tail newb questions

[hellian]

hello all. I was wondering if it was natural for a helicopter's tail to not "lock on heading" while on the ground. Do I need to get it off the ground to get the tail still? I've read raptor technique, and have followed their setup suggestions. Am I missing something? The tail rotation is not very fast, but no matter how much input I give it, it wont stay on one heading. All of this is while still on the ground. Should I go for it and hover it? I'm using the 401 futaba hh gyro, on hh mode. thanks for any suggestions.

[craneyum]

Sometimes when spooling up and the head speed is pretty low this can happen,try adjusting the points between bottom stick and midstick by a few percent and see if it makes a difference.
If there is no change in tail authority then it could mean your low neadle is a tad rich.
regards
Nigel

[tdswan]

As for spooling up, yes the above is correct. There will not be enough speed on the tail to overcome the rotation of the main blades.
....But at full headspeed, a HH gyro isn't effective until you're off the ground. The main reason for this is that the gyro is only made to put inputs small enough to hold it in one position when there is minimal friction on the airframe. When it's on the ground (at full headspeed), the gyro is correcting, but there's so much resistance on the skids that the corrections often go unnoticed just because they're not large enough to actually center it on the ground. Once you lift off, it starts to have real authority.