sachin998

Best Advice you will ever get:

This heli flies great with atomic force motor and pg-03 gyro. I dont see the need for anything else. If you really love your heli, then a brushless is fine for duration and performance. BUT, other than that

Make like no other spare part or upgrade exists besides Litemachines original parts. This heli will always fly. If you bought the corona, never compare it to any of the bigger machines. The corona can be the smoothest best flying helicopter you will ever own. There was never a reason to upgrade this machine cause It will always, always, always work with the original parts.

But if burning money is your thing more than flying, its your fun, let me not spoil it.

I have seen guys buy all this amazing look things, they got themselves more frustrated trying to get it to work with those things. I bought a second hand heli with a carbon boom, belt drive, carbon stiffened blade holder, some funny looking new tail thingamajig. He purchased all this to fix his problem with the tail handling and blade tracking. The owner took a while to get it right and never did succeed. I put back all the original LMH parts, took an hour or two to adjust settings, put my cheap GWS pg03, put my cheap atomic force and it flew like a bomb once again. Tail was perfect. Tracking was perfect.

Think twice before buying some other extremely high priced part to fix a problem on this heli.

gadget01

Kudos to you for being able to assemble a Corona with all stock parts and make it fly well. Apparently, the guy before you had it set up with some aftermarket parts and probably didn't know what he was doing or had a faulty component, or just had bad luck. Heli's are not easy to learn to fly or set up correctly. It can take a lot of trial and error to finally get it right, unless you're just really lucky and it flies great from the beginning. Any heli will not perform well if not set up correctly, regardless of what upgrade parts are installed.

At best, the stock Corona 120 flies OK and is not bad as a trainer as it is pretty durable, but only indoors or outdoors with very calm winds. The stock Corona has a fixed-pitch head, which is simple to set up and requires only a simple airplane radio for control- but you have to contantly adjust the throttle to modulate your head-speed/thrust/altitude. It also has a tendency to pitch up in forward flight, which if not caught quickly and compensated for, can easily contribute to a crash. If the wind picks it up and you want to keep it from climbing, you have cut your throttle to compensate, which lowers your head-speed, which makes the heli harder to control and easier to crash.

With a collective-pitch head, your throttle stick mostly modulates the pitch of the blades to control the amount of lift while your head-speed remains fairly constant. This is more complicated to set up and requires a transmitter with specific heli programming, making it more costly, but yields far better responsiveness and performance.

In the end, if YOU are happy with how it is with all stock parts, great. Keep flying and enjoy. I don't agree that aftermarket parts are wasted money, so long as you know what you are doing or take the time to figure out what you are doing. Many aftermarket parts improve performance and durabilty, and control, and yes, some are "bling" but typically are more durable than the stock part it replaced.

I have installed numerous upgrade parts on my Corona and I am far happier with the improved performance and controllability, which has made it much more fun and it flies great. However, it took me a while to learn what was necessary to make it that way.

beaner

Sachin998,
I’m glad to see you got that Corona flying again and are enjoying it. I agree that the Lite Machines Corona is a durable, stable flying model right out of the box. In fact I liked it so much that I purchased another and now have two. One for the most part is stock and the other has many upgrades and each upgrade addressed a specific performance or durability issue.
I think that people are attracted to helicopters partly because of the complex mechanics involved to make the machine fly. And this same curiosity triggers a desire to learn how a component or group of components functions. With the next natural step being to try to improve how that component(s) works. Most upgrades do improve performance or durability. And like gadget01 said some upgrades are ‘bling’. But hey if bling is your thing let the cash register ring. Point being…..enjoy the hobby weather it’s flying, building, upgrading or just learning the physics of how they fly.

Good luck and have fun,

beaner

ilewis

Yep, I think it should be said again - if you take the time to set it up and troubleshoot it, you should be able to get a Corona to fly stably and smoothly with no aftermarket parts. I agree that buying upgrades is fun, but there are a lot of posts along the lines of "argh! tail won't stay steady! what upgrade do I need!?", and really what's needed is some troubleshooting on the heli you have on the bench.

The "tricks" (things not in the manual) that I can think of are:

- mount the gyro securely with foam tape, NOT velcro as the manual instructs you. Mount it on a horizontal surface (even the tail rotor servo will work if you don't have a bracket).
- get a good servo for the tail. I went from HS81 to HS81MG and even that made a big difference.
- buy a glitch reducer if you don't have a fancy receiver.

Other than that, it's all in the manual.

mikec456

My Feedback: (1)

I just purchased a what appears to be a good used Corona 120. It came with the following:
LRP speed Controller
Speed Gems Brushed motor
Auto rotation clutch
JR XP652 radio sytem
Hobbico Pizo Gyro
2 batteries
Crash kit many other replacement parts

All for $200, now if I can just learn to fly it better than I fly my Shogun V2!

ANy setup tips? From what all of you have said it sounds like I might have better luck flying with the Corona then my Shogun. ANy thoughts?

gadget01

Some tail control tips:

Piezo gyros typically are not all that good, but will get the job done. A good heading-hold gyro (Futaba gy-240 or gy-401 if you have the extra channel on your tx to control the mode/gain) and a fast digital tail servo (Futaba 9650) are worthwhile investments and make dramatic tail control improvements.

A very inexpensive mod is to hook up a carbon fiber tail control linkage. You can make your own quite easily- get some 2-56 threaded rod or cut the heads off some long-ish 2-56 bolts. CA them into the ends of a carbon fiber tube (cut it to the length you need) that fits the threaded rod and thread on some 2-56 ball links. Don't use the cone washer when you bolt the ball links to the tail slider bellcrank or the servo horn. Ball links distribute the friction load over a much bigger surface area vs a clevis, which means they will stay slop-free a long time. If there is any slop in the tail system at all, the tail will most likely wag around and make tail control an exercise in frustration.

mikec456

My Feedback: (1)

For now I was thinking about taking my new JGF 400 DH & my CC35 out of my Shogun and try it in the Corona. I asked one of the tech's at JGF but they haven't heard of anyone trying their motor in the Corona. Is the 400 too small?

TIA

Auto rotation clutch? Are you sure of this?

I can't see that on a fixed pitch heli.

mikec456

My Feedback: (1)

Ok I'm waiting for my new parts to come in. I purchased a JGF 450th (3000kv) to go with my CC35, main rotor belt drive upgrade, tail rotor case upgrade from Chopper-1, aluminum crutch kit and a tail boom mount for my 240 gyro. Running 2 Hitec 81mg and 1 Hitec 81 standard for the tail with a JR radio, Think of anything else I might need?

Peter_d

Ehh... Mikec456,
Did you say Alu crutch kit ??

I don't know what you paid for it but I know Matt sells a simple CF crutch called the blade for $45.
The Blade is much lighter and much stiffer than the alu crutch...

//Peter

mikec456

My Feedback: (1)

I purchased a complete aluminum kit from LM for $45 which comes with all the hardware. For now it's better than the wood crutch I have.

gadget01

I agree, the alum crutch is too flexible. You can stiffen it up with a few minor modifications though. I ran some alum U-channel/L-bracket from the motor mount bolts all the way to the rear landing gear standoffs and this helped out a lot. You can also bolt on some standoffs to the rear of the crutch and attach a CF link to the nose and to the tail.

gadget01

gadget01

This is the current setup, but with the new ESC strapped in you can't see the homebrew alum bracket, which took a bit of time since there were a lot of holes to line up and drill. The motor mount, lower bearing block, and rear landing gear standoff bolts all go through my bracket to pretty much eliminate unwanted flexing of the the alum crutch.

TIA

Hurray for Carbon!!!!!!

gadget01

Nice! Is that pack 3S3P? What kind of hang time do you get with that?

mikec456

My Feedback: (1)

Thanks for the tips. I'll stiffen that baby up when I assemble it in the next few days.

TIA

Gadget, Yeah! About 12-15 in hover, and 10 balls out!

mikec456

My Feedback: (1)

OK another question. I just received my new belt drive for my rotor but if I use it then I loose my one-way bearing. Is there anyway of putting my oneway bearing in my Hyper drive? Or will I just have to deal with no auto rotation?

gadget01

If you can fit the one-way bearing to the hyperdrive pulley, more power to ya. Last I heard from Matt at BT, it was still in the works. So far, I've not heard of autorotation being featured on a Corona- which is the final remaining detail that I would like addressed on this bird. I'm sure if I had the proper machining tools, I could take an autorotation hub and adapt it somehow to the HyperDrive and make it work.

mikec456

My Feedback: (1)

Yes I agree. Well I have the auto hub and a stock gear but for now I guess I'll go with the hyper drive without AR.[&o]