clp.eng

My Feedback: (10)

I decided to make my Honey Bee Fixed Pitch V2 (HB FP) heli have a brushless (BL) main motor. Unfortuanately, the motor I picked over powered the stock tail motor. Someone suggested I look into a direct drive (DD) tail setup which I did. Several people recommended I look at the product from Xtreme Productions and that is the kit I eventually purchased (EHB012). I got it last week & decided to put it on the HB this weekend.

I opened the nicely pakaged kit of parts which includes everything you need - brushed N60 style motor, vertical tail fin, boom connector, hardware, and the propellor. The instruction sheet says it's "for Honey Bee FP/CP". There are 2 pictures on the instruction sheet (see below) which should be enough for most people. When I opened the hardwre package I was a little concerned at first as there was an odd number of screws! It turned out they provided a spare for each of the 3 different sizes - very nice touch especially as these are really tiny screws!

The 1st thing I did was mount the motor to the frame. When I tried to tighten the screws they wouldn't snug all the way down! I took the motor off & saw the screws hitting something inside the motor. I didn't have any really small washers around but I did find some screws from another heli that fit and weren't too long.

After I removed the stock rear tail assembly from the heli, I tried to fit the boom connector into the boom. It didn't fit, it was too big to fit inside the boom. After thinking about it a bit, I got out my hand drill, chucked the small end into it, got some coarse sandpapaer and carefully took off a little at a time until it was a snug fit in the boom. Once I got it to fit, I realized over time it would get loose, so I marked the piece while it was in the boom for the stock screw hole. I took the boom connector out & drilled a small hole in it to accept the stock screw.

Next I the wires wouldn't reach the connections on the motor because it is longer than the stock motor. Fortunately, there is a lot of slack the the tail motor wires, so I removed the wire tie & pulled a couple of inches through the boom.

Next I put the tail fin in the supplied frame. The plastic is very thin & "bendy", I hope it holds up. Then I put the boom connector on after running the wires through it. Then next came the frame piece. I tightened down the self taping screws which hold the tail fin to the frame & clamps the boom connector to the frame. Except it doesn't grab the boom connector very tightly & it moves with the slightest touch. This is not good! This problem I don't have a solution for just yet but I'm thinking of wrapping some electrical tape around the shaft to build up the outside diameter. I'm not sure how that will work.

Last, I attached the hardware to hold the prop on the motor. The screws provided are pretty long & are phillips head. When I first put it on I had the screw heads on the prop adapter hitting the motor screws. So I had to move the prop adapter away from the frame. There isn't very much motor shaft to move it out, so I had to carefully clear the screws & still have shaft to clamp on. It would have been a cleaner design if they would have used grub screws.

I then put the prop on using the supplied lock nut. I had to hold the frame in one hand to keep it from spinning to tighten the hardware.

Finally. I fired up the heli to see if this cured my original problem. It helped but I still have proportional set to max & the trim to max, so my main motor is still over powering this tail. This is not the manufacturers fault, but my poor choice of main motor. Every time I landed I had to readjust the tail assembly to vertical.

Given the amount of rework and the poor fit of these parts I can not recommend this product for it's intended use!

Regards,

Chuck

karlik

One of the guys in the falcon 40 thread got that for his falcon and had no problems mounting it, and says it has much better response than the original gear drive.

I use the boom for the honeybee v1 in my falcon so I know they were the same diameter just different length - my only thought would be did they change it for the v2 or has the oem boom been replaced?

clp.eng

My Feedback: (10)

Hey, Larry.

It's a stock HB FP V2. I believe the boom did change between V1 & 2. Somebody also told me that the V2 boom fits inside the frame piece directly & he tossed the boom connector. If I can ever find a small enough BL main motor, I'll try that approach to solve the loose fit problem.

Chuck

karlik

This could turn into a nightmare. Did any of the parts remain the same?

I'm kind of afraid I may be able to get parts for the v1 much longer, and depending on the source I may order what I think are v1 parts and get v2. I'm thinking I may stock up on stuff I still break now and then.

AT anyrate it sounds like the xtreme fits and works pretty good on the v1 but not the v2 and nobody sells the v1 anymore. Your reveiw is pretty accurate.

If you continue to use it, make sure you do something about that nut that holds on the prop. I use the GWS dd motor and the prop assy looks identical. [link]http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXHHE2&P=SM[/link]

The nut will vibrate loose in flight and the blade will come off. The nut on the GWS unit is a 2-56. I put 2 nuts on it and a little blue loktite (NOT RED).

dknovick

Hey Chuck,

Sorry to hear about your problems. I have a Xtreme DD tail waiting til I burn out my current tail motor on my Falcon 40. Of course, mines a v1 F40, so my milage my vary.

-Dave

brianm72

Strange that you had so much trouble, Chuck.

I just installed one of these DD tails this morning on my HB V2 and it fit fine. I did have to snip the zip ties and pull a little extra wire to reach the motor. I also had to make sure not to slide the piece that attaches to the motor shaft all the way down - like you said - the screws that hold that piece on the motor shaft would hit the motor mounting screws if slid all the way on. Just backed if off a little bit.

No real problems, though. The boom connector slid into the boom fine. Pressed it in and it fit tight. Then the tail piece fit on the boom connector and tightened up nicely. The lower fin is very flexible. I do hope it doesn't break too easily, but so far it is holding up.