HansV

Thanks joizeex! Sounds a little more complicated than I expected. Usually a screwdriver is all it takes to replace something. I bought the new parts from Rotor Feaver in CA, but they only ship via ground so i expect to have it mid next week.

Try this link for scale fuselage:
http://darthdrk.4t.com/photo3_6.html

That is sooo cool

joizeex

no problem. due to the size of the tail assembly and the way that you would have to run the wires through the tiny tail boom, there's no option to put a connector there as it would be too big, so we have to work with that. don't worry, it'll be something different that you can also enjoy.

thanks for the find. man, those lil scale bodies are crazy! [X(][X(][X(][X(][X(] i couldn't believe they have those already. i definitely will get one and i wanna get one for my honey bee king as well (those sell for about $15 unpainted). i would airwolf all my helis out, but too bad that one for my Evo50 is a $600 affair and it'll be destroyed in the first crash lol. maybe when i'm really good at not crashing...

gnaras

Hey Hans!
Thanks for taking the time to post a reply. I started flying, but today I noticed that as soon I increase the throttle increases to a take off speed, the tail starts going counter-clock wise and no matter how far I push the rudder stick it won't stop. I think the tail motor is gone. I have ordered spares but it will be atleaset 8-10 weeks before I get them here in India. But I will definately keep your tips in mind. I have put in the flybar paddles at the flat portion so there is not much adjusting to be done. I tried out one thing: I removed the flybar paddles and increased the main rotor speed and found that the flaybar rod was going up and down as it was rotating and also the heli rolled towards the left as it approached take-off speed, since there were no flybar paddles I could not control that. Is the movement of the flybar rod wihthout the paddles normal ? and does a normal heli roll towards the left duing take-off?

HansV

Thinking about buying an Airwoulf body myself. I havn't invesigated the link completely so I don't know if there is a retailer here in US. Let us know if you are able to get one. 600 bucks for your EVO50 is crazy. Better not crash that one lol. I have a Belt CP that came with a Bell 222 fuselage. I havn't mounted it yet because I smoked the BEC really badly. I really love scale bodies on helis

Regarding the tail motor. Why don't they just solder a connector from the factory? I havn't done any soldering for a long time so I have to go to Fry's to get a new soldering iron. Well, I guess that I can do it but it will be quite a challange. Soldering has never been my strong side.

/Hans.

HansV

Hi gnaras

No problem, I am only glad to help . I have taken a lot of advice from joizeex and HeliStyle regarding this little one. I found that this forum is one of the best (thanks to the two mentionned before).

I can not imagine that your tail rotor has already gone already. Try to push in the rod and make sure that the gears are connected/aligned. Try to spin the tail rotor to see that the tail motor is spinning. Also make sure that the tail rotor is connected to the gear. Try to hold the heli by the batt and spin it up. Then turn it around the y-axis (yaw axis) to see that everything is working. When you turn it clockwise the tail rotor speed should descrease and turning it counter clockwise you should hear a significan increase in the tail rotor speed. If your tail rotor is working correctly you will find the heli spinning very fast clockwise. If you suffer from lack of tail rotor power you can try to put the trim on the transmitter all the way to the left before turning it on and after the heli has initialized you can move it to the center or right. On one of my helis the I have to do this since the tail motor has less power and is about to die.

If you remove the paddles from the flybar your heli will not be controllable and you will see that the flybar can not align itself. You will probably see the flybar doing an "X", where it is all the way down in one side and all the way up in the other. This is perfectly normal and there is nothing wrong with that. But don't do that: It will not give you anything and you can not use this for centering the flybar. Good idea but I tried that and failed [&o]. The Heli will roll to the left when taling off which is perfectly normal and is due to the construction. You just need to apply a little right aleron (roll) when taking off. Make sure that you take it out of the ground effect fairly quick or you would find it all over the place. I usually take it up over 15cm as fast as I can without the tail starting to turn to avoid this. Long time ago when I started flying the Hornet which was one of the first electric helis somebody told me to keep it on the ground and start practicing. It has never worked for me so I always tries to clear the ground effect.

Btw. 8-10 weeks for sending something to India is outrageous. This is strange. Where are you located? I had a team in Bangalore a few months back and it usually took around one week to ship something from US or Europe. If it really takes so long for you to get the parts, make sure that you order extra flybars, servos and main motors. The servos are a little expensive but the rest is pretty cheap and will keep you flying for a long time

Hope it helps,
Hans.

joizeex

yea i won't be getting that shell for Evo50 for a loooong time lol. spending $100 per crash is punishment enough [&o] i wish i had the last one on video...i didn't know whether to laugh at how dumb-thumbed i was and how dramatically it hit the ground, or to cry because it would take 8 hrs and 1 Benjamin Franklin to fix it. lol

the guy in the link you posted is here in the US: "$12.99 for the kit and $16.99 for the finished assembled and painted version. Discount available for multiple purchase (Four and above mix or match). Shipping is a flat $6.00 for USPS priority with delivery confirmation to US addresses. 1st class shipping also available $4.00 to US addresses. "

the reason for no connector is what i mentioned: when you have to replace the tail boom, you need to be able to pull the wires through it for removal. if there was a connector like the one on the Rx end, then you wouldn't be able to pass it through the tiny tail boom. it's pretty easy to solder when the wires are so thin because you only need to hold the iron there for a second or 2. you can find some soldering hints online. oh and don't pay more than $20 for low power iron.

gnaras

Can anyone tell me what is the maximum volts that is available on the tail motor when we apply full throttle ?
I fixed my heli on the ground, so it wouldn't go anywhere, and measured the volts.
I am getting 2.5 volts on application of full throttle.
I am measuring this to determine if the tail motor is blown or to see if the receiver / ESC is faulty.

HansV

I will try to masure it later this week when I get my new tail motor. Remember that the tail motor is not at full throttle when you go on full throttle. You have to apply right rudder for it to get close to the limit. Did you check what I suggested above in the thread?

/Hans.

HansV

joizeex, sorry to hear about your crash. Must have been a hard one [] I am more of a "flyer" than "fixer" so that's why I stick to the smaller ones that don't break that easy. That is also why I am annoyed about the soldering. Simply too lazy OK, now I have a good excuse to replace the tail bom I broke a couple of months ago when I did a beautiful right on tail landing lol.

Did you order one of the scale bodies yet? I am thinking about investing in a couple, but hadn'd the time to do so.

Finally yes, already figured out the connector part: Small tube - large conenctor - very hard to get the wire through

/Hans.

gnaras

Thnaks Hans.
I forgot that all important thing.
Here are my readings again.

On a battery used for 2 minutes:
On minimum throttle and full rudder I get 3.5 V
On full throttle and no rudder I get 2.5 V
On full throttle and full rudder I get 3.15 V

On a fresh fully charged battery :
On minimum throttle and full rudder I get 3.7 V
On full throttle and full rudder I get 3.4 V


Gnaras

joizeex

without measuring i would say those numbers are good. at max rudder it's close to 3.7V which is the max that the battery can supply. so i think you have a bad motor.

thanks Hans. what's worse is ordering the parts and then a week later after i get them, finding out that additional stuff is broken that was overlooked. plus, while rebuilding the head i loose a friggin spindle spacer. so i had to place 3 separate additional orders from 3 sites. ugh! it's all done now though.

i didn't order the canopy yet, trying to limit my hobby spending to crash repairs only for this month, since i just bought a blu ray player/burner for my PC. don't you guys wish that money grew on trees lol.

rockinro

gnaras buddy...try ordering from chinesejade.com or helipal.com
i tried both and i live in dubai...i get my stuff within a week and thats with normal airmail (not express). Don't order from the US, you're right next to China!!!

HansV

gnaras, I have to vote with joizeex on this one. Sorry, it sounds like you have a bad tail motor.

joizeex, sorry to hear about our orders. Hate when that happens. Over the time I have lost quite a few of those small devils. I have learned to loosen them with my fingers usually will prevent them from jumping all over the place. Hurts a bit but saves a lot of time doing the "magnet dance" lol. I even lost a servo horn once. I coudnt fint it even though it is pretty big. Must be getting old. Luckely I had a spare one but man... Fitting the screw for the ball link took me more than an hour. No matter what I did the screw woudn't go in. Finally I had to expand the hole, so now I am very careful when it comes to where I put the parts and how I rip them off

Something really "funny" happened to my order I placed Saturday last week from Rotor Feaver (located in CA!!). They have shipped it today and according to UPS Ground it will be here the 8th [&o]. Some time ago I ordered something from China or Hong Kong and it was here within 3 days! I am all grounded due to tail motor problems [&o][&o][&o]

/Hans.

HansV

Yep, I am with you buddy Could use something like your EVO. I think we share another (more expensive) hobby

Anyway, if I am looking back on how much I have spent on this hobby and how much fun I have had, it is not really expensive at all. Most of the stuff I have broken or worn out has been fixed for 3-4 bucks and that doesn't really happen too often. That is one of the reasons I try to stay away from the bigger heli's. I guess a Nitro can really easily eat a big chunk out of the budget would love to see your fly with that thing. Btw. have you posted any videos of it?

gnaras

Thanks everyone for your suggestions.
The reason I said 8-10 weeks for Shipping is because in India, if anything arrives thorugh an Air Parcel , it goes thorugh customs and they charge upto 100% of the cost of the item. And also sometimes the parcels get lost and they won't even provide proper answers.

rockinro

well guys i finally got my hand on the USB connector to connect my transmitter to my laptop.
I downloaded FMS and it just isn't flying the model.
When going into the controller settings on FMS I tried calibrating, and it shows that it is receiving a signal from the transmitter, but when I try to get the heli to fly I get no reaction from any of my inputs on the transmitter.
Also during calibratiuon, all the controls are wrong and some need reversing, but still there should be some response when trying to fly the model!

Any tips please

HansV

Strange. I dont use FMS that much since it is not really compatible with my nVidia graphics card and Vista. If you have configured your transmitter as a windows joystic and is able to calibrate it every thing should be fine. It is quite normal that some of the functions have to be reversed, but as far as I remember that should be done automatically when you calibrate. Remember to highlite "joystick interface" before you press the calibrate button. If you dont have any response when you return from the calibration window try to press "G" or "V" on the keyboard. Try to go to the keyboard menu to see the key assignemnts. Btw. do you hear engine sound in the speakers? Try to select a different scene and model. I remember having some problems some years ago because I was messing around with the model parameters causing it to detect crash with the ground all the time.

I sometimes have problems with Vista not recognizing my transmitter, but that says more about Vista than FMS. Btw. there is another pretty cool free heli simutator: http://www.heli-x.net/index_e.shtml It is photo realistic so it makes it more fun to fly and you can download a lot of different scenarios and models. Not the 4#3b however. It is Java based but it actully runs pretty OK on my 2-3 year old PC. Remember that you have to choose idle-up1 or 2 before it actually starts. See the keyboard assignment in the program for this.

Hope it helps a little,
Hans.

HansV

Man, that is tough. I remember now that evertime we ship to India we have the paperwork done up front. That is probably why it takes so short time. Maybe you should start a Walkera import company. I guess that there must be a lot of people in India with the same problems...and you will never run out of spare parts and get grounded

I am still waiting for my spare parts and it feels like it takes for ever so I can't even imagine 8-10 weeks. I thought about buying a plain new tail motor from one of the local electronics stores but I can't seem to find the specs for it. Walkera are not very open with that kind of information. []

Anyway, managed to get airborne again by rebuilding one 4#3b I had used for spare parts. It had a good tail motor but no servos and a bend main shaft. It is really nice to fly a round again, but it is really strange: I have already become a little rusty after not flying much in the last 3-4 weeks (visitors and tail motor problems). Really looking forward to get a little air time this weekend.

Has anybody else been flying the heli lately?

AndyW

My Feedback: (1)

I had trouble with my 4#3b from the get go. At first, it wouldn't bind porperly. I traced that to the TX mode switch. A drop of WD40 and flicking the switch a dozen times cured that.

Then I found that the tail's response was erratic. That can be seen here. http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=ArrO-fZC48c Emails to the vendor, HeliPal and Walkera left me sad and lonely,,, no solutions, they eventually put me on ignore.

So after a few months I decided to really dive into the TX to find that possible bad solder joint or something. Using a jeweller's loupe I went over every millimitre of the board and tugged on all the wires. With nothing obvious there was nothing to do but put it all back together. After that, I was surprosed to find that now, the roll servo was erratic, just like the tail WAS. The tail was now reliable.

A hard look at the stick assemblies revealed that the rudder (yaw) and aileron (roll) pots were connected with wiring harnesses. Remember my saying that all the wires were tugged? That was to try and find poor solder connections. Well, one end of the harness is hard soldered to the board, the other end had a male and female socket assembly. This is where the trouble was. Just wiggling the sticks would sometimes get both functions working and then, one more wiggle and back to erratic operation.

The solution was to hard solder some fresh wires directly to the board. That did the trick. The tail motor wouldn't kick in till about half throttle but a screw held adjustment took care of that.

It hasn't been flown yet, I'll do that over soft snow, it's getting late in the year.

AndyW

My Feedback: (1)

At first I thought that the problem was with the receiver so I ordered one. That wasn't the problem so I now have a spare receiver. I've been thinking of expanding into E-Planes and was wondering if anyone had published a method to convert the tail from a motor control to a servo control.

Or I could just build an REM ship.

AndyW

My Feedback: (1)

Money DOES grow on trees. The trouble is, the US government gave the tree to a collection of private bankers called the Federal Reserve. The "Fed" is neither federal nor do they have any reserves. What they do is pick a new crop from that tree and LEND it to you, through your government, AT INTEREST.

The tree was discovered by the Chinese many years ago and it eventually caused the collapse of one of the Dynasties of the day due to hyperinflation, bank failures and the collapse of the currency. America's tree is native to the land, belongs to the people and grows on public soil. Nice racket the Fed has. The Fed was created in 1913 and caused the Great Depression. That was their learning phase. The first time the got too greedy so they went slower for nearly a hundred years. But funny money is funny and eventually, the ponzi scheme collapses. Guys, you are seeing the result of that today.

Do a search for a documentary called, the Creature from Jekyll Island. It IS a horror story but not in the way you might think.

HansV

Hey AndyW

It seems like you got the one that they did at the Walkera factory just before the lunch break. Sorry to hear about that [&o] It should (and usually does) work directly out of the box. I have bought 4 of different generations and 3 of them were OK and actually flew quite good. The last had a crushed swashplate that was due to bad shipment or handling. If your tail rotor starts to spin at half throttle something is still seriously wrong. Usually the tail rotor starts to spin before the main rotor.

Wrt. the US economy, I have no idea since I came to US a year ago from northern Europe (Denmark). There we had no "funny money", but I paid almost 60% in tax, 25% in sales tax, and more than 180% in registration fee for new cars. I had an Italian car that not even a Canadian would touch (don't know how much you pay in tax but I have seen that you guys have a lot of nice cars up there). Now it is a different storry, so who am I to complain

Sorry that I am not able to help you. I think that the best solution is to send it back and get a new one. And don't try to fly it over snow. There are a lot of metal parts that are not compatible with snow I usually fly in my livingroom and found that crashes are usually not as fatal as "landing" on grass or other things outside.

/Hans.

AndyW

My Feedback: (1)

Hans,

Actually, the tail rotor now works normally after I made the adjustment mentioned.

About funny money. Any currency not backed by gold (or silver) has the potential to be abused by printing more than the economic activity of the country can absorb. If the government and ONLY the government has the power to print the money of the nation, (out of thin air and backed by nothing) that's bad enough but if a PRIVATELY owned institution, like the Federal Reserve has the exclusive power, then how can a country decalre itself to be independent and free?

Not only does the Fed create money OUT OF THIN AIR, it then turns around and LOANS that money to you, (through your government) and then YOU pay THEM interest ALONG with the principal. You can see that you will never, ever, get out of debt. The scheme is designed that way and the scheme is now unravelling.

For the moment, the reason all this excess money isn't causing massive inflation in the US is that the US dollar had been established as the word's reserve currency. That means that the US dollar is the currency used by the world to conduct global trade with and all that excess money gets exported. The commodity MOST dependent on a world currency, of course, is oil. It's called the Petrodollar. Only because world central banks and others depend on the US dollar as a (once) reliable store of wealth does the system work. If the (perceived) value of that US dollar starts to drop, CONfidence in the dollar wanes and the potential for a "bank run" on the dollar can become an avalanche. It's really a bank run in reverse where the money isn't withdrawn, but dumped back to where it came from. All those dollars flooding the shores of the US will cause Weimar like inflation. Look that one up. It's starting.

Look up M3 and ask why they no longer publish the figures.

Also do a search for Executive Order 11110.

Life is good in the US because the US is living off her credit card. Do that for a while and you can live like a millionaire. But when the bill comes due, as it is these days,,,,

You can't have 10 trillion in outright debt and 500 trillion in future obligations without something letting go.

And BTW Hans, if you had a central bank and your currency had no backing, you had funny money. That's WHY you paid so much tax. In such a scheme, the productive efforts of those who actually add wealth to the nation is being skimmed off by the bankers. Most of those taxes go to pay off the interest on the national debt and only a tiny fraction goes to pay off the principal.

HansV

Wow, you should really go into politics. It is very interesting, but am not sure if we need to start a hughe financial discussion in this forum. I am a plain guy who loves RC helis and cars. I don't owe any money to the banks or anyone. I have a credit card but I have never used it. I always belive in earning the money before spending them when ever it is possible.

Glad to hear that you managed to get your heli back in business. I am quite impressed. You must be quite a cleaver guy with electronics as well since you were able to fix the problem yourself. Try to spend some time away from the newspapers and take it up for a spin in your living room. Let us know how it goes.

/Hans.

HansV

Has anyone been flying with their helis lately? I managed to put 3-4 batteries on it yesterday flying around until all loose paper in the room ended up at the floor lol