Roxon

hi everyone, i have been flying planes both nitro and electric and have always wanted to fly copters but i always
crash them when i try to fly them on the sim. so i saw the axe EZ that seemed "ez" to fly so i got one. it came yesterday
but was very windy outside. i flew it in the house a little but i didnt have much room so it wasnt really a real flight just a
bit of small hovering. my question is could you modify the battery compartment on the bottom to hold a larger LIPO
like a 3S, 1250? thats still a pretty small battery but quite a bit bigger than the 2S, 800 it comes with. will the motor in
it run on 11.1v? i know it has the power to lift the extra weight of the battery, its just i dont know if the engine could
handle 11.1v since the stock battery is only 7.4. i could prolly get a bigger 2S, a bigger 7.4v, but it just so happens
i already have a 3S, 1250 so would rather use that instead of buying a new one. but if the engine cant handle the extra
volts, then would that work, a bigger 7.4v??

RWT

My Feedback: (1)

My experience with the EZ is that the motors are rather poor and don't last long. I stumbled on to the fact that the roto fly motor will just fit. With those motors it will fly (I think) longer than the stock motors ever will on the same 800 mah battery. I flew it once to apparent cut off. Glad it was close to the floor. It never did that on the stock motors.

This isn't the cheapest mod you can make but I thought it made it a better machine. If you would go this route the gear that come on the motor has to be pulled out a little farther on one and push the other one on about as far as you can. I think it is about 0.100 inches movement.

It has been a while since I ran it, so this is memory, and the oddity is I picked up a tail shake about the time I put these motors in. Tweaking the gyro didn't seem to help much. The top rotor seems like it is fairly out of balance and could be the problem. It is not hard, but the rotors a kind of a pain to pull, so I never have gotten around to trying to balance it.

I was never brave enough to find out if it will handle 3 cells.

Rereading your post it will NOT handle hardly any wind. I think I was getting around 6 minutes brand new and that quickly declined to around 3. I think you will get closer to the claimed 10 minutes on the above motors. I did try a better 2 cell battery (910mah) and would NOT run any longer than the stock battery.

RT (my 2 cents)(and I hate to admit it but I have had 2)

Roxon

hi thanks for the reply, that is interesting about the different motors, i may look into doing that. im sad to say my first outdoor
flight of my EZ didnt go so well. it was to windy, unfortunantly i live in a place where it seems like it is windy 10+ mph about
95% of the time. it makes for real problems flying my planes. have had numerous crashs due to wind knocking me out of control.
i broke the lower rotor head which is only a $2 part from tower with $4 shipping so it was only a $6 crash hehe. anyways i was
looking around on ebay at this and that and saw a EZ on there so bid $50 and won it at $49, so i got another one complete setup
for $69 (49 bid + 20 ship) the lipo itself is $24 on tower so i figure i cant go wrong with a whole nother bird for $70. now if i can
just get a calm day and actually fly one!! those motors you are talking about do they have more power than the stock motors?
because if i can get it to lift a bit more weight there are lots of kinds of small 7.4v 2S lipos on hobbycity.com and ebay. refering to
my original plan to modify the battery box to hold a little bigger battery.

RWT

My Feedback: (1)

Your stock motors I think are 130. The roto fly has a 180. The anti rotation bracket at the rear has to come loose to get the rear motor in. It fully seats but it basically touching the motor. I think it would lift more but you could get into an ESC problem. I don't think you necessarily need a bigger battery and that thing is physically limited on the battery it will carry without mods.

I find the thing to be mostly a hovering machine. There not enough control for much wind.

Compared to pod and boom though, it is almost too easy. When you try forward flight that top head resists. It is good to work on orientation though. It flies good in a garage minus the car.

I have hanger queens. The roto fly is a wobbly goblin (That's how I discovered the motor). For me it wobbles too much for a single car garage. I have wanted to try forward flight but haven't got it done.

The roto fly has a 600 mah battery and mine died. The 800's in the EZ so far have held up. Tower sells the 800 cheaper than the 600 and they are the same physical size.

RT

Roxon

well im sad to say im just totally not very happy with my EZ. i did manage to replace the lower rotor head but wow was that a really big job waaaaay harder than i thought it would be, i just didnt realise those parts were so small in there. this is my first heli remember. you have to be a freaking micro brain surgeon to work with those little screws. the 2 screws that actually hold the head to the shaft are the smallest screws i have ever seen in my life and by far the smallest i have ever dealt with. and to keep the head holes lined up with the shaft holes at the same time while you are trying to drop the screw in was just pretty dam hard i have fairly steady hands but you need a VERY steady hand to do it. it took me at least 2 hrs to do the job. but i am proud to say i managed it. but the job instilled a fear into me that wow i -really- dont want to crash it again and break that part because i -really- dont wanna go through that again. ok so i get it repaired and we get a calm day it was very calm for here wind was no more than 3mph. a day like that, at this time a year is like once a month. so anyways i start trying to fly it and i cant seem to get it trimmed out. its like i need more trim than the trim lever will go. on realflight sim i can fly it soooo good but in real life i just cant seem to fly it that well at all. i can keep it up and in a fairly small area but i can not hover in one spot to save my life. i did get it about 20 feet in the air and landed safely i felt it was a huge accomplishment for me!! so anyways charge batt, 2nd fly now it wont even take off, its like the battery is low or something but it is showing fully charged. it will almost take off but not quite. at full throttle it gets light but wont actually take off. so im like geeez god what a hunk of crap!!! im not sure what the problem is but i think its what you were saying the little motors are wearing out. right about that time im thinking DAM i screwed up BAD buying the 2nd one from ebay! this one i have now i am going to try to return it back to tower, i have bought alot of stuff from tower but this will be my first return so im not sure how much of an ordeal it will be. im thinking that if it had 2 little brushless motors, and if you spent the high dollar money to buy the aluminum rotor heads it would be a much better little machine. but im not going to that much hassle im just gunna return it and then try to resale the one im getting from ebay back on ebay and just stick to planes! makes me sad though i really wish i could fly a copter (real kind not the cheezy little EZ)but i just cant seem to get the hang of it when i try on the sim. [&o]

RWT

My Feedback: (1)

Well I am a mechanic or mechanical person, but yea, those are tiny screws. Now you know why I haven't tried to balance that head.

I am not there but yours sounds like the problem I had but I got more than 2 flights out it. They seem to be pretty poor motors. If I would put motors in the first one I could more definite.

As for the trim, on the second one I had to pop the link off and gave it 1/2 or 1 turn (forget) to correct a maxed out trim.

I have only sent one thing back to Tower and I thought they handled it pretty well. You have to give them time to look at it.

And finally, helis aren't for everyone so you have to go with how you feel. They end up costing more than planes.

RT

swanpondwv

Well...... Here goes. The Axe EZ is really a great little learning machine. Co-axles are good for learning orientation. I have a hundred plus flights on mine, both indoors and outside. I have a few of the stock lipos. This is what you need to mod:

a) Figure out which of the servos controls forward and reverse. I seem to recall that it is the right side servo. Move the z-bend out to the outermost hole on the servo horn. This will give you a fairly good forward speed. This is a great mod AFTER you've learned how to hover in one spot. It is a must if you want to fly outdoors.

b) This one is more involved. The motors from a Blade CX fit perfectly. You may have to losen a screw above the rear mounted motor to get it in. But they do fit perfect. You will need to have a pinion gear puller because you'll have to use the rear pinion gear from the EZ on the rear motor. Make sure that the rear pinion gear will not contact the upper rotor gear. My LHS only had two front motors, I just switched the polarity when I plugged into the mixer board for one of them. There is no soldering or re-wireing involved. Other than the pinion, it is plug and play.

HUGE increase in thrust and the motors don't get very hot. I believe that flying the EZ in the air constant until the batt gets low is what will fry the stock motors. Just bring it down every once in a while and let it cool off for a minute. Then take off again.

Bill

nla_pes

I have been flying the AXE EZ since January. I couldn't get off the carpet in the beginning. Practicing with Realflight 3.5 helped some, but none of the helis on realflight fly like the real thing, anyway they don't for me.
I have chewed up six sets of blades, tops more than bottoms, burnt out a motor, and blew a battery, bent a shaft, and cracked a gear. With this repair activity I decided to up grade the motors and go all aluminum where possible.
I upgraded the motors to two ESL001 Xtreme 180 bearing motor (A) & (B). They cost $16.00 each from RCHover in Mass. I had to buy a gear puller for about $12.00 from my LHS. The gears form the original motors were installed on the new motors in about 15 minutes. I have taken this heli apart so many times that it seemed to fly together on its own. I also upgraded the standard servos to E-Flight ELFRS75’s. They seem much more responsive, so lighter on the controls is necessary. They installed right in place with no modification. I had to fiddle with the wiring some but within a few minutes it all found a place.
The new motors put out more power so the increase in weight was negligible. My indoor flying sight is my upstairs hallway which is almost a ten foot by ten foot square. I plunked the upgraded EZ in the middle and wound it up. The manual does not show control arm lengths as the AXE Cp manual does, so I had to play. I ended up with slight offsets to the servo arms but the setup flies well. I am uploading a photo showing almost all of the upgrades. You can see the forward motor, the right side servo (which controls yaw), the servo mount, the swash plate, the lower rotor head, and the lower rotor blade holders.
I took it outside the next morning with almost zero wind it flies well in all directions. It wants to jump into the air so I have to be careful with the throttle.
I hope this helps,
Paul

skierbri10

I put in stock blade cx2 motors and what a wonderful difference. It finally has power for normal flight. The batteries last longer too. Didn't take much modification, just pulled off the pinion gears and put the ez pinion gears on. This is the best upgrade you can make on this heli. [8D]

rdhuffy

Hello fellow Axe EZ pilots! I've had my Axe EZ for about a week now and I'm really impressed. I was able to trim and hover well on the first flight! I've been flying exclusively in my garage and really trying to get the hang of it and primarily working on orientation so I can move up to a bigger CP heli.

I purchased and additional Lipo battery, and I've installed the CX 180 motors on front and rear as well as the E-Flite servo for fore/aft movement. I think the two biggest improvements I've noticed are the lower temp and better power of the CX motors, and I'm using my Hyperion 0606i charger for the lipos. The included wall charger was taking well over 2 hours to charge, but the Hyperion does it in about 60-70 minutes.

I was wondering if it is REALLY worth the extra $$ to upgrade to the available aluminum parts for the Axe EZ, or if they would really only be good if used to replace broken parts? Is there a performance increase from using these aluminum parts? Also, has anyone here used one of the aftermarket carbon tail booms in place of the rear fuselage? I like the look of it, but was wondering again if there's any performance benefit?

Lastly, I heard that tightening the blade grips down firmly helped with the responsiveness of the heli. Has anyone tried this?

Thanks for the input!

heliricter

Just got started here, I too am Axe Ez convert. have two , one is a test bed for new parts and mods. the other is my full up hot rod. Love to fly outside,and inside all so. With 950 batt I get 15 to 20 min flites inside 10 to 15 outside. A radio glich did not help the first few flites, changed radios and up and flying I was. Nice heli , just have a few tips, I may be telling you all stuff you know, but mabe some poor guy can use this to good. Do not repeat Do not oil swashplate with sewing maching oil , stock plastic ones just slip apart, made this mistake two times. If you use metal swashplate move right side to the last hole out on the servo horn , way better control. all for now Heliricter

cstratton

My new Axe Ez had a brush canted at an angle which wore within a few packs to the point where the front motor was not contributing its share of lift - it would spin in circles but not lift off the ground. The store was closed by then so I ended up taking the motor apart and bending the brush flat, at which point it was flyable but even with the gyro gain cranked and the tx and rx trims all the way over I was still having to hold left rudder.

Anyway, I set out today in search of some 180 motors off a CX or a rotofly, and learned that those of a Llama are comparable to the CX ones but nothing in stock. So I ended up with some from a vortex. Front one went in easy using the vortex pinion, and actually flew it with that on the front replacing the damaged motor and the stock 130 on the back. Ultimately got the back one in there after cleaning up the boss on the front of the motor with a file and notching the back of the can to better clear the servo/anti-rotation piece. The shaft was too short so I had to use the longer pinion off the stock motor, but that was engaing both gears so I had to shortnd its teeth - plugged the motor into the charger to spin it and removed brass with a very light touch of a needle file. So now it flies, and they were cheaper than stock motors too. Can't really comment on power as I don't have a good idea of what it was supposed to be like before.

And then I crashed it... trying to land on top of the narrow end of a 2' high cardboard box to practice precise flying out of ground effect. Got it the first time. Second time it fell off. Broke the nubs off the lower rotor head and bent a blade root. Stupid.

But while motor shopping I gave into temptation and picked up an Axe CX micro cause it's quieter and better looking, so I'm still flying. Differences in handling are interesting - the Ez really shows its mass in vertical inertia but seems well damped horizontally, while the micro is much more forgiving up and down but likes to drift out of phase with your thoughts horizontally. And yes, I know without the folding blades it's more fragile. Going to try to get a lot of spares for that when I get repair parts for the Ez.