RE: axe cp thread
 

HelisRule, that's good stuff, man - the resistor and lamp are brilliant! I have a couple power supplies that are slated to be thrown away but would like to convert one of them for this use if possible. Could you provide some highlights of your conversion and possibly a picture with the lid off the power supply popped off? Electronics isn't my forte but, with some good instruction, I think I could handle a conversion myself.

RE: axe cp thread
 

Glad you liked it. I can only take credit for my results, the ideas came from a couple of different websites:

[link=http://web2.murraystate.edu/andy.batts/ps/POWERSUPPLY.HTM]PC Power Supply Conversion 1[/link]

[link=http://www.marcee.org/Articles/PCPowerSupply.htm]PC Power Supply Conversion 2[/link]

I took ideas from both, based partly on what I had available for a power supply, which solution matched my needs and which ideas I liked best. Then I went to Radio Shack and got the parts I needed, looking also for the switch and light that would specifically fit the two holes I had available, rather than drilling new holes. I'll get some pictures of the inside and post them with more details.

RE: axe cp thread
 

AXE CP -PITCH TRIM POT Problem? Pitch Control quit after just a few flights. In other words, moving the right hand stick forward and backwards did NOTHING. Moving it right and left was normal, and the servo's moved very quickly. After turning the model and transmitter on and off a few times, I got the servo's to move about 1/16 inch in either direction (forward and backward), but were doggy slow. After thinking about this for awhile, I reasoned thus: It can't be a solenoid problem because they all move properly and quickly when moving in the "roll" direction (moving stick right and left). It can't be the receiver, because all sticks and directions use the same channel and radio frequency. It can't be a loose servo plug, because it affects ALL 3 servo's and ONLY in the roll directions. If it was loose servo connectors, they wouldn't work perfectly in the roll direction and NOT work in the pitch direction, would they? NO, it can't be loose servo plugs. There were not any mishaps or rough landings that may have caused this. So what can it be? Well, I figured it had to be something wrong with the transmitter, so I started out suspecting the rheostats for the right stick gimbal, and or the trim slider. My chief suspect was corosion similar to what makes an old volume control on a stereo get scratchy with age. Moving the lever up and down to either extremes several times seemed to clean it's contacts and the heli flies fine now.
Does anyone out there think this has solved the problem permanently? I'm thinking of disassembling the transmitter and spraying tuner tonic on the trim pot. Does anyone out there have any other ideas? Thanks!
:(
Vic

RE: axe cp thread
 

If you can find an old XT power supply, you won't need a load (because it is a non-switching power supply!)

RE: axe cp thread
 

here's a link to a short clip of the heli hovering after the conversion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbPV2ZkNI34

RE: axe cp thread
 

JUNK


the 3-1 boards are JUNK

contact hobby services and send it back for replacement

Free if still under the 90 day warranty

RE: axe cp thread
 

Pitch-axis Control Problem - Brand new bird. I'm NOT talking about rotor blade pitch here.
I'm talking about the right stick's forward / backwards functionality.
I thought I had fixed it by working the pitch trim back and forth. NO Go. I even tried removing and re-seating all radio connectors
Problem still exists. No Pitch control. Maybe one time in 10 does the AXE CP turn on with pitch control working.
I don't believe any responsible pilot would fly that way.
What's the solution? Any ideas guys?
[sm=drowning.gif]

RE: axe cp thread
 

Pitch-axis Control Problem - Brand new bird.
I'm NOT talking about rotor blade pitch here.
I'm talking about the right stick's forward / backwards functionality.
I thought I had fixed it by working the pitch trim back and forth. NO Go. I even tried removing and re-seating all radio connectors
Problem still exists. No Pitch control. Maybe one time in 10 does the AXE CP turn on with pitch control working.
I don't believe any responsible pilot would fly that way.
What's the solution? Any ideas guys?

[sm=drowning.gif]

RE: axe cp thread
 

vbradley, is the pitch problem still there if you remove the servo arm links. I ask to rule out any binding issues and also to isolate electronics/servos. I don't know how much free time you have (I have lots), you may want to disassemble that whole rotor assembly and inspect and reassemble piece by piece. If it's still a problem and you've check all on your connectors, it could be the 3-in-1. The 3-in-1 is notoriously bad (just ask hobby_man ;)) and has been known to go out in just a few flights. You may want to take the issue up with Heli-Max and get them to send you a knew one. Sounds like you're still within 90 days of purchase so it shouldn't be a problem.

RE: axe cp thread
 

Well I finally got some air time over the last couple of days, after being grounded for a few weeks. The LiPo made all the difference. My previously reported power problem is history. It was either the slightly bent feathering spindle (which I doubt), or the stock battery (which I suspect), or both. At any rate, I'm finally getting enough practice time for some off-the-ground hover attempts. It's pretty exciting, but also bewildering. I see a lot of videos of solid in-place hovering and I'm still trying to get it to stay in a 10' circle. I'm trying to trim it out, but it wants to head to the left every time it starts to lift off. If I adjust the cyclic trim then it wants to lean to the right and I have to give it left stick to keep it from tipping over. Occasionally I get it to stabilize and hover a bit but I still can't keep it in one place for very long. It must just be a slow process. You all started out this way, right? I just want to rule out that there's something wrong with my 3-in-1 board.

One thing I'm really impressed with is how resilient this Axe is. I've made several pretty hard emergency landings to avoid bashing into things (some really, really close calls) and I'm amazed at how well the training gear absorb the shock. Occasionally one end or the other of the training gear comes unclipped but I just snap it back on and jump back in the air. And even when it isn't so resilient, it's still a formidable little guy. Toward the end of one flight session I came in a bit nose down and suffered a blade strike followed by a boom strike. The result was a bent tail boom (midway, about 30 degrees) and a broken blade grip. I had extra blade grips but no extra tail boom. Well hey, I just bent the sucker back in shape. So it has a dent in it. I was back in the air in half an hour! At the end of that session I had another minor crash into the wife's golf bag. No damage to that thankfully; the axe suffered only minor damage. I thought it was more serious as I found the tracking to be off after that, but later discovered one of the flybar paddles was off pitch nearly ¼". At one point I thought I had bent the feathering spindle again, but I checked it and it was just loose. I did finally put some threadlock on it after tightening it up 3 times.

I'll get a new tail boom with my next parts order but for now it seems to fly fine with it. The tail skid keeps getting bent with the hard landings, but I just keep bending it back into shape. I'm sure it's saved my tail rotor plenty of times. The foam balls on the training gear are getting pretty flat around their circumference, so I'm going to swap them out with some plastic practice golf balls. Just hope that doesn't make it bounce more with the hard landings. If so I'll go to the craft store and get some new foam ones. As cheap as the stock foam balls are, I do believe they're pretty good at dampening the hard landings. I can't begin to imagine removing the training gear for some time. I would have gone through many a blade by now had the training gear not been on.

Battery charging question: My Triton2 defaults to a 90 minute safety cutoff time for charging, but if I do the math to figure out the time for my specific battery I'm coming up with about 70 minutes. So I set it to 70 minutes. I've been running the battery down to about 10.3v so as not to over discharge it early on, but I'm finding the 70 minutes is timing out before the battery is fully charged. I think it would only take a few more minutes judging by the display, but the safety timer can only be set in 10-minute increments so I'd have to go to 80. Do you think that's too long to be charging this battery? Am I discharging it too much? Or was the default 90 minute safety sufficient protection? Thx.

RE: axe cp thread
 

Dear S_McFlurry:
Thanks for the post, and ideas. Yes, I'm way ahead of you here. I already tried removing all the ball joints at the 120-degree CCPM swashplate. That's where the servo's connect.
It didn't do any good. No surprise there because, as I mentioned in a previous post, the Roll-Axis works just fine. The two rear servo's move quickly and fully when I move the right stick to the left or right, but NOT AT ALL when I move the right stick forward or backwards.

I've never seen this problem on any heli, and this is my third one. (sabre, t-rex, now AXE-cp?)

I AM NOT HAPPY! Probably going to get my money back.

[sm=thumbs_down.gif]

RE: axe cp thread
 

If it worked for a little bit after working the stick for a while then it could be transmitter. If you move the left stick up and all three servos move then it should be the transmitter.
My 3-1 smoked after about 3 weeks of daily flight and took out the reciever and one servo with it. Since I have an extra futaba reciever I just bought a new speed control and replace the electronics of my AXE. You can have my transmitter for free if you want, I am not using it any more.

RE: axe cp thread
 

even if it is well trimmed helis will initially move to the left. just give it a little bit of right cyclic during take off.

RE: axe cp thread
 

after more than 20 battery cycles over the long weekend the belt conversion is still holding up pretty well.

RE: axe cp thread
 

s_mcflurry, here are the inside pics of the PS I promised. If you read through the plans on the two website links I posted, you can pretty well follow along what I did. The red wires are the +5v leads, the yellow wires are the +12v leads. The black leads are grounds (DC common). I didn't use the -12v or -5v leads as I don't need them. Don't know that I'll ever really need the +5v posts either but who knows. I used 3 leads for each post just to be on the safe side with amperage draw, and attached them with small ring type crimp connectors, to save from having to do all that soldering. Extra leads I just cut off and shrink-wrapped the ends; never know when you might need them. The PC power switch was a DPST switch that switched both the line and neutral input wires. I determined which were the neutrals and just spliced them together, so I only needed to use a SPST power switch. The switch sits above the two blue capacitors and has the brown and black line wires attached to it (in this case, the black wire is not a ground {DC common} wire). The lamp is actually a 12v lamp that I have wired at 5v. It isn't as bright as it would be at 12v, but it's bright enough to see that it's on and it will last twice as long. You could also use an LED for this purpose, but then you need a dropping resistor to be able to operate it. You can buy them with resistors already connected to save you the trouble, I just went with this lamp to fill the hole in the case. You can see the sandbar power resistor in the lower left side of the case in the 1st picture. It's connected to a 5v lead. When all is said and done, you want to make sure you do some wire management to ensure no wires are going to contact anything that gets hot, like the large (and one small) heat sinks. That's about it. Pretty easy, and cheap. I think I had about $10 in parts.

RE: axe cp thread
 

Did a better job today but still erratic. I guess I just need lots of practice to get it right. I actually let it out of the garage for a little while today but it was a bit too breezy. It got away from me and by the time I got it back to earth it was uneven earth which cost me another blade grip. Replaced that and went back to flying (loose term for what was actually eratic hovering) around the garage. Then I had a most peculiar and actually quite funny mishap. As has been my experience, just when I think I'm doing pretty well and making progress, it gets away from me and I have to drop the stick (and at times the heli) fast to avoid catastrophe. One such time I was very close to the ground but was heading for the precipice that is my cellar stairwell. Uh oh, heading for those gallon bottles of pressure washer detergent! Wish I had a video of this one. Next thing I knew, in a wink of an eye, wham, the heli stops dead, the blades come together, liquid sprays for several feet and the deck wash is spilling out onto the garage floor through a 3" gash in the side of the bottle. One of those "What the @#!%! Holy $*&#! NOOoooo! moments. :D

That's why you always fly with the canopy on - unplanned heliwash!

Thankfully, the bottle also absorbed most of the energy - no broken parts. Phew!

Oh, and I only lost about a pint of the deck wash. So no biggie. But a funny one if nothing else.

RE: axe cp thread
 

Finally installed the tail motor from the box of spare parts I ordered through TowerHobbies. Got her back in the air and its seems to be back to normal except the slight vibration. Checked the flybar to be sure its centered and had to make an adjustment. The next battery had virtually no vibration. Everything was perfect. (except the battery wasn't fully charged) Replaced the batt. and the vibration came back. Flew anyway. Its as if the blades are not centering. Do some of you fly with the blade grips really loose?

I should try tightening the grips and then balancing them dynamically like Heliko does.

Atleast I'm back in the air. Forgot how to nose-in.

RE: axe cp thread
 

I pretty much check the blade tension before every flight (lately it's been part of the grip replacement procedure [sm=confused_smile.gif]). I set them like the manual suggests, tight enough so they can support themselves when holding the heli sideways, but loose enough that a slight shake of the heli makes them drop a few inches equally. I have noticed a slight shake in the training gear on a few occasions, but it usually doesn't last. Not the kind of wabbling you're describing though. Weird that changing the battery made a difference.

Oh, I was finding that the screws on the feathering spindle were loosening up which caused some erratic behavior, but I cured that with a couple droplets of threadlock.

RE: axe cp thread
 

HelisRule, thank you very much for the pictures and the links for the power supply conversion. They'll be great help for my new project!

RE: axe cp thread
 

I go by the manual too for grip tension on the blades. I try to make them as even as possible though because if tension is uneven it can cause vibration.

RE: axe cp thread
 

Hey Guys,

I am new to both Helis and Electrics. Is it pretty typical for the tail rotor authority to fade out towards the end of the flight. When I first start the flight everything is dialed in nicely but, it seems like i have to fight the tail a lot during the last 2 mins or so.

If it helps I have been flying the Axe for a little under the month now with no major crashes on all original equipment..

Thanks

RE: axe cp thread
 

Mine does the same

RE: axe cp thread
 

Oh, ok. That answers that question for me too. On a fresh battery I always have to back off on the TR trim, but gradually add it back in during flight. Good to know that's the nature of the beast.

RE: axe cp thread
 

Hmm...I got a $50 Merchandise Certificate for buying the Axe. The certificate came in this week. What should I use it for? Too bad Tower doesn't carry the TP LiPos; that would be a no-brainer. Let's see, there's the Hitec servos, down-payment on HH gyro, many stock parts, a few CF parts, etc.

Oh and, Saturday, should I help the wife paint the porch or do hover practice? I hate painting.

Too many decisions.

[sm=tongue_smile.gif]

RE: axe cp thread
 

Use the gift certificate to buy some paint then paint your wife while she is hovering about the porch. Kill 3 birds with one stone?