I bought a brand new Shuttle ZX some 10 years ago and it came fitted with a Super Tigre 34. I tried to learn hovering on it but everytime I throttled up and it came to the point where the heli looks like it is just about to lift off, the engine would stall. No matter how I adjusted the 2 needles, I couldn't get it to lift off without flaming out. Subsequently, I gave up trying and the chopper has been sitting as a display until now. I have decided to give myself a second shot at learning to fly nitro after these 10 years because I had some success with basic hovering on a tiny electric Dragonfly. Please tell me what could have been the problem - poorly balanced blades; wrong pitch of main blades; bad mixture; anything... Just HELP! Also, should I assume that the engine is scrap metal if it had been left in the heli all these years without being used?

Get a OS 37 and set the engine and pitch curves up per the instructions that came with the helicopter. If at all possible try to find someone to help you with the set up and first hovers and put some training gear on the shids.

Definately get another engine thats is very important to the workings of a helicopter.



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I would say that if you want to try the engine again,take it out of the heli and mount it on a test bench and put a prop on it, a 9x6 prop should be fine.Try get the engine running on the bench,it will be easier to tune as well.Set all the needles to default as per instruction manual and start from there.Use at least 5-10%nitro,it will make tuning the engine easier.Make sure the tank is getting pressurized from the exhaust and change things like fuel tubing and glow plug if you are not successful,then resort to cleaning the carb out in case there is dirt in it.The engine is not that bad, Super Tigre's are good engines IMO although I am not familiar with the heli ones. O.S is undoubtedly the best, I use an O.S 32SX in my Shuttle ZX and haven't had one flame-out.When I bought my Shuttle the engine had been standing for 5years, I bought it even though it felt like it was ceased but I knew it was the fuel that got all sticky and prevented the crankshaft from turning.I flushed it with fresh fuel and it slowly started to move again,then ran it on the bench shortly before sticking it back in the heli.Worked perfectly ever since then.Just remember to replace things like fuel tubing etc.

Regarding the setup of your heli,the pitch may be too high and therefore stall the engine.Use a decent pitch gauge to set your pitch.The paper pitch gauge that comes with the Shuttle is a bit useless, it works but is not very accurate.You should have 0 deg at bottom, +5.5 degrees at the centre and about +9deg at the top.This is just for hovering so don't go too high because it will take long to come down with no negative pitch.The reason for 0 deg at the bottom is so that you don't slam the heli down when learning to hover.Don't forget your training gear!

I wouldn't bother getting a new engine yet until you can hover properly because you won't fly high anyway unless the engine is really bad and you can't get it to run at all.Hovering is not so good for engines because they don't get sufficient cooling and are therefore more likely to break.Get a new engine the moment you begin forward flight.

Good Luck!

Thats a good point,if the internal parts of the motor appear good then you can run it oo a test bench with a prop to get it back to 100%.

Thanks all, esp Tuned Pipe for your set up advice. I'll mount the engine on my old 40 size trainer since I don't have anything resembling a test stand at the moment. I'll set the needles and prob let it run a full tank just to clean out the gunk that must have made home in there for the last 10 years.

Does anyone know where I can get a full set of instructions? I don't have access to any written instructions as mine's about a decade old, but I did remember reading something about having negative pitch of 2 or something at the lowest point. The 0 pitch makes more sense for a beginner learning basic hovering. I do know how to hover a little on an indoor dragonfly.

Here is the only link I can find to a Hirobo Shuttle ZX:[link]http://warhammer.mcc.virginia.edu/ty/heli/hirobo/shuttle/zxassy/zxassy.html[/link]
It is not the best in terms of quality and convienence but it is better than nothing.
Check out this site too if you haven't seen it yet.[link]http://www.raptortechnique.com[/link].It is good for an overview on setting up the heli even though it is dedicated to the Raptor, most of it applies to all helis in general.
If you can hover an electric well then you should have no problem hovering a nitro.I tried the new Protech Zoom 400 (awesome heli) the other day and it is quite similar to a nitro heli if not slighly more difficult.

Hope the manual helps!

Thanks for the link to the Shuttle manual - it was "readable" from my notebook screen so it wasn't that bad. One thing got my attention though... On page 12 of the manual, there's a line that goes something like "once the heat shrink tubing has SHRANK". I remembered laughing at this 10 years ago when I was putting the ZX together so it must be the same manual.

Flying an RC heli is not easy... well, at least for me. I've been playing around with my tiny indoor Dragonfly and I notice that it gets really unstable just when its about to lift off. It starts to yaw right and roll left. To overcome this, I found that I had to give it a sudden "blip" of throttle to get it a foot or 2 off the ground and once its off the ground, it seems to be easier to control. I don't know how best to describe this phenomena but it seems to me as though the heli's own blades are creating some kind of turbulence that diminishes as the heli gets higher. Does this happen in the nitro ones too?

In fact it does,I noticed that too with my Shuttle the first time I hovered it.Once you're about a 5 feet off the ground it is much easier to hover and and if you go even higher it feels even more stable.The rotor downwash creates turbulence which makes the heli more difficult to control at low altitude.I doesn't bother me anymore though.becasue I am not that low often, only when I land.Usually one is above 8 feet.I am busy flying figure eights and having a lot of fun.I started flying 4 months ago but was stuck when I couldn't get spares for nearly two months so actual flying time has only been 2 1/2 months.I haven't crashed yet,the clucth broke and I had to buy a whole new clutch set (clutch bell,clucth,liner etc.) becasue it was an older model and in the process of doing so I upgraded to top-start.

I was fooling around with my indoor dragonfly the other day and because I was feeling a little over confident from my last few hovering flights, I decided to get it way off the ground to avoid this dreaded "downwash" from making the lift off unstable. I throttled it up full just before lift off and when it got about 5 feet high, I cut back on the throttle to keep it at that level. I was ecstatic to be actually hovering that high off the ground and with minor stick adjustments, this went on for a good 45 secs or so until over-correction caused the heli to move right out of position and it started coming towards my neck. That's when I chopped the throttle and it came crashing down from that height and snapped one of the carbon landing gear rods.

I'm assuming you're flying with the same ZX model as mine since the manual you referred me to is the same. Mine is 10 yrs old and has a belt for starting. U mentioned that u changed the clutch set and upgraded to top-start because yours is an older model so that must mean that the the ZXs I see in the stores are "improved". What are the differences besides the top-start and the clutch and what must I do to change it to this more convenient top-start?