BarracudaHockey

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FWIW I haven't changed a bearing since I switched from Cool Power to Byrons Rotor Rage. (and I pay for all my fuel, even the review stuff)

I hope all my heli friends have a safe and Happy New Years!

Mack66

Cuda,

At our club, most of us heli pilots use MagnumFuels Heli 30 (DS). We buy about a pallet of it at a time to reduce shipping costs. Seems to perform very well for our needs too. Biggest need is lower cost! A five gallon case costs $72, or $14.40 per gallon. That's less than half of what you're flying with. Greg has flown with both and really can't see an awful lot of difference in performance. Maybe someone who is in the position of doing REVIEWS all the time could arrange for a dyno test of different fuels using the same engine? The OS 50 Hyper comes to mind.

JD,

I have one more RL-53H new in box. I'm thinking after I've gone through the ones I have it's time for a change.

Y'all

Have a Happy and Prosperous New Year!

Mack

TakeshiSkunk

I'm back! Not sure if anyone even remembers me, I've been gone for a while :P

I haven't flown much at all over the past year, but I just picked up an mCPX (well ordered, LHS will have it Thursday) for myself and am hoping to get back on top of stuff. Being able to fly indoors at the drop of the hat will keep me motivated to work on stuff, at least that's my theory. My Blade 400 still has yet to be crashed save one hard autorotation after a tail belt failure, it's repaired and ready to fly but I'm out of practice enough that I'm hesitant to take it out right away.

My first impression coming back is that flybarless tech seems to be the new big thing in smaller helis, I still can't believe that the mCPX is FBL!! Maybe come spring or summer I'll pick up the Blade 450 or something, it seems like it would be a lot easier to rebuild after an accident.

In lieu of flying this past year I've been racing Mini-Zs with a local club and having a blast, but the guilt of my planes and heli sitting around has motivated me to stop neglecting them

dooleyje

Boy,,,where you been??. Glad to have you back. The MCPX is a dream of a heli and i fly mine most every day. It is a blast to fly and crashed very well. I hope you got the version2 MCPX. It have different main board and tail. The tail holds a lot better than the oringinal version. We have installed brushless motors in ours and they have a bunch of power.

Jim

TakeshiSkunk

I have a bad habit of taking sudden, long absences from forums...I usually come back though! I'm happy to see this thread still going strong with some familiar names, always enjoyed the community here.

I did a bit of reading on it and made sure to specify the V2 when I placed my order, is there an easy way to quickly identify the V2 so I can be absolutely sure before I pay for it?

I was actually curious of a few things regarding the revision. I understand the tail holds a lot better with the new blade, but I heard some blowout issues were caused by excessive negative pitch bogging the mains and that a full turn or so of extension on the swashplate arms was suggested out of the box. Is this no longer a problem on the new ones?

I also heard that it tends to lose a lot of altitude when rolling to inverted, is there a good way to correct this via setup or hop ups? What upgrade parts will offer the most improvement for the money? I'll probably be poking around for a good base 3D profile after I get my sea legs back with some hovering and boxes and all that

Mack66

Skunk!

Welcome back! You're one of the people who I've wondered about. Also wondering what happened to Choppy. One Thumb is still lurking I think. Glad to see you've returned to the dark side. You know you wanted it.

All,

Been working of repairing my SDX. Damage wasn't too bad. Installed the main shaft this afternoon. Then went to slide the swashplate and washout and...it didn't fit! After a little fussing around, I took my calipers to it and surprise surprise, the main shaft is about 1.5 thousandths larger than the swashplate's hole. I measured the original mainshaft and sure enough, ~ .0015in smaller than the new one. I wonder if Hirobo is losing it? This is the second QA error I've seen, the first one being a very large runout on a clutch shaft.

Not a big deal, I'll just swap it out with another from Greg (assuming that all the other shafts are within specification).

Tomorrow looks like a good day to fly at least in the afternoon. Should be in the 60's with winds 5-10mph. Thank goodness my trusty Sceadu is ready to go. The SDX is a few hours away from a check flight.

Release the hounds!

Mack

dooleyje

Skunk, the box will have a big red sticker that says version2. The Mcpx needs a little light touch on the collective. The new version has an extended tail, new blades and new main board. I suspect the tail motor is different also since it is a different part number too. All the new parts for version 2 will begine with 36xx. The reading you are seeing is probably the version 1 and it was bad about blowing the tail out. We installed the 120 tail motor and no blow outs at all on the V1. The V2 tail hold very well. You have to be fast on your collective when pounding the MCPX because the stock motor just does not have the power. I have a brushless upgrade on mine with the Microheli frame. But all in all I believe the problem with loosiing altitude when flipping is the servos are not very fast. I found that even the v! roll very nice without a lot of collective..... Get the heli and then look at the blades and make sure you are at 0 pitch with the sticks ion the middle. The early versions were off by about two turns but later one have been right on the money and all the V2 I have trimmed were spot on.

Jim

TakeshiSkunk

OK cool, thanks for the advice! I think I have an idea of what to expect then, just based on fooling around with different helis in RF. Probably going to hover inverted at a lot lower stick position than my b400, so I'll be prepared for that! Without the heads up I very well may have landed upside down on my first attempt

Sounds like the motor upgrade is something I'll definitely want to look into after a bit, I'm really excited about getting my hands on this thing and getting it all sorted out.


There's no escaping it! These little balls of death are an addiction to be sure Good to see you again man!

Edit:

Augghh Riders is letting me down once again...I called in the order EARLY on Monday and for some reason it wasn't placed until Tuesday [:@] They had promised it today but now they're saying tomorrow. I could have paid less online and already be flying, but I have to support them because they're the only LHS in the area I'm still kind of annoyed that they didn't even have a single mCPx in stock...they hardly have any models at all in the store really.

Ah well, I just have to wait one more day. Waiting is kind of fun in its own way

Mack66

OK, time for another episode of the Rat Club Chronicles. Greg, Ronnie, Fred and I were out at the Rat Club today. My goodness what a wonderful afternoon. Low 70's, winds were say 2-5mph, and calming by 3pm. Fred is our newest rookie pilot, and he had a good day hovering around especially without having to deal with any winds. He still struggles with keeping his altitude steady, but he perseveres and is moving around a lot. I'm the next skill level higher, able to fly lazy 8's, strong pylon style turns, stall turns, loops, and rolls. Hovered inverted once.

But not today. I had a lot of work to do. My Sceadu has continually given me fits. The engine seems to run ok and then seemingly out of the blue, while executing a steep decent (about 60 deg angle) to land, the engine would suddenly go lean. After that, it seemed to STAY lean. Grrr. Anyway, Greg had a theory that the mid-range was involved and the only way to correct it was to go in and adjust the position of the opposite end of the spray bar that is attached to the throttle barrel. This is accessed on the Redline 53H by removing the arm on the barrel and adjusting with a screwdriver. Sounds more confusing than it actually is.

Long story short, we adjusted it, then followed up with adjustments to the high speed needle and I was in business. For the rest of the afternoon I could fly the tail feathers off my Sceadu! Yay!

While not flying I continued to work on repairing my SDX. By the end of the afternoon, it was ready for pitch adjustments and preflight checkout. Next time out we'll go over it and take it out for a checkout/setup run. Still need to go over the whole thing and check all fasteners. Finally, she's almost ready to go.

Ronnie was having a ball. He flew hard and fast, practicing his autos as he ran low on fuel. One attempt he decided to abort the auto because he had drifted too far down field. His execution was perfect powered back up and resumed normal flight. Because he didn't let the main rotor speed fall off too far, he still had enough tail rotor speed to make a smooth recovery.

Ronnie did have an unusual event though. On one flight, he really was banging his sticks not 3D, but lots of aerobatics. Came in to land and his tracking was off. Also lots of vibration. Turns out that one of the balls on the seesaw pulled out or unscrewed itself almost to the point of pulling free. Not sure just how bad it would be if it let loose. He parked it and reinstalled it, this time applying glue to permanently set it even though it hadn't stripped out as far as we could tell. No problem Ronnie brought out his reserve another SDX of course.

I had the last flight of the day. Sun was down and clouds had moved in. Put on my yellow sunglasses, but that didn't help much. Flew about 3/4 of a tank then parked it as I was having difficulty seeing it clearly and started having orientation issues.

Life...is good!

Mack

flyerbug686

Still flying! Nice to see that this thread is still going.

Best Regards

FB

Mack66

Hey Bug! Is the weather flyable up there or is it miserable and wet and cold?

Mack

TakeshiSkunk

Picked up my mCPx Friday and hovered out maybe 10 packs or so yesterday. So far so good, though flying indoors still makes me very nervous! I've just been working on switching from tail in to both sides hovering, haven't done any actual nose in yet. I should probably be flying outdoors...I know I'm not going to fly it into the ground or anything, I'm just worried about not having enough space to recover if it starts moving when I don't want it to

Does anyone have a suggested refresher course I should try? I figured I'd just keep hovering until I could relax in all orientations again and go from there.

Mack66

Skunk, why not try following the IRCHA PPP program? Go to http://ircha.org/index.php?pr=PPP_Levels and follow the levels. It will give you reasonable goals to pursue.

Mack

Mack66

The Rat Club Chronicles continue:

Yesterday, we all reconvened at Read Memorial Flying Field to continue pursuing our dreams. The weather was fantastic, and all of us flew well. About the only incident was when Ronnie was working on his autos and decided to abort his mission about 10 feet off the ground. An excellent recovery, he switched power back on and climbed out from a possible landing too far from him to see well!

Turns out that I missed the event of the day. Sean, who got a Raptor 30 for Christmas had his first hot start, resulting in a destroyed clutch assembly. I wasn't there when it happened, but I guess he let go of the head when it sped up. Long story short, they got it shut down, but not before it had consumed the clutch. Sean spent most of his afternoon calling around town to find a hobby shop that had the parts he needed. Found a shop in Sugarland, so he and his father headed out early enough to get there before they closed. The next day they hadn't repaired it so when they showed up today, only their Sceadu was operational.

Today, things shaped up differently. Thunder storms circled the field, but never ever attacked us. Winds started rising eventually hitting 20mph gusts. My goal for the day was to finish setting up my SDX, but that didn't go well since I couldn't determine what a level hover was because of the winds. So I parked it and watched the other pilots fly.

Had a number of planks flying so the heli pilots gathered on the alternate runway that runs about 30 degrees West of the main active I'd call it runway 340 or so. We crisscross with the fixed wing traffic, but not a big deal. I took my SDX out to finish the setup but couldn't manage to get a good read because of Westerly winds gusting 15-20mph. Richard was having a bit of vibration issues with his Sceadu, but went out anyway. He was flying his usual lazy eights when he ended up auguring in. My assessment was that he presented his rotor disk directly into the winds and didn't recognize the folly of his ways. Since he really didn't have any upward thrust he fell to the ground. He is assessing his options, but I think he's going to opt for moving up to an SDX and stop pouring money into his obsolete Sceadu.

Back to the main events, Crazy Bill was flying the tail feathers off of his SDX, and although his aerobatics left a lot to be desired, he did manage to keep his bird aloft. Fun to watch. His rolls were terrible, but improving as the day wore on.

Ronnie went out at the peak of the winds. During an autorotation practice he was rewarded: for some reason known only to him, he flared too soon. He flared about 4-6ft off the ground and had no energy left in his main rotor. Down he came! The helicopter seemed intact at first. Closer inspection showed a severed mixing arm on one of the blades. Not too bad.

However, once the aircraft was back on the bench, alert Greg spotted a fractured side frame: the heli needed to be rebuilt! Aaaarg! Not a high cost, but certainly a lot of labor will be needed to repair this baby.

Luckily, Ronnie has a second SDX and got it out. He took it out and flew it including practicing more autos. I guess if you fall off the horse you need to get back on and ride ride ride.

Sooo all in all it was another great day at the Rat Club.

TakeshiSkunk

Looking at level 1...I think I have all of that dialed except for the final part. That gives me something to work on! All the other stuff can be improved/made more comfortable as well, I find myself tensing up and have to force myself to relax my hands occasionally.

I need to find a more experienced pilot to watch me fly and give me some input. I know one of the guys that comes to our Mini-Z races occasionally is a pretty solid heli pilot, I should see when I can fly with him. I may be headed to my first indoor fun fly this Friday with my housemate actually! I've been to club meets and all that over the years but have yet to actually fly, fixed wing or heli, with a group ever. I'm a bit nervous but it should be fun

Mack66

One of our newest pilots was practicing hovering, and suddenly landed. The peanut gallery immediately thought something was wrong until we saw him wiping his palms on his pants sweaty palms!

Don't worry about stage fright at the Fun Fly. You will be too busy flying to be concerning yourself with what's going on around you. Out at our field on days when only the heli pilots are out there it is pretty comical. We all take turns flying and the rest of us line up on the grass in our chairs and cheer the current pilot on. Or not. Sometimes they just shoot the bull and don't even pay attention...unless something interesting happens, usually involving a strong buzz from the main blades! Or worse.

Mack

TakeshiSkunk

Well here's hoping I won't be the "worse" I just got RF set up again at home, going to try to put in enough time to not embarrass myself!

Mack66

My question is: what muffler should I buy for my SDX with the Thunder Tiger Redline 53H in it?

Some background:

- Since I bent my Redline Hiflow 3D muffler, I figure it will only be a matter of time before it fractures and falls off like several I've seen before. Wasn't my choice though: it came with the used SDX.

- I have a Youngblood MP-5 on my Sceadu, and it seems to perform well. They aren't available any longer just the stick banger version MP-5 SB.

- Looking at online shopping there appears to be a muffler shortage for 50's. What's up with that?

I was seriously considering the Outrage Hyper Rage 55 Muffler (50 Size) OTR-HR1161 from AMAIN Hobbies, but I see that it is now out of stock as well.

What do you think/recommend?

Mack

dooleyje

Mack, see if you can find an Align .50 pipe. It will make that Red head scream. The Align pipe sorta reminds me of the Hatori pipe. If you can find a MP2, jump on it. It is a lot better pipe than the MP5. The Outrage is a good pipe too. >50 size muffler systems have always been hard to find.

Skunk,, Take the Mcpx outside and let her rip.. It is great in the wind and you will not break anything plopping in the grass. Take your time and get comfortable with it. Small figure 8's!! lot better than smacking furniture!!!

Jim

Mack66

Do you mean the Align High Performance Muffler [AGNHE50H08]??

I think AMAIN has one!!

Mack

richhemmings

Hi All,

As a total newbie to RC heli's and the forum I just want to say hello to all in the forum!

My first heli: GTec 5889 GT (cheap-ish Chinease job!)
4 ch, single prop:
http://www.********.co.uk/5889-rc-me...t-in-gyro.html

Does anyone else here have/had one?
Having only spent an hour or so with it, I'm starting to get the hang, but get some odd wobble when hovering after a while, and my swashplate seems to uncouple (related?) - havent worked out if this is through use, or heavy 'landings' yet!

All the best all.

Rich

TakeshiSkunk

Still anxiously looking forward to the funfly tomorrow and a chance to let my mcpx play somewhere big enough that I don't just have to hover it....it's been really crappy weather all week and on top of that it's dark by the time I get home from work

All this aside...I'm thinking about pulling the trigger on something pretty big that I've thought of from time to time since I first became interested in helicopters...If my tax refund doesn't let me down, I'm very seriously considering picking up a trex550EFL kit. Kind of scared/intimidated and excited about that at the same time [sm=what_smile.gif]

I always would see the guys at the shop working on their (comparatively) huge helis and it seemed like something way off in the future, if it was even in my future at all. The idea of finally stepping up and building myself a "real" helicopter is pretty intense!

Mack66

Rich,

I suspect your heli may not last too long before you will need to repair it. If you crashed during your first few sessions you may indeed have a separated swashplate. The low cost low end helis are not very durable and spare parts may be an issue. Regardless you can still learn a lot about flying and building by going to www.helifreak.com and looking at the beginners' topics.

Also, take a look at Radds School of Rotary Flight at http://www.dream-models.com/eco/flying-index.html

And of course, having a friend who has been in the hobby already is the best bet.

Good luck!

Mack

Mack66

Skunk, you won't regret moving to a big bird. I went from a CX2 coaxial to an Hirobo 50 Sceadu. Although it was a bit intimidating, it was a heck of a lot easier to learn on because of its size. Also, since you need to belong to a club to fly it, I had lots of help from seasoned veterans. Lets hope that Uncle Sam sends you lotsa moneys.

Mack

BarracudaHockey

My Feedback: (11)

What Mack said ^