old piccolo electrics

[Nigel Davison]

Can anyone tell me if its possible to replace the piccoboard on my old piccolo helis (i have 5 ) they have been sat for a while and all the piccoboards are no longer working and sadly no-one (not even Ikarus ) appears to repair them anymore . The motors are 310 main shaft and a very small tail rotor motor , i have a number of small spektrum recievers and dx7s etc so will obviosly go 2.4 , so i guess i will need gyros esc 's( will i need one for the tail ). has anyone done it before or any recommendations about what to buy . i know they are hideously out of date but i do not just want to bin the lot if i can get them working again .

Thanks

[WolstonFlyer]

How about this one for sale on ebay, the board might be OK?

[Nigel Davison]

Thanks woolsten flyer , i have gone this route before which is how i ended up with so many piccolos . the old piccoboards just do not seem to last well so if i can go with more modern seperate units i think the whole lot would be more reliable .

thanks though

[WolstonFlyer]

Haha, yes I know what you mean.

This guy did a brushless conversion,

**LINK**

I guess the hard part is control of the electric tail motor, otherwise the job would be easier.

He has a wiring diagram here

Lots of other info here: **LINK**

Good luck but I fear that they will be consigned to "Shelf Queen" status

[Nigel Davison]

hi thanks , have had a look at that i would prefer to stay brushed but i guess the principles are the same . im not great with the tech so i would need some help with the specs if anyone has any ideas i would appreciate the help . N

[Frank Skilbeck]

Nigel, I've got one as well that has stopped working, controlling the main rotor is quite easy just a brushed motor ESC on the throttle, but the tail rotor will need it's own ESC and gyro that would need to be mixed in with the rudder stick and main rotor.

The issue is that conventional tail gyros operate a servo with input from the rudder, whether this would work to control the tail rotor or not I'm not sure, but if it did what you would need is the following

Main rotor motor ESC, say 10A

Tail rotor motor ESC, 3A ???

Tail gyro

5/6 channel Rx (4 main controls and 5th to allow gain adjustment of the gyro)

Not sure it would work but if you had the bits it might be worth testing, but my piccolo is reserved as a shelf queen now as there are much better indoor helis around.

[Nigel Davison]

Thanks Frank , apart from a small tail rotor esc i have the rest of the bits although the gyro i have is perhaps a litte bigger than i would like ,i will try to get a small tail rotor esc and give it a go . do you think i will have to mix the throttle and tail rotor channel . i do have other small helis but this is sort of a last ditch attempt before i clear out , as i said i have 5 of these things and tons of spares ,. i would like to break them as is my usual "policy" before consigning them to the bin . do you know of a very small tail gyro incase i get some success .

[Ed Darter]

Blimey - converting Picolos to separates is a blast from the past! Not sure if this is still useful / needed:

When I did it I used a 10A main esc and a 5A tail esc and a PG03 gyro. But I very soon started on the brushless conversion route as well (for the main rotor anyway). That consisted of converting an old CD Rom drive motor, very straight forward and a massive jump in performance due to being more efficient and much lighter than the 310 motor. My Picolo was powered by a 2 cell 1200mAH lipo and easily flew for 25 minutes!

For TX setup, just make sure its in heli mode and the TX should take care of the rudder mixing for you. You may find that arming the tail esc is a problem though, and thats usually solved by moving the rudder stick to one end of its travel, this is due to the esc not seeing 0% with the stick centred and potentially not arming because of this. Then you can play with revolution mixing in the TX to fine tune the tail to the main rotor through the whole throttle range, assuming you don't have a heading hold gyro.

[Nigel Davison]

thanks Ed . i have just completed the conversion and it works brilliantly . using a HH gyro . still have lots of 310 motors but i will go the cd rom motor route on one and see how get on. many thanks . nigel

[Frank Skilbeck]

Mmm I tempted to have a go now, I have a spare 6 channel park fly Rx, 20a brushed ESC, just need to find a small ESC for the tail motor, what size did you use and where did you get it

[Nigel Davison]

Hi Frank . I used a hobby stores RIPMAX 5Amp brushed esc works well, need to register the esc as you described but with the hh gyro works well . wish i had done it before . i always had problems with the picco boards i had even with thier hh module . i wish i had done this before , better than binning the lot . with what i have in the way of apares i'll probably be flying these things for years . Who needs Flybarless modern things !!!