cptsnoopy

My new #45 arrived today! Happibuy.com sent it express only a couple of days ago and it was delivered to the door on a Sunday. I ordered it without the radio but I did ask that they include the gyro. Like some of the other not so lucky folks this is the first time that I received a heli with some minor damage to it. The box it was shipped in looked to be in decent shape but who knows what kind of knocks these things get in shipping. Unless the box is crushed it is hard to tell what kind of shaking etc. that goes on. There is a small chip in one of the teeth on the gear at the forward end of the tail boom. There is a small dent in the tail boom near the rear. Those appear to be the only damaged areas. Other than the gyro not showing up with the helicopter, one of the three control rods for the servo to swash-plate connections is missing.

as far as looks go it appears to be pretty robust in structure. the rotor head system looks a lot like the Blade heli. The tail drive system looks just like a bigger version of the 22a/22d. since the motor is in front of the main gear that makes it one possible solution to driving the tail. Like the 22a it needs a shim below the mast body and just above the main gear to set the proper gear lash for the tail shaft gear. Otherwise it puts an unnecessary pressure on the tail shaft gear causing some binding and friction. I checked the tail boom diameter and length. It is the same diameter and is about 1.25" longer than the boom used on the #35. I could see this thing getting a belt drive tail system without too much trouble. probably easier than modding the earlier shogun.

I have emailed Happibuy.com to see if they can help with the damaged/missing parts problems. I will update as news comes in. if anyone needs pics please ask.

oops

Hi CptSnoopy,

I feel your pain. Just today my new 22A chassis arrived.

Sure enough, still no shim (Walkera just don't take a hint do they?) and this looks like it was assembled by Monkeys.... The top collet was broken, and the grubscrew superglued in place so I had to use pliers to get it off.

The location of the parts was wrong also.

The biggie though was two different blades - as in two completely different models of blades. The new foam blades seem to have 2 CF spars now, which is good, but they are obviously changing model. And I got one of each.

One was about 5% bigger than the other, had holes in different places and was slight linger and wider than the other.

So much for quality control eh?

Then the head was badly fitted and set up, and there were grub-screws missing from the flybar assembly !....

The Flybar was misbalanced and the whole thing was glued together - except the anti-rotation post which was just sitting there... Along with it's equally unglued mount.

Walkera obviously is getting worse on quality control, and it doesn't help people like Happibuy or others who are simply reselling the stuff and often get the blame for poor quality assembly and parts. If I didn't have the parts from my old one, I would have been unable to get this one fixed !

The sad thing, is there is no need for it to be like that.... The Walkera stuff is OK, but assembling stuff badly really hurts their credibility. Even with their fans. I guess it's the price of cheap labour

I might contact my suppliers and see if they can supply Walkera heli's as parts only rather than barebones.... ie, Just the chassis, mounts and parts that are hard to make, and then consider making a really good helicopter from the pieces... A complete Walkera 22A unassembled should fit into a parcel about 1ft by 4" square. - That would be cheaper postage also. They obviously have a good price on stuff, but if it was assembled well, their stuff would rock !...

David

cptsnoopy

OUCH! oops, that makes mine look like they pampered it!

concerning the blades I was going to mention that the #45 blades are the same ones that are on the #35. my #35 and #45 both have the blades with 2cf spars in them. I have been lucky and so far I have not needed the spare set that came with my #35. I agree that it would be better if they sent the Heli as brand new parts, not assembled so that we could start with less damage. I take mine completely apart and put it back together again just to be sure anyway.

cptsnoopy

Happibuy.com sent me an email indicating that they will send the replacement parts that were either damaged or missing. I am pleased with the tone that they are using and hope that this turns into a good deal for the both of us.

GEORGE_32

I WAS ASKING BEFORE 2 MONTHS ABOUT WALKERA 45 IF SOME ONE BOUGHT IT ...BECAUSE IT HAS 380 MOTOR AND HAS THE SIZE OF 35 IF I AM SURE/....
WELL ANYBODY HAS FLOWN THE HELLI YET????
BECAUSE I AM INTERESTING TO BY ONE
AND 35 IS THE SAME IN SIZE WITH 45????

THANKS

GEORGE (GREECE)

cptsnoopy

HI George,

I have not flown the 45 yet. I received it with minor damage and some missing parts that are being handled buy the seller. I can tell you that it uses the same rotor blades as the 35. The tail boom is slightly longer but the same diameter. I looks plenty strong. It is a cross between the 22a, 35 and #4. It will be as heavy as the 35 once it is setup. I expect some troubles with the tail drive system. It looks like it could be the weak point of the 45. A belt drive might be needed but only time will tell. I'll update when I have the Heli flying.

Mrashtray

Hi cptsnoopy and everyone else. I have had my 45 for about 3 months. I bought it off ebay from buying-sources complete for $132.00 plus $35.00 S&H. That was cheaper then my 35 and my Aerohawk 3 years ago. Anyway I have flown my 45 for about 15 hours total since I play with both helis. You know when one breaks you play with the other until parts arrive. I believe the 45 is more stable in flight, at least mine is. The swashplate design resembles the Esky 3d bird. It is beefier and works well. From inspection I believe the tail gears are the same. The input tail gear is different because of the main gear is different. The tail boom is longer because of this. I have broken 3 sets of tail gears. Since I ordered extra tail gears when I ordered the first set I will have to wait to see if the 35 tail gears will work. Side by side comparison it appears they will. One thing I have not done is mounted the battery in a better way on the inadequate piece of abs the battery is supposed to sit on. I had a hard landing (my mistake playing with the tx switches and knobs while flying) and the battery came loose and bounced up into the main blade. It broke the blade and the battery took of flying. I found it about 20 feet away. It didn't hurt the battery but it destroyed the blade about 1 inch from the blade root. The rest of the heli is ok. Other than the skid braces it's pretty tough. I also had another hard landing and broke the skid braces on one side. I replaced all 4 pieces of fiber rod. I have already been scoping it out on what it will take to convert the tail to belt drive. It looks easier than the 35.

Mrashtray

I have been using trex main blades on the 45 because they were at the hobby shop for 11.50 with no 2 week shipping. They are the wooden ones, model no. HS1052T. (Item 315 wooden rotor blade). They fly a little better than the foamies that come with the 35 and 45. My 35 and my 45 both came with a RK-400SD motor with gold wraping around them. I thought the 45 was supposed to have a bigger motor. It flies well with this motor anyway.

I have read all of the horror stories from everyone. Here is a thought. What if some of these helis people are getting that are banged up are not directly from walkera. I mean what is to keep the vendors from replacing parts on someone elses return and sending it back out to keep from loosing profits. Not to defend anyone but maybe this is not totaly walkeras fault for the broken helis. Since I got mine for $132.00 I was expecting a bird that would not fly and would have dead electrical parts. I guess I just got an honest seller and received a new bird.

Thanks for listening.

Mrashtray

One other thing I forgot to mention. When I broke the skid on my 45 I cut open a set of broken stock foam blades and removed the 2 fiber rods inside and cleaned the glue off. Since the foam is usually the only thing damaged the fiber rods are ok. This rod is the same diameter as the landing skid and tail brace. Hey we are into saving as much as posible to facilitate buying other things.

cptsnoopy

Hi Mrashtray,

Thanks for all of the info. It is good to know that some of these will fly with the stock radio components. My #4 and 22d flew ok but I still have radio problems once in awhile. the servos were the biggest problem but I will try cleaning them out to see how that works. thanks again for posting that fix. Did you put a sleeve on your main shaft just below the body of the heli and just above the main gear? On my 45 the main gear is held down by the tail driven gear and causes a lot of friction there. If I add a very short shim to the area mentioned above, I could set the tail driven gear to main gear mesh by moving the tail boom forward or aft. My 22d has the same issue. oops has a 22a and the slop created at this same location gave him fits because it would cause the heli to change pitch and jump from the main shaft moving slightly up and down.

As for how the Heli's are getting damaged, I don't really know. It could be from walkera or from the resellers. This is the first one that I have received that had damage. 1 in 7 aint too bad I guess. I am glad that I have several others to fly until the parts come in for this one.

On the issue of belt drive. Since the tail boom is just a little high compared to the body of the heli, I am thinking that a gear driven belt drive gear like the #36 has would be a good idea. you could use a shogun tail boom and belt drive upgrade tail housing. might be pretty simple but I have not really looked into it yet.

The motors say rd-400 on the sticker but they are really a 380SD on the can. My 35 and 45 have the same motor but different pinion gears. my guess is that the 45 may be the same weight or slightly heavier than the 35 when it is fully equipped but I won't know for a while yet.

delboy344

Hi Mrashtray,

I’ve got a 40#, and have just ordered replacement landing gear, I have broken foam blades which I will cut open and remove the rods, thank you for the tip.

Upgraded to brushless motor, 11 tooth gear which I will change to 15 teeth, the head speed is too high. Small movement on the throttle and up up and awayyyy.


Do you fly outside?

I great support from Walkera.

Mrashtray

Hi delboy344,

Yes I do fly outside. I prefer inside but it is on a rare occassion that I can fly it in the GYM of the school where my wife works. It's hard to find a place to fly where nobody will mess with you. You know when people see helis flying they usually have small children and kids always want to chase anything remote control. I guess people just don't understand how dangerous these kind of things can be. I fly where there are no people around.

Thanks.

voltron1011

Mr Ashtray,
You have some excellent ideas on fixing the landing skids. I used waxed dental floss on my skids and the covered it with CF. Those skids are really strong now.

voltron1011

I really like the layout of that heli.... It looks like everything is accesable.

cptsnoopy

It's been quite awhile since I ordered this #45. I finally got the parts needed to fly it. I was a bit leery about the tail drive being like the #22a and d models. It seems to drive the tail just fine and not too noisy. I am using GWS NARO STD servos. (insert note here: I will be buying GWS NARO +F HP BB in the future.), Hitec dual conversion micro receiver, and JR 8103 xmitter. the stock walkera gyro is being used for now. I was able to try it out and it was not very flyable at first. I had to track the blades, mess with the xmitter setup some and it hovers ok for now. The swash mixing was at 60% to start with but I am starting to increase it towards 100%. once the swash mixing is at its max then I will start putting in negitive exponential until it responds better. right now it requires alot of stick movement to respond. the #35 is much better in this area. there will be no problem getting enough negative pitch for upside down flight but I enlarged the holes too much on the servo arms and there is some slop. I won't be attempting any 3D until that is removed as much as possible. The #45 weighs about the same as the #35 but I don't have a scale handy to give the exact difference. If I had to choose which heli to buy, between the 35 and the 45, I would probably go for the 45. If you are going to use a name brand radio you will need one that has 120* CCPM swashplate mixing. more updates to follow.

cptsnoopy

this update did not take long. after spending a couple of hours messing with mixing trying to get the most travel without binding and still get +12/-12 degrees of pitch I broke the swashplate in two trying to move a servo by hand... my bad. I did not realize how weak the swash plate was. the top half with the bearing pulled out of the bottom half. I am tempted to just fix the swash plate but it had a bit of slop around the bearing so I will look for a aluminum upgrade swashplate before I decide if I need to just fix this one...

cptsnoopy

I went to the local hobby shop to see about getting a new swashplate. the closest match would have been a T-rex aluminum CCPM V2. there where only two issues. the first i was prepared to deal with. The anti-rotation on the T-rex swashplate is a pin attatched to the outer ring. on the #45 it is the fork. I was just going to buy the T-rex "slot" that would normally bolt onto the T-rex frame and modify it to work on the #45 frame. total cost would have been about $45.00. The second issue that I could not figure a way around was that the balls on the T-rex swashplate are slightly bigger than the balls on the #45 swashplate. If I could have just put the correct size balls on the swashplate I would have done it. as it was they were not available. So the hobby shop guy said that it was not unusual to have the top part of the plastic swashplates seperate from the bottom. they seem to be a press fit. He sold me a little tube of green loctite that has been successfully used for this type of repair many times. So the original swashplate is back on. I did pick up a "Deans" antenna to put on the Heli. I had the original antenna wrapped around the legs of the heli back to the horizontal fin a couple of wraps. it seemed to do ok. The instructions on the "Deans" antenna suggested doing a range check before switching to the new antenna to see the difference if there was any. I got only 50' away with my transmitter antenna extended before I lost range. after putting on the "Deans" antenna I got over 150' away and gave up. that was better than 3 times the distance going to the "Deans" antenna. I am sure it had a lot to do with how I had wrapped the original one around the the heli but I was simply amazed at the improvement. after getting the antenna issue fixed I managed to get the pitch setup so it would go +/- 12 degrees with full stick throw at the transmitter. somehow I managed to get 0 degrees in the middle postion. Then for the norm pitch curve I set -4/+12 and 0% to 100% on the throttle. the heli was still pretty jumpy at hover. when I set the mid range pitch to 60% to help reduce the rotor rpm a tad and flatten the curve it was more managable. I am curious how to go about setting the 3D curves since all I really need to do is set the throttle to 100% at the low end and 100% at the high end. I would normally have used 50% in the midde but I am getting the idea from reading the forums that it may better to use 75% in the middle or maybe even 100% from bottom to top. any thoughts? I flew the heli in the living room and it seems ok. I don't have any -expo set in yet but I do have the elevator mixing up to 90% and the roll at 80% to maximize the available angle of the swashplate. To get the pitch to stop at the correct angles the pitch mixing is only at 33%. So far so good. My #45 is still more jumpy to fly than my #35 but they are not set up the same. It was easier to set up the #45 because there is no mechanical mixing. once you get the servos lined up with sub-trim it is no real issue from there. On the #35 it is apparent that a couple of the mixing rods are 2.5mm too long and soon I will have to cut and rebend them. after that I can figure out how to set the pitch and throttle curves to match the #45.

cptsnoopy

i went out to fly the #45 this afternoon and did what i thought was a thorough preflight. however i threw a tail blade about 1 minute into the flight. lucky thing it was not pointed in anyones direction. i was only about 2 feet off the ground and was suprised that it did not go wildly out of control. it did start turnnig slowly to the left but i set it down quickly and got it stopped. one of the main blades has a chip out of it. i am pretty sure that it touched the horizontal stabilizer when i landed because i was not too gentle about it. the horizontal stabilizer has no damage or marks on it though. the only other thing i can think of is maybe the tail blade hit the main blade on its way out to space. I guess next time i will have to look for micro-cracks in the tail blade where the screw goes through it. to finish off the flying session i grabbed my 35 and ran the battery out in it. so, i guess no big loss...

cptsnoopy

good news! she is flying again. i got a set of cf blades and more tail blades on the heli. I set up some expo on the transmitter and reduced the pitch range a bit more to make it easier to hover and it seems pretty good now. I just need a nice day outside to start flying it around and do some manuvering. I don't think it is as stable as the 35 but it appears that it is much more nimble. once we get used to the pitch at full range then we can set it up for upside down flight...

cptsnoopy

Went flying yesterday. I have been getting used to flying the larger micro heli's around and doing some manuvers but I have not really flown them hard, as in yanking and banking. yesterday was the first day of serious speed, steep turns, figure 8's, stall turns etc. no 3d but maybe someday. the good news is that all heli's came home in one piece! the only bad news is that the 35 acted like the motor is giving up. normally it would maintain rpm throughout the pitch range but yesterday the rpm's would slow down noticebly with the throttle above 3/4. The 45 was a champ. I am going to try the brushless as a replacement on the 35 and if that goes well, then i'll get one for the 45. My opinion of the 45 went way up after the workout yesterday.

cptsnoopy

ok, time for another update. I bought this heli as a bare frame with brushed 380sd motor and if it had not been damaged in shipping it would have worked out even better than it has already.

Here is the list of goodies that have gone into it:

Hitec electron 6 dual conversion 6-channel rx
Dean's antenna
three GWS naro std servo's.
one HDS-877 digital micro servo for the tail.
Futaba GY-401 gyro
castle creations phoenix-25 esc.
3600kv brushless motor from this link: [link=http://cgi.ebay.com/Brushless-motor-ESC-dragonfly-zoom-hornet-3d-helicopter_W0QQitemZ6002658990QQcategoryZ34056QQtc ZphotoQQcmdZViewItem]Brushless motor+ESC dragonfly zoom hornet 3d helicopter[/link]
10 tooth pinion for 2.3mm shaft. (the 45 has a 12 tooth pinion stock)

using a couple of max-amps 1650mah 3cell 11.1v li-poly's for about 10 to 14 minutes of flying time each.
using a JR 8103 tx.

This heli is a bit more jumpy in pitch than the #35 but it is quite a bit more nimble than my #35 that is set up very near the same. Fast forward flight, stall turns and steep turns are a blast. I have not set up the tx for 3D yet but it is easy to see that the heli should have no problems. (the #35 is doing very well also but the #45 seems to be more agile)

I would definitely get another one of these over the 35 if I had to get another heli. I would only get the bare frame, (no motor or electronics) and add the above equipment. Here are some pics of what it looks like now:

cptsnoopy

I went flying today and unfortunately the #45 was the only one of four different aircraft that did not survive. Today was the first successful attempts at loops and rolls. The #45 was doing just a tad better than the #35. I slowed down at the top of the loop with each of the heli's to try some inverted hover but ended up washing out both times. On the second flight for the #45 I started trying rolls. The first two rolls were to the right and they went pretty well. The third roll attempt was to the left and I got disoriented while upside down and was not able to recover even though I was fairly high up. The #45 hit in the grass and it looked nasty. I have pics but the picture editor is not installed on the computer today so I will have to post them a bit later. The core body of the Heli did not break but most of the cf rods did. The main shaft and feathering shaft are bent. The top part of the rotor head snapped in two. The brand new gyro shed it's case but it seems to work still. All of the servos seem ok and the receiver is working. The Battery had such a big dent in it that I took it apart and am discharging it so I can dispose of it. The pics will complete the story. I will have to see if repairing the thing will be worth it. Oh well, I flew the #35 upside down after crashing the #45 and all was ok again.


edit to add picture. only $55.00 + shipping from china for the repair parts. plus a new gyro cover, lipo and receiver crystal...

cptsnoopy

just curious if anyone else has splatted this bad?

power_crazed65

That looks like a blade with a shaft drivin tail, and the blade uses a 380 motor also, and yes i have crashd bad but not quite as bad as that