A Newb's 700E F3C

[watdazit]

Originally Posted by sarah1097

Has anyone tried flying the new gp900 I can not seem to get the tail wag out of my new 700 v2 f3c. In addition to that I only flew one pack basic hover only and now when I spool it and or turn the main blades against the motor it feels like either my pinion is not slipping or the bearing block on the side of the piñon is bad. It literally sounds like I have a stripped main gear but it is not stripped at all. This has had less then five min flight time

I cannot really comment on the second problem as I really do not understand the problem. In my mind the pinion should not slip at all. If it did you would have no drive. (The pinion being the gear on the motor which drives the main gear.)

As far as the GP900 is concerned I cannot get mine to work at all. It compensates correctly for movement of the heli when in set up mode but when I come out of set up mode it does nothing. I am about to throw it on the bin and use a Quark. I am told the GP900 is just a modified GP780 and I could never fully get the wag out of a 780. I am meticulous in setting up a tail to the point in calm weather I can happily fly circuits in rate mode. The best I have seen for the set up of a 780 and this would also be for a 900 is that (1) the tail has to be spot on so the heli hovers in rate mode without having put in any rudder correction, (2) the gyro has to be installed as close as possible to the mainshaft and (3) has to be exactly in line with the centreline of the heli. If I remember rightly as well I was running HH at about +20% on a JR DSX9 (same as a 9303) gear channel.

[sarah1097]

Well I put my spare 780 on and it locked right up at 25.5 no way stupid gp900 and come to find out the bearing in the third bearing block for the motor pinion is binding the one way is
Fine this is soooooooo annoying

[Train Fixer]

First of all - it's good to see a girl in here!! I wish we had a few in Israel!!

No wonder there is no peace over there, you guys don't have any girls.

[sarah1097]

Well I found the clicking stripped sound noise, the bearing in the 3rd bearing block is bad, after less then one flight. Which is terrible because I am going to call Align on monday, and I am way to nice to chew them out, or be demanding, which means they are going to make me buy a new on, it is so frustrating, do I even need the third block for the pinion if i have installed the 3rd bearing block for the main shaft? Also did any try tracking the main blades, (it is so picky).

[Train Fixer]

Well I found the clicking stripped sound noise, the bearing in the 3rd bearing block is bad, after less then one flight.

I had that pinion support bearing go bad as well after about 50 flights or so. Turns out that the motor shaft (700MX) fits perfectly into an old TT Raptor 30-V2 blade grip bearing, except the bearing overall is larger. (Outer diameter and height) So I knocked the old bearing out, made the hole larger and pressed the Raptor blade grip bearing in. That was about 250 flights ago, and it's still working great.

[sarah1097]

well the bearings are a 6x12x4 so I ordered two really high end ceramic bearings for like ten dollars, it is better then asking align to send me another crappy one.

[K2Freak]

Did you loosen all the bolts (12) that hold the bearing blocks in when you did the main shaft install? If not, yo might try that, as I find that it helps. Loosen them all up, slide the shaft in and then turn it a few rotations to seat the bearings and let everything align and settle as best it can before tightening the bolts...

Hang in there!

[sarah1097]

I did do that, but the three bearing blocks on the main shaft are fine, it was the bearing block that sits below the motor pinion gear that went bad. If i turn the bearing out side you can feel it grinding.

[Mustang Fever]

So far so good on my pinion support bearing. I was careful not to tighten any of the bolts on that block, or the motor block, until everything was seated and moving freely. Maybe that was the trick, maybe not. I have around 20 flights on mine, now.

I am not happy with all the vibration I'm getting, and nothing I do seems to help much. At 1700 rpm, the skids can be seen to vibrate side to side.

I have balanced the main blades on a balancer, twice, and they are as close to perfect as I can get them and both weigh exactly 27g.

Today I tried balancing the whole system (see the pic). The entire assembly was off by 2 grams at the distance of a flybar paddle. When spun, the blade/head assembly would stop, then reverse, then always come to a complete stop with the same flybar paddle at the bottom, so I glued a dime to the other one. It now comes to a stop at more or less random places and never reverses, just slows down steadily. The pieces of pine are 3" high, which places the main shaft parallel to the ground. It's necessary to have a weight on the frame, near the skids, to keep it all steady. Works as good as any plank prop balancer- those main shaft bearings are really smooth and friction free. A slight nudge will make it all turn for about a minute.

Helped some with the vibes, but not a lot. I'm going to reduce the head speed for the next flight, as I'm just doing hover practice anyway. I'll be trying 1550 RPM.

Anybody got anymore ideas?

[sarah1097]

i also went and re did the tail pitch slider, which was binding a little, some of my thread lock seeped onto one of the link assemblies which made it nice one way but terrible the other, so that should also help, now i just have to wait on the new bearing.

[Mustang Fever]

I'm happy now. Set the head speed to 1500, and all the vibration is gone. I'm thinking it was something to do with the governor gain, but I fiddled with that a lot, to no avail.

It now uses 18 amps in a hover, which works out to 10 minutes flight time with 75% of the pack used up. I tried it this afternoon, and still had 22.4 volts per battery after practicing for 10 minutes.

I'm starting to get used to it now, and have finally got all the control sensitivities set up to what I like. (I had to go + 30 expo on channel four and bump the rates up to max to get the rudder sensitive enough for me.)

[Gene T]

I also reset the head speed to 1650 rpm, and that, combined with about 5 deg. max pitch, makes it very easy to maintain a steady altitude.

I have a 700E F3C about to be delivered in a couple of days. Can I ask about that 5 degrees max pitch. AFAIK, these helis can run + or - 15 degrees pitch. Are you saying you set your endpoints or your swash mix or your pitch curve so that you never have more than +5 degrees in pitch? Or are you talking about something else that I'm missing out on?

[Mustang Fever]

Regarding pitch, the instructions say + or - 10 degrees in idle up, and +9 in normal.

Being relatively inexperienced, I was having a lot of trouble maintaining altitude. Every time I tried to use the rudder, I'd bounce up or down. I used the normal pitch curve to set max pitch to about 5 degrees. This made it possible to get a lot smoother, as a small stick movement doesn't change the pitch near as much as it used to.

When I set the normal head speed to 1500, I put a little more max pitch in, maybe 7 or 8 degrees. I haven't measured it, but it seems about right.

[Gene T]

OK, thanks.

I have a feeling this one is going to behave somewhat differently than my previous experiences with CP heli's.

[Mustang Fever]

I'm really havin fun, now, guys.

Got the HK telemetry system today, and it is the cat's butt.

Shows individual cell volts (on one of my 6S packs in the heli) plus total pack voltage plus a bar graph at the bottom to indicate percentage of the pack used. Preset alarm pops off if voltage in any cell gets down to 3.2 under load.

[Mustang Fever]

First time today I was able to fly until the telemetry told me it was time to land. (Single beeps separated by long pauses, maybe 30 sec.)

Pack voltage for the 6S was 22.3 static when I plugged one of them into the charger. Perfect.

I did discover that in order for the device to work properly, one must go through the binding procedure whenever changing to a pack with a different number of cells from what was monitored previously. (I went from 6S in the heli to 5S on my delta wing seaplane.) If this isn't done, the unit looks for that missing cell and gives a continuous warning, (3 beeps, pause, 3 beeps) and the battery "fuel" gauge flashes continuously.

[Tronix]

how long was your flight, fever?

[Mustang Fever]

15 minutes of hover practice at 1500 rpm. My fingertips were just starting to get numb.

I just now looked at the pack that's on charge, looks like I used 3.5 A from a 4.0 pack. That's also ideal.

[Tronix]

Originally Posted by sarah1097

well the bearings are a 6x12x4 so I ordered two really high end ceramic bearings for like ten dollars, it is better then asking align to send me another crappy one.

When you get these installed, please let me know how the heli feels! I've been wanting to do a ceramic bearing upgrade myself!

[Tronix]

Originally Posted by Mustang Fever

15 minutes of hover practice at 1500 rpm. My fingertips were just starting to get numb.

I just now looked at the pack that's on charge, looks like I used 3.5 A from a 4.0 pack. That's also ideal.

15 min! bravo!

where'd you pick up the telemetry system? and do you know the total weight of your heli RTF?