Dyami's late log

[Eagle513]

Well here it is, I am starting my log a little late. I just got going on here, I have been reading just not posting.

I bought a T-Rex 450 SA ARF, E-Flight Gyro, Align Batteries and Align aluminum rotor blade mounts, flybar peices, rotor mast levers, and swashplate.

I flown several times the first of them all reseulted bad due to incorrect setup of the swachplate and throttle pitch curves.

I am making progress with my flight partner, daniel reese, and I am flying much more stable now, and since then my only broken parts have been a skid mount after he broke and suggested flying higher in the gym. This was not a good idea since our throttle pitch curves we not set in such a way as to maintain correct head speed with less pitch so the decent was too fast and I broke a skid mount.

Other than that I am flying much more stable and getting ready to re-adjust linkages and reset my base pitch and change the settings in the tx. I think this should be much better for normal flight and I should have more control over acent and decent something that right now, I only reall yhave control over hover at about a foot and a half and the next throttle up movement is acent kinda quick.

I think I forgot to mention I am running the DX6 tx. I think I would have gone with a better transmitter with the 5 point curves if I had known better before I bought, but it is a little late now.

I will have more to come later, and pictures soon.

[Sleepstalker]

I am pleased to be the first to say Welcome to Helitown Eagle !.... :D It's good that you have a flying partner as you can both learn/brainstorm share ideas and even loan parts as you progress as a heli pilot. The Trex SA is a great heli for the money , the only mod I did on mine was swap out the stock tail servo rod that has the Z bend in the front for a larger carbon rod "less flex" and epoxied ball link ends on the replacement rod . Nice to see you post...Sleepster... 8)

[Eagle513]

I like the tail servo rod idea, I would like to get rid of the z bend attaching to the servo arm and thanks for the welcome.

It is definatly nice to have the flying partner, we sit around and go through batteries trying to figure everything out and I think we are making real progress. Especially since we started from nothing at all on heli's.
I will be around, I am fighting with my Spectrum though, not having the 5 point curves and a few different settings than daniel has made things difficult sometimes. It is manageable though.

[Eagle513]

Ok I flew again this evening and what a difference new t/p curves make....they are written in the chit chat page.

It was pretty fun, and I flew through 2 batteries with only a broken skid mount for damage. The wind does some really neat stuff to the heli and makes your heart about stop as it bobs up and down.

I really didn't do much other that hover around over the pavement, the t/p curves are much different than they were before and I did not have sufficient head speed before, so now everything reacts much faster and it took a little getting used to. But other than that it felt great. I think if I had set it up correctly the first time, I wouldn't have been so much the mystery flyer. I was beginning to get a little discouraged by the way it was handling.

I am learning more about the way the Spectrum and the Futaba differ, and I am kinda beginning to want to ebay my DX6 and get a Futaba.

I must say though, no matter how much stuff breaks, I am learning more everyday and that is really very exciting! I can see why it is such an addicting hobby. I also am going to be getting a new digital camera here soon, so I can start getting pictures going.

[Eagle513]

Flying again today and it was great!!! No broken parts at all through 2 batteries, that is a major improvement.
I will post up some more later about the flight, but I wanted to put up a pic of my little rex.

[/img]

[Eagle513]

Ok, well....that didn't work, I will have to get a photobucket account later and post it up.

[eddiemoth]

Eagle513, it might be the size of the pic. you can use photobucket and keep the size to less than 640 by 800. That will work. This How To would give you some ideas http://helitown.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=519#519

[Eagle513]

Let's see if this works....

http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x85/dkrasko/HPIM0968.jpg

This is my little T Rex 450SA

There we go, thank you photobucket.
I have some aluminum and please excuse the mis matched skid mounts, I haven't been too concerd about color yet, just keeping it flying!

[Eagle513]

Well, I flew again last night and as Daniel said I am down for a few days. I got a little over ambitious and I was attempting a little faster forward flight. Without touching the throttle it started to climb. My little rex was running away and looked like it was going to chase down a park car, so taking the less of the expensive, I dumped the throttle and my rex was introduced to the ground. It was an abrupt meeting and resulted in both blades broken and 2 servos with stripped gears. That is really all it did, and I am pretty happy with that, although I would say that my rex's indroductions where still a little rough. lol he he he

So I am brole for a few days because the hobby shops don't stop enough parts. I am waiting on them to come in so I can get airborn again. I will say this though, for normal flight I do not reccommend the DX6. the 3 point curve does not seem to provide enough control and the ratchet on the throttle proves to enable it to click nicely from a 6 inch hover to a brisk climb, something I am pretty well fed up with. This evening I removed the ratchet mechanism, rather I turned it upside down so the metal peice and the plastic grooves no longer click into place. It would be awful nice to have enough spare parts to get in the air again, I would really love to try this removed ratchet bit out.

That is about it for now, I am sure there will be more to come as soon as I get parts. I think I enjoy rebuilding this thing as much as I do flying.

This helicopter and I have a perfect relationship, introductions left out. :)

[Eagle513]

I am really bad about logging stuff, it is a great idea and I guess I really should do it more often......but.

So anyway, I am fly much better than I used to. It finally strarted making sense. I have been fighting to get the thing in my hands and the picture in my head to do the same thing. I am getting much closer to getting it to do exactly what I want.

I am really close to completing true figure eights. I go side to side very well, and can pretty much have it do anything I want tail in. I think I just need to get used to seeing it in the air from different angles. I don't really have much of a fear of heights anymore, and I think that helps quite a bit as well.

So I will post again here in a while when it strikes me as a good idea.

On a side note. Lots of batteries and a flying partner really help too. It helps alot to get to see what the thing should do or be able to tell what it is doing, and the more stick time the better. Real stick time. Nothing is more beneficial to flying your helicopter than takiing your time and flying your helicopter. I love this hobby and would reccommend it to almost anyone that has some patience.

I posted a bunch of links to picture under real helecpoters forums for anyone that wants to take a peak. They are current pics of helicopters at work on forest fires.

[Eagle513]

Here's the skinny, I had some time yesterday, actually alot of time outside to fly, so I thought....great, I will get to fly lots of batteries (Thanks to Daniel), but.....no such luck.

I flew the first pack and noticed that my tracking was way off. So I checked pitch, seemed right. Everything seemed ok, but I started digging. I thought I found the cause of the problem to be the settings I use in my Tx are pretty mellow. I cranked throttle up, and flew about half a battey in idle up with higher throttle and pitch curves. It seemed worse. GRRRRRRRRRRRR!

I started tearing into it, but I was working on a picinic table and after dropping the same bearing and a few screws in the grass I decided to wait. Now I have it in pod and boom.

I took the rotor head out and had a few stupid moments, thinking I found the problem (Something obviously not). But as I went farther into teardown I started find little things, like connecting rods, and mixing arms that are supposed to be the same length as much as 6mm different. (yeah, I was shocked too)

Well, I took every arm off and I dissasembled the entire head, every peice. I had seized bearings from too much lock tite and in the rotor grips, mixing arms, and washout arms. So that was not good. Then to make it more interesting I replaced them and started actually looking at the book. I forgot to put those little washers between the bearings. Oops, tear it apart again.
Then I noticed that it looked different than it did before, look at the book again, oh I had the washout base on upside down, and the mixing arms oriented wrong as well.

So maybe this crap could have caused some problems. I am not sure.....(ok being sarcastic)

End result I feel like an idiot and I think it is going to be much better, I have a few more links to make and put on, but I should be back in the air tonight.

I'll let you know if I even know how to fly since it will be set up correctly.

[Eagle513]

So it turns out that flying too late after dusk is a bad idea when your heli isn't set up for it. That is the reality I had a few days ago. I had that "one last battery" thought and it turned out badly. I had flown about 4 batteries and all was well, actually really well, I had pretty much just rebuilt my little rex and reset every link, retrimmed electronics and had the tracking perfect (something I have never had). I was flying some slow lazy 8s and some really fast ones occasionally coming nose in and not getting too freaked out. This was all well and good until Dan comes up with the idea of flying one last pack and video taping it so the lipo alarm lights would show up a little better. I did some very aggressive forward flight moves and thought I could see it well enough to do normal flying, but that dang treeline gets really dark. I came off my left side and lost it, in trying to come back to the right, I held the cyclic too long and did an unintentional roll. While it was inverted I dropped pitch and it started coming back up (away from the ground that is) but I lost orientation and while trying to roll it back over upright it came at the ground pretty hard inverted.

The end reult was twisted flybar, broken blades, twisted tailcase, broken CF tail fin, Aileron and Pitch servo's stripped, bent mainshaft, stripped a few teeth off main gear, and I think that was it. Total cost of repair was about 50 bucks. Not bad, but a little depressing. I got it fixed today and all reset. It actually took a while just to clean the dirt out of everything, I landed in a dirt patch, but all is well cleaned and flyable. So I am going to go fly again today, just waiting on batteries.

Also while I was at the hobby shop I ran into this guy that walked up to the counter and said he wanted to buy a trex. I wouldn't have thought much of it but he mentioned that he had never built one and was asking alot of quiestions. The guy at the counter continued to give the regular sales pitch and ended up selling him a Trex S with hs65 servo's, 401gyro, and digital servo, a few batteries, no charger or connecters to get power to the esc, all in all it was not in his favor. he ended up spending almost 800 on this thing with no TX or RX and hadn't ever put one together. I heard him say he had to have it flyable by tomorrow (today), and it was for some laser tracking thing. I thought I would help and offered to help him assemble it and get it in the air. We spend about 4 hours putting it together and getting it ready, but without any connector on the esc there was not good way to connect the battery. I used aligator clips just to get power and make sure all the electronics worked, but he ran out of time and had to leave before we could put my RX in it and set the servo arms and actually fly it. No big deal, but I thought it was probably a big help to get everything put together and get the mechanics set correctly. I felt pretty good about it anyway, the book that came with the AFR which is further assebled than the S said it takes about 8 hours to get it in the air, I did it in 4.

I am ready to go fly and I swear one of these days I will get more pcitures posted. lol

[Eagle513]

Well, I just got back from the school yard accross the street and flew out my batteries, just two for now :(

No wrecks this time. I spent the first pack warming up and getting comfy with it since the last time I flew it (in the open), I crashed pretty bad. So I was a little timid with it, just wanted to make sure mechanics were good and no issues before I starting into practicing 8's.

By the second pack I was flying along pretty fast and really doing lazy 8's. I still have this thing about coming at myself. But I was doing very well flying past myself sideways, so I am not complaining.

I plan on buying some more batteries here soon, kinda waiting on a few things $ to work out, but I hope to get a new charger and 2-4 more batteries. I think if I get the additional batteries the extra stick time per session will help me overcome that nose in fear, seems like everytime I get through the second pack I am coming farther into it, then I am out and don't get to continue.

I started in May and was stricken with mechanical issues and TX issues, now I have not enough batteries and still a crummy TX.

Soon......maybe there will be a fix.

[Eagle513]

Well, an update, short but should be long.

My last flight ended poorly. I am finally claiming one not of my own fault. I was doing some nice easy flying and doing what I thought to be a great job and I had a servo failure. I am blaming this one on the tail servo.

After the wreck I fixed everything or so I thought. I had it in the air again, but I was getting severe glitching on the tail servo. Now me and my Rex have had a few bad spills and I have broken a reverse switch (wee tiny dip switch) off of the gyro. I thought the glitching was from the gyro. I was wrong, I was playing with my new DX7 getting it set up and the glitching returns. With no gyro attached I had glitches. Well I should say jitters. So I put a different servo on and no problem. Then connect it through the gyro I thought to be broke and no problems. Problem solved.

Now it is late though and I need sleep so I have to pause. But the good news for me is, I didn't want to use the new receiver really on the 450, I wanted to save it for the 600. I had to use it to use the new GY401 that was also purchased today, but again I didn't want to use it yet because I want it for the 600. So, now that I found the problem with the servo I can use my old gyro and the AR6000 receiver and still get all functions I want without using the new stuff (except TX :) )

So I will sleep now, and follow more up tomorrow starting setup with the other RX and all will be good.

Anyone want to buy a T Rex 450SE RTF he he he

[Eagle513]

So now is a good time to update. I flew this evening....well I hovered for a few. I lost my confidence with the last crash and it has been a few days rebuilding. But I am up in the air again. Wind was pretty calm and would have been great to fly a little more, but because I was setting up the new TX and lights and a few other bits, I was running batteries down just trying to get eveything just right.

So tomorrow will bring more flight time.
The DX7 is as nice as everyone says it is and I am very glad I didn't wait any longer to purchase it. Although setting up the AR6000 receiver was a little funny on it. Aileron and Pitch servos had to be switched. Like the receiver was mixing them backwards. The AR7000 receiver didn't do that. Anyone every heard of this before?

[daniel reese]

"Put down the glass pipe and step away..." (LOL)

[Eagle513]

So fly yesterday, Aug 29, and it went wel, no major issues, this was the first time out in the open with the new TX, everything was great. Flys like a dream. Maybe a little to nice and easy. With the old TX (DX6), I set everything up by the book, like you are supposed to do, and might even be a good idea more often.

There were a few odd moments when I was setting up the new one. I thought I had remeber all the settings and hadn't had the 450's book out with me. So I programmed everything in and starting setting servo arms. When I had the arms level, I moved the cyclic and huh...they were wrong. Pitch servo and Aileron were backwards. I thought this strange as the other one didn't do that.

I ended up switching the plugs and making it work, but they are truly backwards and many of the servos were reversed. More than are supposed to be.

So through reading the manual again this morning and thinking about reseting a test model in the TX to see if I can get it right, I think I found my answer.

The Trex 450 is 3 servo's operating in 120 degrees. Each one 60 degrees from eachother. I got that right, even me in my ignorance can figure that out. The part I forgot from the manual is that is the swash mix it should be set as:

Aileron -65%
Elevator +65%
Pitch +65%

Instead what I had done with the settings was

Aileron +65%
Elevator +65%
Pitch +65%

Hmmm....Gee that might make a difference.

With that done the book says reverse Pitch and that is the only one that will need it.

The DX7 has this really neat display that shows what the servos should be doing as you move the sticks so I tried it. The result was kinda neat. Imagine that the book was right (for the most part.)

Everything moved as it is supposed to. except the pitch. I had to unreverse it and then everything was correct. So that was my first "shoulda done it by the book" mistake. The next was that while centering the servos to their neutral position you are supposed to move the throttle stick to the center position. Yep, didn't do that one either.

I have limited everything mechanically by half. This needs to be corrected. So this evening after I go fly I am going to reset the mechanics on the Heli correctly. It flys the way it is, and I don't have time to fix it before I go to the feild tonight, so I will do it later. I think the new setup will help out quite a bit.

One of those duh moments when you think back and go well gee wiz that's why no one's T/P curves have been working for me.

Oh well, I know better now and all is well.

[Eagle513]

I'll keep it short and simple tonight. Expecially since I need sleep sometime tonight. Dan and I took off for the field today and what a great flying say it was. I flew out 6 packs today on the 450 and no major problems. Well there was that one little problem.....the screws that hold the seesaw in appear to be wrong. They are the original screws that came out of the plastic one. They got transplanted to the aluminum seesaw when I broke the plastic. So I have this slop in the main blades that causes an uncureable tracking issue. I am going to take the bird down to the LHS and see if it is screws or if I need a new seesaw.

Other than that it was great flying lots of well controlled forward flight, figure eights and ups and downs. On top of great flying it was great weather. I can't complain at all, the sun was shining and winds were ok. It was a great way to spend 5 hours outdoors. :)

[Eagle513]

I am very excited to report that I have sold my Trex 450. It is no longer mine, and is now owned by Jeff (new member to the forum). He is doing quite well with it so far and I was privledged to witness his first flight with it. Some decent hovers, may have been the result of an excellent setup already done. :)

So the reason this is so excited, as I am sure you may be wondering by now, is that the sale of my little Rex finished the funding of my new Trex 600CF. This is extremely exciting. I have been assembling it over the last two days and everything is complete except the setup of the GY401 Gyro. This is the only bit remaining and it would have been done but I had to leave for work. I have done function tests of everything so far and the electronics are all mounted and wires run. I am very very very very very excited to get off work and finish the gyro setup and do a test flight.

So I just thought I would update everyone.

The new bird is as follows:
T Rex 600CF Frame
CF Heli Max Pro Blades (Cheap, very Cheap)
DS821 Digital Servos
GY401 Gyro (Using DS821 with this Gyro)
75amp ESC
XL motor

Flying this machine:
Spectrum DX7
and ME.

The Maiden voyage of the new bird will be on video and I will update everyone after it's flight.

-Dyami

[eddiemoth]

Sound like a good system! Can't wait for the Maiden flight of your new bird.

[Eagle513]

So there I was, a nice calm day, just me, a transmitter, and one very beautiful shiny new T Rex 600CF E.

Well, no video, but the maiden voyage is complete. This was quite an experiance. I finished setup of the GY401 Gyro, which I must say is made out to be much harder than it really is, and took the bird out to the old soccor field. Of course I should expect it by now, but I don't, that when one goes to a soccer field there are usually soccer players there. So I had to share the field. This didn't really bother me, I was keeping to my little corner, but it is nice to have the field to yourself.

Oh yeah, the flight, I would like to say it was great.......but I can't.

Now it wasn't because I crashed, but as of right now, I have one battery, since this was the first flight, I was taking it slow, very very very slow. This is a bigger bird than what I have flown before and I wanted to make sure that nothing was going to go wrong. I flew pretty slow, I never really even got to forward flight. The T/P curves I had used in the little bird were not even close to being right in the big bird. I think it might help if I had a pitch guage.....I knew I was forgetting something while at the LHS. :(

A good flight.....Yes, but exciting......not really.

I guess unexciting is probably a good thing.

There it is, it is in the air and flew without problems. No tracking issues no drift, no anythingy bad. Just good.

[Eagle513]

Hey guess what.....The wind sucks!!!

I went and flew the 600 today, and I have flown in wind, but there were gusts of like 25 mph and that was too much. I had the helicopter at almost a 45 degree angle to the side and it was just hovering in place. This was pretty crummy. I finally landed and decided to not fly out the last battery. I love flying even in wind, but this was just a bit much. It was still good flying, forward flight and lazy 8's.

Anyone else ever fly in this kind of crap? I feel pretty good about flying now, there have been no crashes with the 600 and I plan to keep it that way.

[Eagle513]

Here is the good post.... I went to a swap meet here in Virginia at one of the local hobby shops. I was looking around and had no intention of buying anything, but it was my first swap meet and thought it would be cool. There was a good number of people there and I got to see some nice stuff. Most of it was planks, but there was some heli's there too.

Amidst all this walking in circles looking at what people had I saw a scale fuse sitting on the ground. It was a Kalt Jet Ranger.

This Jet Ranger box and fuse looked like it had been sitting around for years. Oh yeah, that's cause it has. It was pretty old and looked a little rough, a few cuts had been made, but it had never been assembled. It had pretty well everything and had a sticker price of $110. I thought it was nice, but not that nice. So I pretty much forgot about it and I went to go eat. I took my time eating and came back to it about 2 hours later. This time I walked past and noticed a new tag on it. hehehe $60!

Well, I couldn't resist the temptation and bought it.

So I am the proud owner of a very old Kalt Jet Ranger Fuse and I am in the process of getting things cut and trimmed and mounting the mechanics.

I was working on this today and I will have pictures eventually, but last time I used my photobucket account, well, they shut my account off for no good reason.

So soon.

[Eagle513]

So I was all excited about having my nice new (old) fuse and starting to spark ideas of how to go about putting this on my only flown 3 times Trex 600CF electric bird. This was great, we are on the same day by the way, I went to the field to go fly before going home, cause there is no point in having a heli if you don't fly it. Everything is great!

WRONG!

I did my preflight checks everything is good. I flew my first battery, the warm up take it easy get your thumbs back kinda flying. Toward the end I started getting more aggressive but the battery wound down and I landed.

I let the bird cool down strapped in the battery, did my preflight checks, everything seems well. I took off and hovered around tail in a bit then got into flying forward flight and work on my 8's. Normal. After a few passes I was coming from the left flying to the right, and I pulled a pretty hard banking turn back the the left, the heli was coming back accross, but was still sideways to the ground when I hear two fast chirps and the motor died on the heli from about 40 feet. I thought the chirps were low TX batteries, but I check those before I fly 10.1 volts no prob. But after the bird and my jaw hit the ground and I finally got out of shock from what I had just seen, I checked the TX, because I tried leveling out the bird and was getting no response at all nothing.

The TX was blank.





I really despise the rechargable battery that comes with the DX7 because it only lasts for a short time, I can fly on 8 AA batteries for a week or more. I made a battery case for my DX6 and was now using it in my DX7. Until now never had a problem not so much as a hint of a bad connection. Well, a connection somewhere in there died while I was in the air and my brand new bird out for the 3rd flight session just smashed into the ground.

So the total damage.....
Main blades don't look like main blades anymore
Flybar wrapped around niceley
Horizontal fin snapped
Boom support rods (CF) split the length of it
dented the boom where the supports brace off it
broken skids
as if that wasn't bad enough...both sides of the CF Frame broke in several places.

This one hurt. I am not so pleased, I think I would have been much happier if I could say that I dumb thumbed it into the ground, but this one was not my fault, that makes me mad.

I have pictures....no I don't...I have onboard video of it.
I had just mounted my digital camera off the side of the heli and was trying it out. So the camera was onboard on it's fatal flight. It wasn't real great for seeing anything, but it does allow you to hear how fast 40 feet go when your heli is sideways to the ground and the motor dies.

The camera survived, but the nice new mount didn't, it snapped off. So I need a new camera mount now too. That makes me mad too cause it worked great!

[Eagle513]

Well, I promised so I am shrinking file sizes to put some pictures in.

So here is comes....

I hope this shows a little of whats going on with it. I am kinda stuck I am waiting on the torque tube to move on so I can finish the tail. But I think it is coming along.


What do you all think?