly inside, I guess you're talking about an electric heli. The good news there is that you won't loose any motor power due to altitude, like you would with a combustion engine.

Performance goes down as the altitude and/or temperature go up. So whatever performance you get outside on a cold day, it's going to be less when you fly inside where it's warm.

I'd like to know how the CX2 performs up there.