Report on CSM HLG200 Gyro - by Bob Johnston
We tried one of the new CSM HLG200 gyro's in Mike's Raptor 30 recently, this was a good test for the gyro as his Raptor has a average sports type set up (standard tail linkage etc running at a moderate head speed) as it happened the tail servo arm was already about the right size to give just about full tail pitch slider travel so there was nothing really to do to set the gyro up, just drop it in and make sure it was working in the right sense. It was a little breezy at our local site when we first flew it which gave good testing conditions for the gyro, I don't know exactly what to say about the gyro as it is not meant as the top of the range gyro just a very affordable entry level heading hold gyro, having said that it works remarkably well, the tail was nice and stable, the response was smooth and the hold is not bad at all, what more could you ask for from this level of gyro. Mike even thinks it works better than the ICG400 gyro he had in the model previously! The only thing that is perhaps not typical of a beginners set up on Mike's model is the JR 8417 servo he has on the tail but I am confident the gyro will still work well with a standard servo like a JR 591 or Futaba S3001, I will try and talk him into fitting a 591 servo just to test this out. As the gyro is small and very light it should make a good option for some of the electric models right down to the Hornet (you would want to remove the gyro's case to use it in the Hornet) Brief description of the gyro. It is a small single box design (same case as the ICG180, the little yellow entry level gyro from CSM) and shares a lot of it basic features, like no reversing switch just turn the gyro upside down to reverse it's sense, the gain is adjusted via a small pot on the side of the gyro, it is not adjustable from the transmitter and is Heading hold only. There are no end point adjustments, just adjust the size of the servo arm to achieve full tail pitch slider travel. Because the gyro is so simple to use it will be suitable for most entry level pilots, unlike a lot of Heading hold gyro's it is not critical on set up.