Allan Bennett

April 23

Best wishes for good progress in the new rehab centre.

April 16

4 hours ago, Erfolg said:

One issue I have not as yet resolved, in my mind, is arming the model. Do you remove the wing, arm, then refit the wing?

Or is arming completed another way?

I don't remember what the plan shows, but I created a front-hinged hatch on the underside of the front fuselage.

April 14

I've built it. Only flew it once, but crashed it due to loss of orientation and control (due I think, to the battery shifting in flight). The only damage was to the nose though, so I'm waiting for good weather to fly it again. I never thought about ease of replacing/maintaining the fans, but consider that rebuilding a nacelle would be not too difficult if necessary.

April 13

I'm pretty sure it must be 0.1" pin spacing (2.54mm) if it's to go onto the 4 header pins on the PRM-01. I get sockets like that from RadioSpares (RS) in almost any number of pins in 1 or 2 rows, like this one. You need the crimp pins to go with them like these. Look for "Crimp housings" and pins on other sites and you'll possibly get them cheaper/easier.

April 12

7 hours ago, J D 8 said:

I will disagree with the statements above. Pods for the fans need to be mounted away from the fuselage some so inlet is away from air disturbed by said fuzz.

Note. Full size practice with types like A 10 thunderbolt, VC 10, Learjet and many more.

I agree. In my earlier post I was thinking of A10 Thunderbolt and Learjet, both of which I have, so I should have said as close as reasonably possible, or something like that.

April 12

As close to the fuselage as possible sounds right to me too, for the reason you've stated, and to minimise the structural load on the wing.

I would also question whether a little bit of down thrust would be good, as is usually the case with normal front-mounted props, to counteract the lift when the throttle is increased.

April 7

I file rudimentary teeth into the end of a brass tube, and use it for drilling holes through foam cores. Should be easy to direct it by eye straight to the servo position.

April 1

4 hours ago, GrumpyGnome said:

When I set up the TRex's they were both flybar equipped with pretty standard receivers. Swash mixing was done in the tx. IIRC, the swash moved down to increase the blade pitch ...... . . .

Yes, with a flybar the mixing is normally done in the transmitter, and a 'flight controller' is not needed other than the gyro for the tail. Whether the swash moves up or down to increase pitch might depend on the way the linkages attach to the blade holders, but on my 3 TRexs the swash always moves up to increase pitch

March 31

25 minutes ago, Rob Manser said:

Thanks for the one or two helpful replies!

In answer to questions:

I asked a few RC heli flyers before buying the 450 whether it was suitable for a beginner and they said yes. I had been looking at this or a Blade on the secondhand market. In the past I've owned an RC glider, a powered plane, a car, and two very basic non-collective pitch helis, so saw this as the next step. I classify myself as a beginner for collective pitch helis, because I understand well that they're quite hard to fly.

I did check the nuts and bolts on the heli before flying and they were all fine, but this problem doesn't appear to be linked to any nuts and bolts - they appear to be push fit items, which surprises me, thus the questions.

I started flying RC helis with a Twister Bell coaxial indoor heli, but then moved on to a TRex 500. At that time we had a few club members flying TRex 450s, and they recommended them for learning. But I noted that those members were unable to fly when the wind got up a bit, so I chose the larger TRex 500 which I was able to fly in much windier conditions.

Nothing on a model heli is a 'push fit'. As Frank has pointed out, there are bolts which positively attache each blade-grip to the feathering shaft that goes through the head.

March 31

I concur with the advice to get an experienced user go over the model, and supervise the repairs. But I would also advise getting hold of a manual -- looks like one of the 450 manuals with the suffix 'FB' (FlyBarred) from this page would show you how it's supposed to go together. In my experience Align's manuals are very good for setting up the model correctly too. I built and setup my first TRex 500 by following its manual to the letter, finally having it checked and test-flown by an experienced flyer.

March 29

Err, what update/version are we talking about? I thought my S8R was using the latest V2 ACCST EU LBT firmware, and I've checked the FrSky web site and see that the latest version was in July 2021. Self-check is on channel 12 switch, and I've programmed my Taranis so that it can't be activated while the motor arming switch is armed.

March 28

Welcome to the hobby/sport. Hopefully you've been able to find a club so that experienced members can help you out and give tuition.

March 22

First-class service from Unmannedtech! They've sent me a returns label and will give me a refund., even though it was my mistake to order it.

March 21

Unfortunately I've been advised by the vendor that this is a 'CAN' device rather than an 'I2C' device, so can't be connected to my 'regular' FC.

March 20

I've just taken delivery of a Matek M10Q-3100 GPS/compass module, but I don't see the GND/+v/Tx/Rx/SLC/SDA connections that I'm used to. Instead there's a 4-pin socket (with plug and lead supplied) labelled G/C-L/C-H/5V, and 6 solder pads labelled Rx2/Tx2/5V/G/swd/swc. Looks like the 6 solder pads are what I need, but am I safe to assume that swd and swc are the compass connections normally referred to as SLC and SDA?

March 19

Dohhh! Problem solved!

February 26

I've printed Eclipson's Model B in both regular PLA and LW-PLA. I did the regular one first because that's the material I had at the time, and if flew very nicely but needed lead in the nose. Something broke on landing though (can't remember what) so I reprinted the fuselage.

In the meantime I printed it using LW-PLA but with a regular PLA nose and rudder for contrasting colour, and transferred the motor and electronics there. That didn't need lead in the nose, was very skittish, and suffered a broken nose when it nosed over on landing. I'm experimenting using CA debonder to remove the damaged nose so I can replace just it, rather than reprinting the whole fuselage. I've now got some other colour LW-PLA so will be using it for the replacement nose, as my experience is it's much more robust than regular PLA.

February 25

A friend at our flying club has a DX6i transmitter with a broken scroll wheel. It connects to the transmitter's board with a plug, so should be an easy d.i.y. replacement, but I have been unable to find any UK source for one. There's plenty available from China at ridiculously (suspiciously) low prices, which are probably not genuine Spektrum. Surely Spektrum have an outlet here for spares other than servo spares?

February 22

Job done! The debonder does make quite a sticky mess. Some of the gunge I scraped off was the colour of the lightweight PLA that was used to print the model, but I don't think it's permanently affected it. After scraping the gunge then wiping with surgical spirit I let it dry off before using cyano to attach the replacement wingtip. All looks good.

February 21

I've just managed to remove a damaged wingtip cleanly from a 3D-printed model using cyano debonder. It seems to me that the gooey residue is hardening with time, so it seems like I'll be able to glue in the replacement tip by tomorrow.

Is that right, or do I need to somehow remove or deactivate all traces of the de-bonder before regluing? I think I've removed it all by scraping, sanding, and wiping, but don't know if there's any residual absorbed in the structure.

January 24

In case it helps others . . . .

When I reported that everything was working, it was because I'd checked the surface movements in 'Self-levelling' mode: I then found that in 'Stabilised' mode there was no movement of the surfaces when I moved the model around. After watching Painless 360's video, as suggested by Graham, I realised that the knob I'd specified for gain control (Ch 9) when centred was giving no gain, therefore no corrective movements in Stabilised mode. Painless 360 suggests adding a curve to that control, so that it outputs from 0 - 100% from one extreme to the other, rather than the normal -100 / 0 / +100. Reading the S8R manual again I saw that they recommend a simpler method, giving the control a weight of 50 (instead of the default 100) and an offset of 50 (usually 0) to do the same job. Having done that it's working well.

As an aside, having got everything working correctly I noticed something that I hadn't noticed before (or had forgotten about): Stabilised and Self-levelling modes work in different ways -- Self-levelling is not simply a more aggressive (more gain) version of Stabilised mode. In Stabilised mode the surfaces move only momentarily in reaction to unwanted movements, and return quickly to whatever the pilot's input is; but in Self-levelling mode the surfaces move to correct the unwanted movement, and do not return to default until the model's attitude is correct -- i.e. the attidude it was in when Self-check was done.

Now having written it all down, I can return to this thread when I get stuck installing my next SxR receiver 😄

January 23

I don't log flights per se, but I do keep a record of each use and charge of my LiPos and A123s. This includes which model they were in for the flight, so gives me some idea (if I'm interested) of model useage.

January 22

Sorted!

Thanks to everyone who replied. My problem/error was simply that I had bound the Rx as 8-channels. Having re-bound it as 12 channels the elevators are now reacting to pitch movements, and self-check is working. All that remains is to reverse the action of one of the elevator channels, and re-do the self-check with the model in a normal flying attitude.

January 22

Thanks Neil R for those details. A couple of things there I need to check: First I'll check that I've bound with at least 12 channels; secondly my model has no rudder so there's no rudder servo. I've never used luas before, so I'll have a look at that. Everything else in your list is as I remember doing it using FreeLink.

Geoff S, I don't consider it to be 'handing over' control completely, but I do proceed with caution, never activating it until I've test flown and trimmed the model in manual mode.

January 22

Having an arming switch on an ESC used to be quite common. Some needed to be left open (i.e. disconnected) for the ESC to arm, whilst others needed to be connected to ground. In either case I permanently wired them so that the ESC is ready to go as soon as battery power is applied.

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