RE: boom strike
Whew! Finally got all the parts together for my boom strike repair. Its interesting to note that the pitch change links from the swash plate to the upper mixing arm are different on the shuttle plus vs the shuttle ZX. I ended up ordering a new style mixing arm which required a new style seesaw. The instructions talked about the differnt rod end types used and gave optional part #'s This is the information I was looking for in the beginning and probably could have saved my old links and mixing arm with some optional rod ends they listed. By this time I just went with the parts I ordered and everything just fell together.
I balanced my blades, tracked them at the field ( this actually was alot easier than I expected.) There was about a 1/4 inch missmatch in the tracking so I did exactly what the manual said. Moved links until I couldnt really tell which blade was which then went a half turn on each link for good measure and WHAMO! Insta-tracking achieved!!!!!!!! I couldnt believe it..................
I hovered around with the training gear lumber strapped to the landing gear and it hovered quiet well. I tossed the old mechanical gyro for a JR 410 and man what a difference. I lost a ton of weight and gained about 5x less power consumption......... The tail-lock feature took a bit getting used to but it really does a nice job on heading hold. I got the tail rotor set up close with the rate funciton first then switched to the tail lock.
Pitch the training lumber!!!!!! I got to the field and found out I forgot my training gear. Oh well, I had hovered fine with it, might as well try without it!!! Wow, it fly's WAY better without all that garbage hanging on the bottom. I will never be using that thing again. I thought of it as a safety net at first, and it was probably a good idea in the beginning, but now its on to bigger and better things!
Thanks for all the help and happy hovering!
Tony