casipak

My Feedback: (3)

Sorry about your crash..and the weather. We are expecting rain too. I am very happy with this heli. The lipo lasts for a long time! I found some interesting chargers on helihobby for around $30-50.
I had a hard landing and around 3 teeth on the main gear were shaved a little. One of them was shaved a bit more than the others so when I fly, it makes a little clicking noise. Everything is balanced however, so I can still fly just fine. I'll trim it up tomorrow.

When the heli is about to lift off, the tail starts spinning to the left so I'll take a look at that and see what I can do.

paedbo

My Feedback: (2)

batfalcon


heli-fever.com has the pe blades for less than $4 each. Dont know exactly what the shipping would be but the package would be very light so it sh ouldnt be much

bell1684

If the tail is rotating to the left on takeoff increase the proportional a little..either that or be a little more aggressive with the throttle on take off which might counteract it as well.

casipak

My Feedback: (3)

I fixed the tail proportion so now it's very stable. Been raining all through the morning[&o]. On the transmitter, there's a little space where it says charge. I was thinking of getting some rechargable batteries and connecting my adapter to them.
What do you think?

batfalcon

The OUTER contact is the + the INNER is the -. Be careful for the correct polarity.

casipak

My Feedback: (3)

Sometimes when I push the throttle up to about 3/4, the green light on the board turns red but everything still works and the board doesn't get hot or anything like that.
Any thoughts on why this is happening and if it's serious?

P.S.-the main motor heatsink that I got has around 10 pretty big fins, however, my main motor still gets hot within around 5 minutes.
Do you guys know of any other place that sells really really good heatsinks?

batfalcon

casipak,

The green led always turns red when the throttle is above a certain point, where the circuit considers as "full". If it happens more than 3/4 then I guess en\verything is ok, couse that's the way mine is beeing working since day one.
As far as the hot main motor, how much hot is this? Have in mind that human hand can barely stand temperatures above 60 C. If you can hold it without burning your fingers it must be around 50 C or less. Try the same flying, without the canpoy. If it's not that hot then the canopy is responsible for the high temp of the motor.
My motor is around 45 C after 1 pack of hovering (10-15 min) with 2 breaks of 30 sec in between.

casipak

My Feedback: (3)

Thanks for the help with the board. I think my motor gets to be in the area of 45c.

bell1684

Casipak
So now that you've had a few days to play around with your Honeybee was it worth the wait?

BTW where did you pick your heatsink up from? Did you use any type of heat transfer goo between the motor casing & the heatsink when you installed it? I think I remember someone mentioning on a forum that radio shack sold some type of goo that helps the heatsink work more efficiently.


Big step for me this weekend..I got my girlfriend to try hovering my XRB lama. Didnt last very long as it only took her a few mintes to crash and break my last set of B blades but I think I may have converted her over to the hobby. Maybe it will cut down on some of the dirty looks I get when i say im going outside to fly my helis..

casipak

My Feedback: (3)

It was definitely worth the wait. This is the easiest heli to fly that I've used. We had some strong winds during the weekend so I just flew around in my living room for hours with no problems at all.

I got my heatsinks from helihobby.com. I didn't use the goo thing, I never used it before. Does it help a lot?

Sorry to hear about your blades but I'm glad to hear that other people are getting into the hobbby. I did the same with my brother. Before, he thought that this was a waste of money but once I showed him some videos of people doing 3d and me flying around the house, he started getting more interested. He might get the lama soon, but he's still thingking.


Has anyone bought and used the lipo charger from heli-fever.com? If so, how is its performance?

jlb0305

that is a good deal honeybee2. too bad it doesn't come with two lipo's like the one for $135 though... but hey aren't you the seller, solaa?

bell1684

The goo is called Heat Sink Grease and is available from Radio Shack for $2.00 for a 6gram tube...i couldnt tell you if it works or not but according to the website "Assures proper heat transfer between semiconductor device and heat sink".

So in your opinion it doesnt sound to me as if your fingers are telling you the heatsink is making much of a difference....

jlb0305

i found that too.... just make sure it doesnt get into the motor and gunk it up so it won't turn... that happened to my group in engineering class by accident w/ super glue...

tnd2000

The goo is soft and doesn't harden much, atleast not from the goo I have in my old computer 10+ yrs ago. The goo is made from silicon and is the same stuff used inside your PC between the CPU and heatsink. Proper place for the compound is between the metal can and the heatsink.

Also what do you mean by 0 trim. 0 trim means its centered not all the way on the bottom. I set my trim all the way down and left it there ever since. You only need to center the trim if you're in 3D mode, even then, the trim wouldn't be exactly centered.

bell1684

I can see where the wording would get confusing...

Zero trim technically would mean having it set on the middle hash mark so the trim levers would be in the middle of the entire range. When speaking of the throttle trim i wanted to make sure and let him know to set it at its lowest setting, which technically is not zero trim.

My bird will fly without having to moving the trim up as well, but with the trim set at the "zero" position (ie the middle hash mark) it will set the blade pitch so the bird will generally hover at or around 1/2 throttle.

Thanks for the info on the Heatsink goo.

casipak

My Feedback: (3)

I'll think about this goo stuff.
All the chargers I'm finding are field chargers where I would have to get a power source for it. Is there a wall charger that won't fry, won't charge the battery too fast and has a good price? My charger is totally messed up. It gets hot in 5 min and it charges the battery to full capasity in around 30 min and charging a battery that fast ruins it's life.

Bell1684,
how did you learn 3d flying? Is there a website or something?

bell1684

Lots of practice on the sim, my friend!

After I had my XRB Lama for a week or two i picked up a copy of RealFlight G2 so i could see how well the XRB skills translated to "Real" helis. Im no 3D master by any stretch of the imagination...just some basic inverted moves are enough to get my pucker factor to where it needs to be.

Sims arent a necessity, i mean you can throw that 3D switch on your Honeybee next time you're hovering outside and see what it does, but I guarantee you wont be a happy camper with what happens!

My Lipo Charger is a Vision Peak Ultra by Dynamite (about $80.00) AC/DC so you can plug it in at home or take it to the field and charge it off your car battery. Only thing it doesnt have is a discharge feature (I think the Triton is only a DC charger, but I could be wrong), which is why I dont think it gets recommended like the Tritons and others do..personally Ive never needed the feature so the $60 savings over a Triton was worth it.

casipak

My Feedback: (3)

I see. Well, I'll toughen up my basic flying skills and then probably get a sim and practice. When you throw the 3d switch toward you, the heli just rises up? What do you do to fly upside down?

I'll look up that charger on ebay and see what happens. To what voltage do you charge your 3 cell?

What do you think of this?
http://www.heli-fever.com/product_in...roducts_id=197

These are a little better:
http://www.helihobby.com/html/chargers.html

14th and 15th chargers down from top

I was thinking of using the 15th charger-polycharge and then use one of the power supplies they offer on the bottom of the page.

paedbo

My Feedback: (2)

how many mah is the pack your trying to charge? that polycharge can only charge at 1000mah, which i think is what most wall chargers do, So if you have a 3 cell 1500mah pack it will take you 1 and 1/2 hours to charge it, where if you had a charger that could put out 1500mah then it can charge the 1500mah lipo in one hour. a 2000mah pack would take 2 hours to charge on that polycharger.

3 lipo pack is considered 11.1 volts, but really the voltage ranges from 9 volts ( lowest you want to go without damaging the battery) to i think roughly 12.6 volts when fully charged.

casipak

My Feedback: (3)

my battery is 12oo Mah and I discharge down to 9.5 volts up to 12.3 volts just to be safe

batfalcon

Hi everybody,

Forgive my stupid question, but how are you sure that you discharge down to 9.5 V?
Do you monitor it somehow?
I mean the E-Sky on board circuit has a feature that "doesn't work" under 9 V?

jlb0305

I've been wondering that too, because I don't want to damage my LiPo's...
I mean if it doesn't work under 9V then why is the NiMH that it comes with only 8.4 V? How does it know the difference between a NiMH and a LiPo?

batfalcon

The circuit doesn't know. You (the user) do. So If I rephrase the question. How do you know, during each and every moment, how much is the pack's voltage? The only method I know is to put a kind of voltmeter on the model which can guide you, (the user), with a little led lamp. (E.g. when the lamp is lit => voltage more than XX,X V => everything ok. When it goes out => voltage less than XX,X=> land ASAP.)

I have put something similar on the Twister FP, which tells me the voltage DURING FLIGHT = UNDER LOAD. Cause that's when the voltage drops. Imediatelly when I land the heli, the voltage rises again above the critical point, but without it, I could have caused the damage, without knowing EXACTLY when.

casipak
This is my point. I managed to get one of these voltmeters. How do you monitor the discharge of your packs DURING flight?

jlb0305

how did you make/ where did you buy the inflight volt meter/LED?

I can probably figure it out but I really don't feel like having to do a KVL or KCL on the circuit to find the proper way to create one.

casipak

My Feedback: (3)

I don't monitor the discharge during flight and that's the problem. I have the same question as jlb0305, where did you get the inflight voltmeter?