Bee V2 cnc mod update... videos are up!

[spoonerrw]

i have always liked the looks of the xtreme cnc set, but never could quite figure out how to fly the Bee using it? it was always just to sloppy with the feathering shaft that xtreme chose to design it with and not stable at all. Helihankster sent me a stock blade grip modded with the bell hiller on it recently, and i put it on the Green Bee. i could not believe how well his mod worked and with the bell hiller... the response was quite impressive and the Green Bee fly's great with it!
he tried and idea i had of replacing the feathering shaft of the cnc set with a set of bearings and a straight shaft, but was not able to get it to fly stable enough to make it worth the effort. i started looking at other ideas to make this set work. a guy in our tooling department at work gave me a piece of material they call a "spicker" which he pre-drilled an inner diameter to just under 2mm. this material is a very rigid but slightly flexible plastic compound of some kind, no one but the manufacturer knows its actual composition, but it is perfect for this. the outer diameter of the material is 6.1mm. since the inner diameter of the center hub is 6mm, this worked out perfect. i had to ream out the center rib of the center hub, pressed in the spicker, then trimmed it to be flush with both sides of the hub. i had to drill out the ID of the spicker a little, then tapped in the 2mm shaft which i cut from an old xtreme 2mm inner shaft from a Big Lama. i cut this one to extend out each side of the blade grip, but future ones will be flush at 3/4". once this assembly is pressed in, it is there to stay and has no flex of any kind but soft enough to eliminate any vibrations. i added the bell hiller mod once it was done using the cnc arms.
it has been breezy out today, but i went out to test its hover, which was perfect. i did manage to pull off a few circles between gusts, and the results are very promising. it seemed to fly really well. it is very touchy, but very responsive and flew very stable despite the breeze. i am hoping for the winds to die before dark and will give it a good testing. i will video the results but so far... there is a ray of hope that this is going to work.
if it works... i will upgrade my Stinger to this set up. if it doesnt, i gave it my best try, and will go back to to the way they were.
here is the set assembled...

here is the shaft and raw length of spicker material...

[spoonerrw]

update... IT WORKS!!!

videos uploading now .

[spoonerrw]

there was a breeze pretty much the whole time during these videos, but i was desperate to test this idea out, lol.

i had to be careful, and was a bit on edge to begin with, so just checking basic hovering and pattern flying at scale speed and mostly close to the ground...

this one had an aileron/elevator DR/Expo of 90/15. i did ok but i didnt like the fact that it was a bit sluggish. the flight was decent... just not what i put this stuff on for.

GSBBH 11313A (6 min 39 sec)

the next two were with no DR/Expo and was much more crisp in its response to inputs. even in a breeze, it really did well. the fact that i could fly it in any breeze at all was a bit of a shock, but i wont be flying in a breeze again.
i am very relieved to see this mod working after all the time spent sorting it out, and it works very well. very stable hover, return from pattern to hover with no significant tail dropping, very decent patterns, and excellent response... i am very pleased with the results and can now start getting comfortable with it and back to my usual manner of flying and get this going on my Stinger.

the last flight was the best as the breeze was not as bad as the other two...

GSBBH 11313B (6 min 55 sec)

GSBBH 11313C (6 min 38 sec)