Should have my tail motor here soon.

Anybody else have problems with the tail motor getting weak? Mine was pulsing at full right tail stick. Could be the higher voltage of the li-po battery shortens the life of the tail motor. OR, the longer flight times create heat in the motor which shortens life.

Oh well, 2 are on the way. Can't get enough HELI CRACK!

My tail motor did the same thing several weeks ago.
It just didn't have the rpm needed to fly.
Got a new one and that fixed the problem.

This is good info to know......Thanks guys

Hi all, just wanted to intro myself and say that I purchased the Axe today. I was fully intending to buy the CX2 but LHS was out so I hem-hawed around and got the Axe instead. I wanted something to learn on but that I could fly outdoors and "grow" with it over time. I put it together and played "pilot" on the kitchen floor until battery went out. I am going to try the RADD system and see how it goes. Boy, is it ever tempting to give more throttle just to see it lift up off the floor BUT, after reading this thread and many others, i see the wisdom in going SLOOOWWWWW. I mean, what is so hard about it? Using both thumbs simultaneously while watching a little "toy" go up and down and all around while thinking ahead about what might happen while the cat and dog are watching and the kids asking if they can fly it now and the wife asking "how much is this going to cost us again?" Yep, nothing to it, might even try brain surgery next. One ? at this time, seems the most important upgrade is the Lipo battery set. I know it is in the thread, but any recommendations on battery, and charger and balancer (are those the 3 i need?) since newer technology and prices are available?
Thanks in advance for your help. bty, I have never flown a helicopter before, hope I didn't get in over my capabilities.

Welcome to this crazy world of trying to fly Heli's. That will be your first month. Trying to learn to hover. What ever you do, stick with it for the first month. It gets REAL! fun after you can hover. It sounds like you are on your way. GOOD!

Lipo's are your first and best upgrade while learning. You can get 15 minutes of "learning" out of a 910Mha pack. Even more out of a better pack. Stock batteries offer about 5 minutes, then an hour of charging. You should have 3 batteries to maximize learning and charging time. After 2 or 3 minutes pf hovering you just might be on brain over-load. This will get better. But having battery power in reserve gives you a chance to swap batteries right away and keep on learning, well that is if you don't crash (and you will, crash).

My personal favorite as far as chargers, balancers, and batteries is: Thunder Power, they are more expensive, but I have never had a failer with them.

If there is anyway that you can get some Simulator time you will learn much faster. A bout 10 hours on any sim and you will be ready to hover. Look in to it.

Absolutely on the sim!. When I bought my axe, the guys at the LHS said, don't buy a heli now, buy the sim first. I said I wasn't interested and that I was just gonna learn the old fashioned way....yeah right! [:@] So after a week ,I bought an esky sim for $30. It was ok, but only to learn what the sticks do. So I sold that and ended up buying the realflight G3.5 . It made all the difference in the world! though still not exactly like the real thing IMHO, it gives you a much more realistic feel and improves your reflexes, a few tweaks in the sim set up does make it pretty close to the real thing. My charger battery choice was the FMA cellpro 4s for $65 and a megapower 1350mah for $28. You can only charge one battery at a time with that charger but it is a balancer as well and is supposed to be one of the safer chargers, also displays useful charging info. Hope this helps.

For those of you who are interested: Axe CP (stock) Electrical Wiring. I was really...really bored. [sm=72_72.gif]

hi guys,

i m parvinder from india i m using axe cp for about 2 weeks now on stock bat. and i just learned to hover and started to enjoy it, just 2 days ago i started using li-po 11.1 1300mah battery and i started getting some problem with tail motor speed slow as i use and now today it completed stopped working i have removed the main rotar connection and i gave full throtel and thr is no movement in tail rotor, i guess i have runined brushes using li-po battery or may i have flown it for more then 15 mins

now can any one tell me which is the best brushless tail motor which i fit in my axe cp to get it back to work and if i use brushless tail motor do i need any thing else with it pls reply me soon as i have my cousin coming to india he will bring stuff for me thanks a lot

with regards

the short answer is you'll need a esc for the tail along with the brushless motor. This is over at RCGroups.[link=http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=701568]brushless esc/tail motor[/link]For sale.

hey there smart Heli dudes

how easy (or hard) is it to change the tail boom? ... i guess you can tell i have two left hands (some say more like one and a half )

i crashed the other day (just was not thinking what i was doing) and bent mine pretty bad - i hand straightened it out but i am sure it is not the best thing to do to fly one not perfectly straight? ...help

Personally, If you have it relatively straight i.e. the motor is behind the heli and functioning, I would try to get a little more life out of it. New tailbooms are 16.00 bucks so i'd suspect you wouldn't want to buy to many of these, lol. You can substitute a knitting needle or go to your local archery shop and pick up a arrow shaft and mod it to work also. Either substitute will require some work but from i've read it's pretty simple.

As far as changing the boom you'll need a few simple tools plus a soldering iron to disconnect the wires from the motor and to resolder. The only thing I would really worry about is the little screw under the boom that holds the motor mount on. Do not lose this screw because if you do and substitute it for a different/longer one you run the risk of shorting out the wires and frying your 3-1.

yikes! ... i guess i will keep puttering on the old shabby bent one til i just HAVE to change it ...much thanks for the help bud.

Thanks for the wiring diagram posting. I am just curious, how does the ESC/Mixer get the rudder control signal from the receiver (CH4); just that single orange wire?
With the HH gyro upgrade Heli-max tells you to plug the gyro control into CH4 and move the orange wire down own slot, CH5. What's coming on CH5? why not just leave out the orange wire since the ESC/Mixer is not controlling the tire motor anymore.
Any ideas?

The ESC does get its CH4 signal on the single orange wire, the reason that they tell you to move it to CH5 is so that it gets a nice neutral position signal so that the ESC will initialize properly for the main motor and will not get wigged out by any stray inbound interference.

I just got Realflight G3.5 and it just seems too easy compare to my real axe cp. In fact, I tried and I was able to fly / hover all the helicopters that are included in the sim. Yet, I have a tough time with the real axe ap. I did notice that the sim axe cp is probably the most "jumpy" helicopter. Other helicopters are very stable and so easy to control.

What modifications do I need to change in the sim to make it more like my real axe cp (no HH gyro)?

It's easy because heading hold is turned on by default. You need to go into the model specs and turn down the percent to zero to make it work in rate mode. I suspect you won't have the same results, lol.

Well, against common sense and more experience advice, I flew with my ball joint damaged (With model glue repaid job), which I found out is part of the "Stabilizer control hub". It worked surprisingly well, most likely because of pure luck.
That is, until I overcompensated and crashed. I ended up trying to do a quick glue fix job again. Well, I guess I used a little too much glue, as it glued the stabilizer control hub and flybar link together at the ball joint!
Luckily I was able to salvage the flybar link with no damage, but my stabilizer control hub is FUBAR'd. I guess I'm heading to the local hobby shop tomorrow. Luckily I should be able to walk away only $6 poorer, and much wiser :-/

Elandur , well, think of it this way: you saved $6 by doing the glue job the first time around and if you hadn't crashed you'd still be fine for tomorrow. Glue jobs aren't necessarily bad - many people have dumped a lot glue into their Axe and have been fine. In fact, I'm flying right now with a tail rotor blade that's glued together (it broke twice and I glued it twice). Just be careful that's all. We know how easily this hobby can eat up your money, especially Axe CP parts, so we all understand your situation.

If you haven't already, you may want to consider adding flybar weights and/or moving the servo links to a smaller radius to tame the Axe a bit. There's plenty of threads in these forums about it.

Woah, glued blades? Maybe I underestimated the power of glue
At first I figured my glue job would be fine since there's not a lot of pressure on that little joint, but I got a little skittish after posting and thinking for a while. Before I glued it, the air flow direction was reversed, pushing the heli into the ground rather than up. I can't imagine how bad it would be if the glue gave way in mid-flight and SLAMMED the heli into the ground. But I'm still working on hovering at about 1 foot, so I figured I could go a while without replacing it

I keep thinking about all of the bamboo in my backyard and looking at my broken blades and thinking about the bamboo and the blades and the bamboo and the..... you get the idea, has anybody heard of this or have I watched too many macguyver episodes for my own good?

I've been having an interesting intermitent problem. I recently disconnected the red lead from my motor when I did the heatsink mod, of course this is before I found out I didn't really need to. But anyway, I pushed the connection back together and everything seemed fine. Now about every 3rd flight i'm having a complete motor failure. Since I'm still learning to hover this means that it drops from about 5 feet. After that, I push on the two connections to be sure they are seated properly and they always seem to be, and then it works again. This has happened with both lipo and stock batteries and isn't due to low power in the bat. Any ideas? Bad connector? The connectors are perfeclty clean and seem to be in good shape. What up?

Sounds like a 3-1 board to me. I had a similar problem with one partictular battery. The Heli would spin up then quit. If I unplugged the battery then reattached the battery it would spin up and then quit again. I called Hobby Services and told them about the problem and they sent me a new 3-1 board. If you are still under warranty I would calll them.

Did they require proof of purchase or a receipt? I'm not sure I can find mine unfortunately. I do have the box though.

That is a classic symptom of a broken solder joint. I bet if you pulled the heatshrink of the wire will come out of one of the leads. This was a big problem in the original Axes and I've seen it happen personally to the tail motor lead/deans connector.

By heatshrink, do you mean the heatshrink from the barrel connector on the motor lead?