RE: Heli stuff and fellowship
 

Hay Chris,
I was out your way today.Hit both places.I should have stayed home or gone to Brennens.At least I would have something to show.I want to get to Walts soon.I want to get another receiver for my dx6.I think I'm going to build another helicopter with my xtra parts.Been too windy to try to fly.

RE: Heli stuff and fellowship
 

drobin,


did you go to the Casino and/or Racino? hope they didn't take ya for too much! i've wanted to get to Brennans this week, but it's not looking good. have to go to Pa. tomorrow for the weekend for my nephew's H.S. graduation, so maybe next week.

yaeh, it's been real windy here all week too. finally got started tearing down my raptor cuz my parts are FINALLY arriving. i'm diving in head first.


chris

RE: Heli stuff and fellowship
 

Nice find Chris, I like the Wolf 450, it's got Trex written all over it, except for where they redesigned the servo placement, that's a much better servo placement than what we've got going now. Nice of them to redesign that, but looks like they copied the rest of the trex. Looks like a fun heli to work with ;o)

RE: Heli stuff and fellowship
 

[sm=what_smile.gif] Pooched, but spongeing it all up.:eek:

Bug

RE: Heli stuff and fellowship
 

I just went to the casinos.Both of them.I like Vernon the best.

RE: Heli stuff and fellowship
 

I hope Jay and Donica are staying low.From what is being shown here,there is bad weather out their way.Looks like the weather is following Donica.

RE: Heli stuff and fellowship
 

drobin,

i've only been to the Indian casino,and only to see the shows at the show room. besides, i couldn't win a door prize, let alone $, ha! i've heard they have exellent food . also heard the Vernon casino is real nice too.

i thought you said you weren't too happy w/ Walts hobby. can you get good deals there? i've been there a few times to buy stuff for my model railroad and have seen they do have some heli stuff, but don't know what kind, ect.


chris

RE: Heli stuff and fellowship
 

david,

yeah, i like both the Wolf 450 & 500. almost wish i'd have spotted them before i did the raptor, but i'm not sorry i didn't. maybe after i get the raptor up and better flying skills, i'll go for one of them. the Hobby Specs look good too, but i'm not too hot on the gear drive for the tail rotor.

is it possible the trex is modeled after the Wolf 450? [just kidding]. are there any American made helis , or are they all manfg. overseas?



chris

RE: Heli stuff and fellowship
 

Haha, Align is a vacuum company, and then they decided to use their expertise in vacuums and motors to jump into helis, kinda weird right? I bet the bearings and shaft factories used to make vacuum parts are pumping out our heli parts. It's kinda funny to think about it. I wonder if they make more on vacuums or heli's. You can't really crash a $300 vacuum, unless you drop it down the stairs, they should make a crash kit for that.

I guess it's possible that Align copied Wolf, who knows the real truth??

Not sure what helis are made in the US, Jim would know!

RE: Heli stuff and fellowship
 

Hey flyers,
Been absent to deal with a very important personal situation that arose. Will explain more in PMs.

No building or flying has been done lately so I have nothing heli to share at the moment.

RE: Heli stuff and fellowship
 

maddog57,
I'm not happy with Walt's, but the receiver for the dx6 go for $50 and that is what he has (or had) them for.Plus I want to get info on the heli club.Vernon casino is nice and the Turning Stone has the best food.My wife is the winner.

RE: Heli stuff and fellowship
 

Nice flying David. I did not here any Bogs. Did you get the motor?

There are not any helis made that I know in the USA. Thats another 450Trex copy. Looks good. An interesting note: The trex is the most copied heli it seems but did you know that when The Trex first came out is was a copy of the TT Rapter. HUUUUUMMMMMM!

When you concidering a heli copter purchase aways looks at part availibilty and how much the shipping is going to cost from China. It is usually very high in price. Try to purchase in the US from dealers who know about customer service.

Well my son crashed his new HDXV3. He had a blade failure. He was just setting down to land and was about 1 ft off the ground when one blade carbon came apart leaving only the internal wire. The blades wher China carbons with no name. The blade set balanced perfectly and track spot on. You never know do ya. He lost main shaft. spindle and bend flybar. Great reflexes hitting throttle hold on his part to save the bird. He said that the lost blade went about 25 yards and woul;d have gone farther but the other blade hit it on its way around causingl the damage. I set his headspeed about 2700 so food for thought: get good blades!!! and be wary of included blades.

Jay we will be here when you are ready.

David: How much is Gas in Canada?

Have got to fix my stove and do honey do's ,later Gators.

Jim

RE: Heli stuff and fellowship
 

Thanks Jim, I'm sure you could fly circles around me though!

Thanks for the warning Jim. I was planning to run my China carbons with my scorpion at max power, I think a set of $50 blades will be worth every penny, saving me from a costly crash with these $25 blades. Save $25 to break $100 in parts? (Assuming EVO25 breaks) Makes no sense. I'm glad your son didn't break much, good job on the throttle hold! Before every flight, I remind myself where to flick for throttle hold, hoping I'll remember if need be.

I got a pick-up slip, I'm leaving work early to pick it up, I think it's the Scorpion, post office closes at 6:30, hopefully there's no jam on the bridge.

Gas is about $1.37/L, which works out to about 5.31$/gallon, is that a lot? How much is it for you?

I don't drive to work unless it's a special occasion, such as today! Gotta pick up my motor! I usually take the bus. I've gotta make an electric car that runs on all my lipos. But I don't think I'd get far on 2 EVO25's.

Never knew they copied the TT Raptor! [X(] So they can't really be mad at CopterX for copying their copied design... :)

RE: Heli stuff and fellowship
 

Hey you gyro guided gear grinders,
Thanks again for the support in your PM replies guys. I'm kind of moping around some right now, but it's not the first time I've dealt with heartbreak. A bit tougher due to the fact that I was head over heels and never saw this coming and was fooled for three years. There is a lot to the story but not here. Okay, enough on that.

David,
enjoyed your video a lot. Your cheering squad did a good job too. Your flying is smooth and well done. Thanks for posting the video.

Whoa, over 5 bucks a gallon for gas. I won't be whining so much about $3.67 when I fill up tomorrow. The JP7 jet fuel for the black beauty is at $21.54 a gallon right now. Down $.13 from last month. It's always been pricey though. It's a full synthetic fuel and oil prices son't affect it much. She holds 225 gallons and will get about 510 miles out of that. Good thing most of the time I'm being paid to burn that stuff.

Spent the morning working on the Raptor and the afternoon working on the black beauty. It was a beautiful spring day here. We are finally getting a little break from the nasty weather.

I found some damage on the raptor that I missed before. There are some small cracks in the mainframe where the upright sides join the bottom. I tore it down to a bare frame and will do some repairs tomorrow. Ames has a vulcanizing kit in his shop for fixing small cracks in plastic parts. He uses it to fix plastic pieces in the control panels and other interior parts in the real helis. He can make it look like they were never damaged. I talked to him on the phone this evening and he told me how to mix the chemicals in small amounts and I'm going to try it on the frame. I wish you guys all lived close. We'd take over his shop once a week or so and have fix fests. He's got a lot of neat magic in that shop. We could take a break and fly the black beauty to Denver for lunch. We'd be back by late afternoon. Yah, okay, sorry, I'll get back on track here. My mind is going in a hundred directions at once these last few days.

My T Rex is mechanically ready to fly. I'm going to double check the settings in the radio tomorrow and hopefully begin testing all the new stuff by afternoon. I'm anxious to get the new Futaba all tweaked in to that heli and do some serious flying.

The Copter X is on the shelf for now until I can get my mind around working on it. I'm giving serious consideration to putting an Air Wolf body on it and use it as a fun sport flying bird. Not sure yet. I may sell it and buy another T Rex. I'd like to have a 500 or 600. Oh, a question here. Have any of you had any experience with the Air Wolf bodies? Do they allow 3d flight? Any negatives I should know about? It seems that weight would be a factor with those but I still have the 430XL motor if more power would be needed. I read once (can't remember where) that a guy was going to try and use a big battery and the scorpion motor for the 500 in one but I lost track of where I read it and never saw any follow up. I'm thinking that would make a real interesting heli. Might try it myself. Any thoughts on this JD?

Finally got the Realflight G4 ordered yesterday. Got it from Redrocket Hobbies in Oregon and they shipped it out today. My new hot rod computer should be done and shipped in a week. It's gonna be fun to run the G4 on that. Seems I have and extra Futaba 6EX to dedicate to the sim. I guess I should ask, do the sims work with the 2.4 radios? I forgot the check on that. If not I can use the old 6EX FM/PCM.

I'm having a beast of a computer built.
It's a Dell Inspirion 1720 with:
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T5750(2.0GHz, 667Mhz, 2M L2 Cache)
Memory: 3GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 Dimm
Video: 256MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 8600
Hard drive: 320G 5400RPM SAMSUNG
System: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition
8X DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Drive
Integrated High Definition Audio 2.0
17" widescreen high definition monitor.
Gonna be a big improvement over the old Compaq I'm using now.

Ooh-yah, nothing like new toys to make one forget and feel better.

Best try and sleep. I need to be rested tomorrow to do some shakedown flying in the black beauty. Another diversion that helps me keep my mind right.

See ya 'buds'. Keep your heads in the clouds.

RE: Heli stuff and fellowship
 

Wow over 5 bucks!! I am very happy to pay 3.85 here.

Jay the body is really very light and you would not know any difference. In fact it will probably fly better. As for 3D yep no problem, just don't snap it too hard and bust the body off. A little caution is to get a brightly color body as the great looking Black body will vanish on you. It will look awesom!!. You may need a 3154 servo to fit the boom caove . I don't know if the 9650 or 9257 will fit. I plan to do a body for my SA. I was trying to find a body like black beauty but have not found it yet. The H500 looks cool also.

I would think a larger battery will give you larger weight to have to deal with and tote around with no gain. I would keep what I had and use that money for more EVOs and another charger. There are NO scorpion motors to be had now.

Jim

RE: Heli stuff and fellowship
 

Hey Jay,
Don't worry about it, now you can spend lots of time flying!
An Air Wolf body would be awesome, I was thinking of making a scale too, it's a great idea!
Hope you enjoy flying your Trex, let us know how it goes.

Motor didn't come in the mail, it was the Bondhus tools, I took apart the head, and checked where the play was coming from, it's the bearings within themself, I must have caused some damage to them in my bad crashes. I'll have to replace those to get rid of the play.

3.85 $/gallon would be fantastic!

Well, it's a great day out, so flyerbug and I will hit the fields!
Hope everyone has a great day flying!

Fly safe and have fun!

RE: Heli stuff and fellowship
 

21.54 per gallon, now thats a fuel bill Jay. Thats a super computer your building wow nice. A buddy of mine has his sim and comp hooked to his 54" LCD TV. My flat screen has an input for my computer also.

Later, going sailing. we have a good 15 knot wind going.

Jim

RE: Heli stuff and fellowship
 

Jd,
Here's a scale that is close. It's of an AS 350 A Star. Called the Squirrel. The black beauty is an Ecuriel AS 350B A Star Variant. A little bigger and fancier inside than the squirrel.
http://darthdrk.4t.com/photo3_1.html

RE: Heli stuff and fellowship
 

Hey Jim,

I found out something very important, 0.03VDC DOES make a big difference. My charger thinks it's charging to 4.20V/cell, but the resistors used are high ERROR, meaning it reads 4.26V as 4.20. So my EVO25's were charged to 4.26 - 4.21 - 4.19, read with an accurate multimeter. The max voltage is 4.23V stated by the EVO25 manuals. After about 8 cycles, they're already puffing.

The IMAX B6 balance charger has done a worse job than the LIPO balance charger that came with the Raptor G2, which charges the cell to 4.24V.

Result from them using cheap resistors: Their charger DOES NOT work at all as a balance charger, but it does work as an imbalance charger. Leading to the destruction of 2 brand new EVO25's($150 smackers).

I think the Air Thunder battery is also damaged from the overcharging of 1 cell.

I'll be getting a HIGH QUALITY external balancing unit, which is going to be well worth every penny. Warning to everyone out there, SPEND the money on an expensive battery charger, or pay the price through broken LIPOs.

Another lesson learned, DO NOT take off and land on your align carry case. I've been doing that, and it's worked well in calm weather, but today a gust of wind hit the bird and my main blades striked the box, did a lot of damage, but the cheap China carbon fiber blades broke quickly, they're VERY weak, I would say weaker than the woodies. No wonder why your son's CF blades went flying. 40% of my blade had gone 50 ft from the crash site. I think it should be manditory to wear safety glasses or eye protection of some sort while operating a heli.

I fixed it in the field over a small towel, and ended up spending most of my day repairing and looking for spare parts I dropped in the grass. Another tip to those out there, bring a LARGE towel to the field, so when you repair, you can work over that, dropped parts will not bounce and roll away.

It was an eventful day at the field for me, not all good, but I did have some great flights with the funtana. After fixing the CopterX at the field, I also took it up with my digicam strapped to it, and took some video from the air.

Flyerbug's day was much better, whlie I was fixing, he was busy flying out a total of 5 packs, he's starting to get really good at 3D. He's been simming with me a lot, and the progress with the sim is amazing, both of us have learned a lot from the sim, sim time shouldn't be taken lightly. As soon as we're confident on the sim, we take it to the field, and the transition from skills in the sim to skills in real life are fairly smooth. I operated the camera much better than I did my tools/heli, and got some good video of Flyerbug going at it.

Hope everyone had a great funfly weekend!

RE: Heli stuff and fellowship
 

Wow looks like the ticket. Good price.

Thanks,

Jim

RE: Heli stuff and fellowship
 

David: Sorry to hear that. I have well over 100 flights @ 8 minutes each and none of my 4 batteries are puffing. I would trash your current charging system it sounds dangerous and get the Cell Pro4S chargers with built in balancer as I have suggested for about the price of an EVO. My EVOs are still balancing 4.20 spot on on every cell. Once again over 100 flights each!!

Glade you found the problem. Its good to have some good tools in your hand isn't it? Your chargers are also tools just like your batteries are and you need good kit to preserve the investment. Money is tight in my household to I have no choice but to get the best for my money. As I have said many times it is way cheaper in the long run. Nuff said my Buddy.

I checked around and the Scorpion motor is back ordered every where.

Jim

RE: Heli stuff and fellowship
 

Ya, 2 cellpros would be the best, then I would probably run about 4 EVOs and fly all day.

My scorpion still is in the mail. They must have had a problem at the custom's, they saw "scorpion" and freaked out, called pest control maybe? I noticed the place I ordered it went out of stock really fast.

Have a good day!

RE: Heli stuff and fellowship
 

Ya I bet customs had a question mark about that HA. I you will have dog slobber all over the package.

Too windy to fly. Very hot today in the 90's. Probably work in the shop today and then go sailing if the wind picks up.

Jim

RE: Heli stuff and fellowship
 

Hey. As you have heard, I had a sweet flying day yesterday. My confidence is going up and up aswell as tweaking is getting better. David had a bummer of a day and so did our other fellow pilot. I still havent figured out the click, but the belt is not showing any unusual wear. Ill keep flying and checking untill we get those new belts.
Hahah! At the rate that I am going right now, I think it will be time for some CF blades soon. Im going to hold off for a bit though until I dare to hover on the field inverted and close to the ground.

All me EVOs are charging and discharging perfectly. My Flight Power V Ballancer seems to to a great job. Money well spent for $45.00. Well, thats all for now. I think Im gonna head up the road to burn a few more batteries off.

Hope you had some fun this weekend.

Flyerbug

RE: Heli stuff and fellowship
 

The FP V balancer is a great piece of EQ. Thats one I forgot about. Thanks for the reminder.

Great day for you and I am proud of you guys on how far you have progressed. Wished we could fly together.

I did not do anything today, NADA and just layed around in the air conditioning. I had a long week of shows and have a grinder coming up this week with 10 shows booked in 5 cities. So I just kicked back in my recliner.

Later folks,

Jim