I'm done lurking and decided which heli to get.

I ordered an Axe tonight (The wife is going to kill me, come to the estate sale to get it ) - Saw one at our local hobby shop (talked with an "inexperienced 2D flyer" whose trainer/neighbor sent him out to buy one) and was pretty impressed so I ordered one from an Ebay store ($175.00). Now I just have to play with my Havoc for a few more days before a real chopper gets here.

What I'm going to do first thing is shoot all the mechanics with my DV so I have a reference point in case...(when) I break something. I also downloaded the manual and read through it. I've been reading the threads on the Axe and want to make sure I'm getting all the details right with anything that might reach out and bite me. Sorry if these have all been addressed before but I hate blowing up things that fly.

How long will the stock battery last in normal flight (no acrobatics)? Say hovering and normal flight.

A higher AH battery will cause higher motor heat (obvious)? Would a small (I have some 4mm) cooling fan help or would the gyro effect from it be harmful?

What's the duty cycle on these things? When should maintenance be done? The manual I downloaded is slim on that subject. I assume that a lot of tiny moving metal/plastic parts will need lubrication - I use silicone on the Havoc gears and motors (solves a lot of odd problems).

The sudden "jump" thing may be due to interference from electrical, metal or tight motor pinion? - got all that from several threads.

The tail boom is fragile (Wal-Mart knitting needle replacement) - is this under normal flight or from wacking stuff?

Do blades wear out or do they break from wacking stuff? What typical parts wear under normal flight? I'd imagine with the loads even at scale can be pretty severe.


Max

Welcome to the chaotic world of heli's Max!
The first thing I'd do, (knowing what I know now about the AXE CP), is to scrap the stock NiMH battery for a Lipo. The stock "crap-pack" is good for about 7min, if it doesn't overheat[:'(]. Adding a non-conductive piece of material between main motor & battery definitly helps keep the battery cooler, (I used a piece of circuit board material & double-sided foam tape).
Next would be to remove the heat-sink off the main motor, and remove some material off the HS, so that the vent holes in the motor are not blocked by the HS, a dremel tool does a fine job at this.
Get some plastic "trainer blades," they are pre-balenced, track great, and take a better lick'in than the stock woodies. The wal-mart knitting needles 8mm x 14" are a great upgrade to the stock tail boom, you will dent or bend the OEM boom, it doesn't take much.
Back-up parts to keep on-hand: alot of blade grips, stabilizer hubs, tail blades, and tail motor.
Then you may want to upgrade with a HH gyro for the tail, maybe BL motors next, the wish list is long, just be carefull of putting your wish list in front of your wife's "honey-due list!" I know mine got me in trouble, "it's easier to ask for forgiveness, than it is to ask for permission, especially with R/C heli stuff!"

Rick

Max,

Welcome to our addiction![>:]
Like Rick was saying the stock battery is only good for a few minutes, then you have to charge them for 1 1/2 hours for another few minutes of flying. When you're getting the hang of hovering you don't want to wait because your battery is low. I'd recommend researching LiPo battery packs, a good LiPo charger and a good LiPo battery balancer. Just keep in mind, if you go cheap, you'll wind up wanting more. The recommended BP910 is a good battery but will only get you 10 minutes of flight. I am looking at buying a couple of 1320 mAh packs. I've been told that I can get 15 to 17 minutes of flying time. The bottom line is that you are going to want more than one battery pack. The LiPo packs still take an hour or more to charge up. I've looked at a couple of chargers that can charge up to 4 LiPo packs at a time. Most chargers are 12 v DC. You can find a few that run off both AC/DC or you can go to Radio Shack, buy a 110 v AC to 12.6 v DC plug and a few connectors, do a little cutting and soldering and now you can go AC/DC.
There are tons of mods out there, just research the threads on this and some of the other forums. When it comes to parts, Tower Hobbies has everything you'll need, but if you do a little research you can find other hobby shops have the same parts for a few bucks less. Tower Hobbies has some nice discounts though.
I started a thread on this forum a few months ago looking to put together a crash repair kit of the more common parts that will break in the event of a crash. Believe me when I say this, you're gonna crash.
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_6177027/tm.htm Read up on this thread, it's a good source of parts info.
One more thing. You can learn to hover and fly on a simulator pretty quickly and save money on parts you break or you can learn without a simulator and replace the parts as they break. It took me a few days to hover with the simulator and a week to do it for real. It probably would have taken me several weeks to learn without the sim.
I know this is a lot of info to digest. Bottom line is this hobby is tons of fun and very addictive. I go into work an hour early and stay an hour late just to get in some stick time. The main reason for not flying is waiting for parts!

Ted

I figured as much about the stock battery. I might stop in at the BatteriesPlus in town and see what they have. They fixed me up with a great 120/12 volt charger for the LiPo in my digital camera; I did some "modifications" to it so it will also charge the battery in the DV. The little Havoc POS I have flies for 6 minutes which is aggravating to no end. About the time the cat is getting pissed off, the thing dies.

The circuit board idea is great as well as the heat sink thing. I'm thinking a discarded CPU heat sink instead for the battery. I've got a bunch of those around here, some have pretty shallow fins too....Those little cooling fans I have will run off a button battery so I might try that too.

I have a good 50 or so carbon fiber rods about 2 feet long each left over from a dome tent gone bad. Hollow in the center and are probably "about" the right diameter.

I've been reading the Alternative AXE CP parts thread - our local overpriced snooty hobby shop has a fair selection of blades and parts that may fit.

The good news for me is I have so many hours on heli simulators (much to the chagrin of the wife), transferring the hand/eye coordination shouldn't be too much of a problem. What I hope to do is treat the training as you would real flight training and go slowly and carefully in agonizingly slow steps. With beer, of course. Note to self: put tape over the idle up and training switches.

For the tail and main motors.....would it better to get several less expensive brushed motors or just spring for brushless right off the bat and do the adjustments on the mixer board?

I should also confess the real reason for doing this. I host a crappy video on demand show and for an upcoming episode I need to be followed by a black helicopter. RC, Airwolf body - you can see where this is going.

Max

Oh,
So I see, the stepping stone to the "heli-crack" technicolor dream, a full AIRWOLF mock-up, with retracts (I imagine, of course)!
I see we have the same dreams, as do many others here (in our e-heli form), or as I've read. That is a SWEET bird! Best I can do is watch the full Airwolf DVD series, I got for X-mas last year, or look at the 1/48 scale model hanging from the ceiling in my hobby room.
I don't have a flight sim, I prefer the "on-the-fly," hard way of doing things. Makes it like being at work, learn new stuff without books, or anyone having knowledge of what it does, how to make it work, or how to fix it.
Here's some nice "heli-porn" for ya, found them in the gallery (scale-heli's), this replace my previous AXE CP (inverted) desktop pic.


Rick

Nah, I don't need no retracts (or so I say now). There's an Ebay store that sells the bodies, 24" for about $30 bucks. Clear Lexan body that will be sure to trap heat so that everything melts inside, but it sure will look good for about 3 minutes. I'll dig up the link.

I found a couple of batteries that probably won't work but I thought I'd run them up the flagpole.


[link=http://www.miracle-mart.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1310]Battery 1[/link]

[link=http://www.miracle-mart.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=455]Battery 2[/link]

Max,
Watch out on the length of the Lipo batteries your looking at, anything longer than 3" is a tough fit, that's if you want your canopy to fit back on. My MegaPower 1350mah 15c packs just barely fit under the canopy (gotta jam it on), and they are about 2.75" long. Anything longer would have to be belly mounted, and that will throw off the center of gravity.
Did ya find that link for the Airwolf body? $30 bucks, I'd be willing to try a body-mod for that kinda money, (it could hide all the other damage I've done to the AXE).

Rick

I just hit the link. Gone. Poop. I found a few others by searching "airwolf body"; most are like $100 for the T-Rex. I've got a line on a guy that has fiberglass bodies but I didn't bookmark it. He goes by Darth or something like that, photos of like a thousand of the things lining shelves. I'll find some more eventually using my superior search techniques (hah!) . They're out there, you just have to Google it and hit the deeeeep links.

You can watch my latest video if it makes you feel better. The wife just shook her head. I finally got that POS Havoc to fly right. The cat loves it anyways.

[link=http://www.northernmichigansolar.com/catwolf.htm]embedded[/link]

[link=http://www.northernmichigansolar.com/catwolf.wmv]download[/link]


Max