I am far from any expert with helicopters but can offer a few useful bits and pieces oif advice to newcomers to the hobby that they could find useful,firstly as we all know the secret of smooth helicopter flying and longevity is to get rid of any unwanted vibration,this usually shows up straight away as shake in the airframe,get rid of any vibration straight away as it will not only kill your helicopter but your valuable radio as well.
One thing that you must do is to constantly check and re-check everything,not like a conventional aeroplane the helicopter is a serious piece of rotating mass which if not treated with the respect that it deserves will bite you back !
I will not go into all of the many forms of vibration just yet because it would be just too much to take on board at once,I had the good fortune to be once involved with selling model helicopters to the public and picked up a lot of useful tips from my mentor who was a championship helicopter pilot,I had no intention of ever getting involved with helis but it just happened that way,I took on board everything that was put before me and it helped me with my own and friends helicopters when setting them up and came in useful.
One of the simplist forms of vibration that will certainly hamper your flying is blade tracking,what happens is that despite having set up your blade pitch small errors along the length of the blade can make the blades out of trim,this is called tracking,to compensate with this the linkages to the blades are adjustable by small amounts,careful tweaking can bring the blades into line,to make the job easier a material called coloured tracking tape is used,place a small portion to the blade whilst doing the static blade balance,you will not believe how a few inches or less can have an affect on the initial balance ( I will deal with the static and dynamic balance some other time ) say we have red on one tip and either leave the other white or perhaps place some yellow on the other tip,when the blades are in motion and the helicopter is in the hover at shoulder height any out of alignment will show up ie one blade will be below the other,simply observe the offending blade and pull the lower blade up into the correct position via the threaded linkages supplied on the model.
If the blades are badly out of track you will hear the waffling noise that they make a sure sign that things are not right.
The difference between a well set up helicopter and a bad one have to be seen to be believed,some new helicopters that have been built will not even leave the ground due to the settings not being correct,the things that were learned from setting up scores of such helicopters showed me many things to look out for and that includes tail rotors that go around the wrong way ! but once again that is another story for a wet evening.
Set up your tracking and just see the difference it makes to the flying of your helicopter.
If there is a demand for more information I will go into greater detail but if anyone has any questions out there or have problems with their own helicopter I will do my best to help you,the black art of helicopter trimming is just something to keep working at.
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