ArtW

I have a Raptor 30 which I have flown for more than a year. It has 350 flights on it. It has had one crash at flight 145 where I had to replace the frame, engine, servos, but nothing in the rotor head or tail assembly. This crash was the result of a forced Auto from 40 feet up onto the runway where the last millimeter of the landing was too fast.

My flying is normal simple stuff like hovering, fast forward flight, and figure 8's and circles, no 3D yet. In the latest crash, the heli simply, slowly, just flipped over to the right. The flip was at an altitude of 2 or 3 feet and was slow. No counter control did anything. The blades were destroyed as was the canopy. The cyclic control was ineffective with no response to counter control. Examination of the wreckage showed that both flybar control Rods were disconnected and one was cracked.

My question is simple. I don't think this crash was dumb thumbs. It seemed like something failed in the helicopter making it uncontrollable. Having one flybar control rod either crack or become disconnected would certainly make it uncontrollable. It may be I had a brain fart, but having both disconnected seems suspicious. Should I be replacing these parts on some schedule? I examine them routinely. I check to see if things seem too loose. But I basically fly, and fly, and fly the Raptor with little preventative maintenance. These plastic parts must have some life span and this rotor head has more than 3500 minutes of operating time on it.

How long do plastic Raptor parts last prior to needing routine replacement?

Rafael23cc

My Feedback: (6)

I'm probably going to jinx myself by saying this, but here it goes.....

I've never had any part of my helicopters fail in flight. Almost everything gets replaced at the frequency of my crashes. So I really do not know what is the "time" of the parts. I do know that I've had some parts last way longer than 150 flights. I suspect that the parts that failed you in the last crash, were damaged in your previous crash and you did not notice.

Having said that, there is a nice write-up in the March 2011 AMA magazine about generating pre-flight checks for helicopters. I do one at least once a day and has saved me at least one helicopter. Doing a pre-flight check may have saved your heli from the last crash (failure in flight)

Rafael

ArtW

Rafael:

Thanks for the reference. I will check on it's advice. I do a preflight prior to every flight but I am sure I am missing things.

Thanks

Art Wallace

AviationNut

The crash probably caused the control hoops to break. My guess is you had a radio problem that caused the crash, but hard to be certain without seeing it in person. I have plenty of original plastic parts on my Raptor 30 that I've had for 9 years now (and many gallons of fuel), so they don't really wear out - even the control linkage plastic takes forever to wear out - the steel balls wear out much faster.

ArtW

The crash was very strange to me as the helicopter just became uncontrollable and slowly tipped over to the right. I consciously thought, wow, nothing I do seems to be countering this roll. I have flown it enough that control is pretty automatic and this event was clearly something different from the normal. It was like the radio stopped working, or something broke that allowed it to uncontrollably roll to the right.

blvdbuzzard

I have had the hoops break in flight. When I lost one side, it sort of leaned and jerked around and would not really respond to what my thumbs were telling it.

I have had ball links fail, belt let go, servo arm break and a few other things that just happened. Not sure I could have seen any of them with a pre flight. You fly them and do the best you can to see if something is showing signs of wear and tear.

I have really never worn out much on my Raptor, I crash before that happens, so I replace the stuff often.


Buzz.

jacob2000

I had a similar problem years ago on my Concept 30 SRT, and on my shuttle zxx. Those helis saw many hours of flying, and I was new to helicopters and didnt think anything about why I would have sudden crashes. Then I just chalked it up to being a new flyer.

I kind of think one of the ball joints came off the ailerons, or somewhere in the head. If the servo isok then Ithink that is where my suspicians are.Onamodel heli,I would replace all theplasticlinkage (female partof the balljoint) after every other season (2 years), or more often if you are doing major flying. Its afew dollars well invested in my opinion.I onlyinstall new linkages since plastic cracks with age.

I inspect all ball joints and linkage, and if either end of them is worn, I replace immediately. Also, I dont recommend taking theballjoints/linkages apartunless you absolutely have to. I will occasionally use a ball resizer and hot water to reseat the plastic part of the balljoint, but again, its usually only on the initial setup or if they get sloppy (really sloppy gets a new linkage). This is where a good set of balljoint pliers are a worthy investment.