stents3

Has anyone gotten there "37" in the past few days? I probably won't get my replacement for a week or more,and I'm wondering if anyone ran into any problems with there's. Possibly the problems I had could be attributed to it being a new release. Just curious!

embpic1

I bought my Walkera 37 when I was in Hong Kong last Saturday. The electrics are crap! After one minute of hovering in my hotel room, the brushed speed controller started smoking badly. I landed right away but I could not shut off the motor. It was stuck at about 1/2 throttle. I managed to unplug it without damage to the helicopter (or me!). After that I went out and bought a 430L with a 35A ESC. I have since returned home to the states and have gutted all the electrics except the servos. Those will be replaced soon. I have flown it just a little so far and all seems well. I plan on flying it a bunch later today, so that will be the true test.

armycopter

You guys aren't making me feel good... my 37 should arrive sometime this week. I hope I have better luck

embpic1

Ok, I have flown it a few times and WOW! This thing is way more nimble than the 36 and I still have the rates at 50%. This one has promise to actually do 3D! I decided to use the Walkera gyro that came with it (the new version) and it actually performed better than my Telebee. Soon I should have her dialed in. I haven't tried 3D yet but I could go from 90 degrees bank left to 90 degrees bank right pretty easily. More details to come.

armycopter

Awesome! Glad to hear some good news about this aircraft. Hopefully my esc won't smoke itself in the first minute of use... I don't have $100 to buy new motor and esc this month

armycopter

I got my 37 today! First, I'm in total awe, since I've only ever been exposed to my Fixed Pitch DF4. This thing is so much bigger and more complicated. Nothing bad to say about it... yet. The only thing obviously wrong is that one of the end caps to my left skid is missing. Not too big a deal, but it says something about the quality. After going through it with a fine tooth comb (Blackhawk, all my wires look good), I decided to put some batteries in the transmitter and check all the controls.

By the way... can anyone tell me how to attach the battery? My DF4 had an actual battery holder, this one doesn't have anything that obvious

Anyway, I went by the manual and checked all the controls. They all worked fine, then I tried to get the blades to turn, NO JOY! They wouldn't budge. I disconnected and reconnected the battery, but still no luck. I tried pressing the little red button on the ESC but that didn't do anything either (By the way, what's the red button for, the manual doesn't say anything about it). In the end, I disconnected all the wires one by one and reconnected them - hoping to seat them better. That seemed to do the trick (plus pressing the red button, not knowing what that thing does).

I got the blades to turn....

I couldn't resist. I picked it up to a quick hover to check it out. It sounds INCREDIBLE! It hovered sooooo steady. Way better than my DF4. Granted, I haven't charged the battery pack so I could only get it up to about 6 inches but that's ok. I love it!!!

Now I just have to figure out how to check blade pitch, paddle pitch, and how to attach the battery better.

Anyway... it seems like a great machine, but who knows what prolonged flight will do to the electronics. Oh yeah, when I was first trying to get the blades to turn, the ESC was getting hot (blades not turning). When I finally got the blades to turn and I was hovering around for a few minutes, I checked the ESC and it was not very hot. Not sure what that's all about, but seems fine now.


..by the way... it did come from China not Texas, but it only took 7 days total.

embpic1

Hey Army,

That button is a safety feature of the speed control. The motor will not turn until you press it. If you look at your speed control when you press the button, you will see a red light come on. The motor will only run if that red light is on. You have to press and hold that button for about 2 secs for it to stay on.

The motor that comes with it in way under powered for this heli. It will be ok for basic hovering, but if you really want to 'zoom' around you will definitely need a brushless setup. If you do I would highly recommend the Align 420LF or the 430LF. The Walkera brushless motors are ok, but they run much hotter. Mine eventually failed when the glue holding the bottom of the motor gave way and the guts of the motor came out. The Align motors have a built in fan that keeps them nice and cool.

armycopter

Here's a couple of pix of my new baby...

embpic1

Well I found a week spot on the 37. The piece of plastic that juts out the front is used to mount the battery. This is very weak. Mine broke off with the battery on a not so hard landing. I am going to beef it up a bit to keep that from happening again.

armycopter

Thanks for the heads up... I will do the same. I hate to add any more weight to this thing until I get a brushless setup. I weighed it this morning with the battery it was 646 grams. Let me know what your plan is to beef up the battery holder....

armycopter

Okay here is an update on my 37... day two. I need some help.

1. I noticed that I could not get the Channel 1 servo (the one in the front) to move very well. Sometimes it would move, sometimes just barely, other times not at all. I thought maybe it was the servo so I tried a different servo plugged into channel one and the new servo would do the same thing. I tried plugging the original number one servo into another channel and it seemed to work fine. I figured it was the receiver. I was about to write the vendor for help when I decided to open up the transmitter just to look around. I found a plug inside was only partially seated. I pushed it in and now the servo seems to work fine. Problem solved for now - I'm not completely convinced yet.

2. Earlier today when I was able to move all four servo's, I decided to take it for a flight outside. The main battery was fully charged. I hooked up the battery, waited for the Gyro to initialize, pressed the red button to activate the ESC/Motor and lifted off. Well, I tried to lift off. I could only get the aircraft about 1 foot in the air. It would not come out of GE. A little forward flight into the wind and I was able to get the aircraft up to about 6 feet but that is only because the rotor system becomes more efficient in forward flight. After I slowed down the Aircraft settled back to a 1 foot hover. I will say that it was a very nice and stable 1 foot hover, but a hover nonetheless. Controllability felt great. Gyro worked fine, etc. I have done NOTHING to this aircraft since opening the box except check it over, tighten a few screws, and charge the battery. Is there something I should do?? Blade tracking seems fine as far as I can tell. Like I said, the aircraft flies smoothly - no wobbles or bouncing.

I know the motor is underpowered but please don't tell me it's THAT underpowered!? I plan to buy the Align ESC/Brushless setup soon but I was hoping to wait a couple of more months. On my fixed pitch, I could always twist a little more pitch into the blades but obviously that's not an option here. Is there a way to manually add a bit more pitch to the blades? If so, how do you do it and what pitch should I look for? How about the paddles, should they be pitched?

Thanks for any help to this CP Newbie...

GTX SlotCar

I assume the gear mesh if fine because you know about that from your DF4. If the drive belt is too tight, it will rob a lot of power, so you might want to check that, too. When you shut power off, the main rotor should spin for about 15 seconds or more.
All that being said, you probably need a good LiPo. 1800 mah, 12C or better, 11.1v. My DF36 wouldn't lift off with the stock NiMH battery and I had everything totally freed and lubed.

Heliwannabe

I am brand new to the Helis and bought my 37# on line several weeks ago from Hooobby.com. Out of the box I noticed the tail pushrod was disconnected from the plastic tail rotor swivel which was repaired with a dab of epoxy. I ran through several battery charges at low throttle (even lifting a skid on occasion) getting a feel for responses. All was well and stable until the on one occasion the motor just completely quit followed 2 seconds later with full uncontrollable throttle which wasted one main rotor blade and broke one main blade holder arm. That will get your attention and I was lucky for minimal damage. While waiting for replacement parts I was able to repeat the anomaly and determine (with the main rotor blades removed of course) that the motor controller was defective. I replaced it with a 30A controller from my RC airplane, which completely cured the problem. I also had an intermittent V2 left hand collective mixing pot, which I cured by opening the controller and resoldering the pot connections. I have since received and replaced the broken main rotor parts and the machine seems very smooth and controllable clamped to the bench but I am going to have my experienced Raptor friend take it on it's maiden flight. I would love to hear from anyone regarding the flight characteristics. The machine looks to have good design potential but assembly QC is lacking so clamp this buggy down and perform dry runs with safety glasses on. I will post again after the maiden flight hopefully this weekend.

Jim

HP03 BlackHawk

So does it have a metal main frame like the manual reads?

embpic1

Well I have put about an hour of flight time on my 37 and it is doing well. The servos have worked just fine. Actually I also flew my 36 today several times. I probably have about 4 hours of flight time on that with the stock servos with no problems either.

Army,
Unfortunately, that stock motor in really junk. I was only able to get it up about 2-3 feet in my hotel room before the speed controller smoked. I hate to say it but you are asking for trouble if you wait to replace it with a different one. When mine failed it was about a foot in the air and when it started smoking it dropped out of the air. If I had been much higher I am sure I would have damaged it.

If you can, I would ditch the radio. I am using my Futaba 9C and it makes a world of difference. I am using a full size rx for now, but I plan on getting a micro one soon. The extra weight does not seem to matter much.

As far as the flying goes this thing really cooks. I am looking forward to doing some basic acro with it after I get a little better at flying it. I have pretty much mastered nose in flying and can zoom around all around the back yard with it. So far the only damage was the 'battery tray' broke off. I have glued it back on and am trying to figure a good way to reinforce it

Also I found something else that could have caused a problem. The plastic tube that the tail rotor pushrod goes through (the one above the main gear) is held in place by a small metal clip. Make sure it is tight! Mine was not and when the pushrod was moved it would bind up and not move at all. In effect I had no control of the tail rotor. That would be a bad thing if it happend in flight

Here are a few pics:

embpic1

No. It is the same plastic used in the 36

armycopter

The gear mesh is good, however, it doesn't spin for 15 seconds - morel ike 6 or 7 seconds. I'll check the belt tension tonight, maybe that will help. I agree on the lipo. By the way, are you selling any nice 11.1V's? The 7.4 I got from you works great.

armycopter

I noticed the same thing with the clips. Also watch out that the metal clips holding the servo wires are ok. Mine were so tight they were pinching the wires. It didn't break the insulation but I had to adjust everything to make sure it would hold but not be too tight. Also, the main gear comes pretty close to one of my wire clips on the left side. Not quite touching but very close nonetheless.

By the way, do you have any play in your main shaft? By play, I mean, if you pick up and push down on the disk on top of the rotor head will hte whole shaft move up and down a couple of mm? Is this normal?

embpic1

Mine were the same. If you look in my pics you will see that I replaced those clips with tie wraps.

Yes my main shaft has some play. About 1mm up and down.

GTX SlotCar

The end of [link=http://media.putfile.com/DF36-take-2]THIS VIDEO[/link] show that the rotor is still spinning when I turn off the camera. From the time I shut the power off to then was about 15 seconds. I beilieve it spins for about 20.

I don't sell 11.1v batteries yet.

armycopter

Gary did you change your DF36 to a brushless setup or are you running the stock brushed motor with a lipo?

GTX SlotCar

I went to brushless. Align 420LF and Align 25A ESC. I think all you need is a good battery to get it to fly with the stock motor. I've been though this same problem with mine.

embpic1

I took some video today of my goofing around with the the 37. It was a little windy so I didnt get too caried away.

http://media.putfile.com/Heli-37-flight

HP03 BlackHawk

What size NiMH battery did the 37 come with?

embpic1

I believe it was a 650mah NiMH. Pretty much worthless.