Nexgens Fusion 50 BeastX build review

[nexgen]

Hi folks, I had the pleasure of putting together a Fusion 50 for my friend Dan, and decided to do another build thread for it. What follows is more of a review of sorts rather than a how-to on building the heli, many others have already covered some of those ins and outs on this heli so I will only touch on some common things as we go along. I broke it up into sections and discuss some of the things I liked about the build and my experiences while going through it. I like doing things like this so join me as we take a look at the Outrage Fusion 50 build from start to finish.

[nexgen]

Ep1 Whats in the Box

Here is a quick whats in the box video

[nexgen]

Ep2 Main Frame



Here we discuss the frame assembly, and component placement. I have read some accounts of this frameset being a little tough to work with regarding component placement, but we'll see how that goes. Im confident that I will be able to find suitable locations for all the electronics and also hide the wiring as best as I can.

[nexgen]

Ep3 Head Assembly



Here we discuss building the flybarrless headblock. This being the largest heli I have built to date, I was impressed with how robust the spindle shaft is on this heli. At 8mm it is the same diameter as the main shaft on my Gaui X5. Having three locations for the jesus bolt is in my opinion a great thing, I really like that a builder can set the height to his/her liking right out of the box. The grip arms are very sturdy and in typical Outrage fasion are adjustable right out of the box. I chose to go with the outer most holes on the arms to retain as much control resolution as possible. Another unique thing about this head setup is that the swashplate grip balls are oriented so the link ends are in line rather than 90º offset. The swash allows for both 120º and 140º eCCPM mixing, however since this will be flybarrless, there will not be as great an effect on servo to grip interactions using 120º so that is where I have decided to start. At some point I may play around with setting up for 140º layout as the BeastX supports this but at this point im not concerned about it. all in all the stock head turned out to be a very stout component in the build, I have plenty of confidence that it will hold up to the most demanding of maneuvers.



Exploded View


Building the Head




Complete

[nexgen]

Ep4 Tail Assembly




Setting up the tail assembly was fairly straightforward. All of the parts were neatly arranged, and easy to assemble. I did find that the tail box itself did not have any loctite, so went over all the screws and added as needed. installing the pitch slider resulted in a slop free setup, and all the parts mated very well. I did remove the tail grips to check for grease in the thrust bearings. The outer grip bearings were stuck on the tail hub so took some working to get the grips off. I did need to grease the thrust bearings here as well, and once reassembled there was no lateral play on the hub and smooth action on the grips. once fully assembled, I lubed the shaft and slider bushing with some triflow, and the action is smooth to both ends. The design of the bellcrank makes for no binding at either extreme and the arcing motion seems fairly linear. Having the pitch slider setup with over/under pins also makes for even distribution of side loads on the slider helping there to be an almost frictionless setup in that regard. The Bellcrank is very robust and should take whatever abuse I can throw at it. Being that the whole tail unit is removable it is very easy to service. Also lining up the tailbox with the rest of the heli is breeze with the tail removed. The pushrod guides allow for smooth motion on the tail pushrod and do not bind. At first I wasn't sure what to expect from the Z bend in the pushrod but once installed it works great and I have had no issues with it. initially I had some trouble dialing in the tail to rate mode hover, but once I screwed the front ball link all the way down it made it easy for me to do the 1 and 2 turn adjustments on the rear link to get the heli to sit still in a hover. All in all the tail assembly was a fun component to build.

[nexgen]

Ep5 Electronics Installation

Electronics installation is as follows:

Scorpion 4025-550 motor
CC ICE2 HV80 esc
Spektrum AR7100R (because thats what we had) using regulated 5.2v at the tail, and Direct 2S Lipo to everything else
BeastX V3.0.8 I went direct to V3.0 and then when v3.0.8 came out, I upgraded to that with no other changes needed.
HP-DH20FTD x3 for Cyclic, running direct 2S Lipo
JR 8900G for tail, running regulated 5.2v from reciever

[nexgen]

BeastX

The electronics installation went fairly well, I did have to spend some time deciding where I was going to mount the BeastX, RX, and flight pack, as I knew I wanted the ESC on the top of the electronics mount. I have seen other builds with the BeastX mounted on the side and with it mounted in the gyro tray. In the end I settled on mounting it in the gyro tray, with the dials facing forward and the pin outs toward the rear as I figured this would make for a clean install and also offer some damage protection should the unfortunate occur. The BeastX dials are oriented as such that I can insert a small flat tip hobby screwdriver down the wiring port on the top electronics mount and it will reach to all 3 dials fairly easily. also there is access to the sys port at the rear for binding and future fw upgrades and software configuration changes. I used a strip of the 3M 411 tape for mounting and also to tape all the servo leads together once connected to the MB, this stuff has 1001 uses not the least of which is excellent vibration dampening. As with all my BeastX builds I got the servo wires routed and marked appropriately using what I like to call the "TAPE" method. This is where you mark and connect the servos to the BeastX in the following order, it works every time on every eCCPM bird I have built to date and makes it easy to remember what servo goes where, just "tape om" and you are good to go. See the pictures below as well.

Tail = ch4 | Aileron = ch3 | Pitch = ch2 | Elevator = ch1

[nexgen]

Receiver

The receiver is mounted on the steep front mount and strapped down with velcro. The pinouts for the receiver point down allowing the wires to immediately enter the frame and are bundled and wrapped under the gyro tray so they are secure and vibration isolated. The tail servo had a fairly short lead on it from when it was installed in Dan's Bergin, so I made up an extension that also doubled as a splitter as well. I routed it so that in the rear of the heli there is a port available to plug in any tail servo, which makes servicing the tail electronics a breeze. Up front that extension has two ends on it, one houses the pinouts for power, that goes to the recievers 5.2v tail output to power up the servos motor. The other lead is purely signal and gets piped to the BeastX unit, it is the T in TAPE described before. The Satellite reciever also had a longer lead that came with it, but I was able to route that along with the tail servo lead from the rear to the front of the heli. I chose to mount the reciever inside the frames at the rear so that the antenna that does the active reception is in the open air, and is perpendicular to the parent antenna on the main RX. This should offer good damage protection as well as good signal diversity. Also in the unfortunate event that a satellite rx needs to be changed out, this modular approach to wiring like the tail servo makes that easy to do as well.

[nexgen]

SERVOS

The Servo installation is fairly straightforward. I like the way that Outrage incorporated metal inserts for the servo screws. These mounts allow for different height servo cases to be used as the mounts can be adjusted inside the frame. Also they give an aluminum brace to the mount point for added rigidity and wear resistance. I chose to install the rubber grommets on this build as well as I appreciate the added vibration dampening this affords the servos, by all rights they could be installed without them if need be. Setting up the horns, I ended up using a 32mm ball to ball distance on the cyclic servos, and 12mm ball distance on the tail servo. This allowed for plenty of resolution for BeastX setup steps J, K, and L for cyclic and for step E on tail. Because of the case and horn shoulder thickness I opted to install the cyclic balls on the inside of the servo horns which from looking at other installs i find is fairly common. I kinda like the look this way but it does making adjustments and replacing worn links a little more fiddly. using the supplied bellcrank locks makes lining up the servo horns, bellcrank, and swash very easy to do. I was able to set the whole thing up by eye and be fairly accurate only requiring minimal adjustment after the fact. Here are some pictures of the install.

[nexgen]

ESC

For the Speed Controller, I mounted it in the intended ESC location, so that the 3 motor wires would rest in the channels in the plastic electronics mount up top near the motor. the motor wires then form an "S" curve under the mount between the frame sides and just above the servos. removing a few screws on the electronics mount makes it easy to "pop the hood" and gain access to the motor wires if need be. for the battery and signal connections, I chose to wire the power in a purpose built series configuration, this esc is not going to be runnning on any other configuration than two 6s saddlebags to form 12s anyway so doing it this way makes it permanenet and there are less connections, and failure points. the connection is fairly short on the esc side, with the EC5's resting about midway down the frame on either side. I did leave the battery leads a little long, but it just makes for better ease of use when moving packs on and off the bird, and also with charging multiples getting the batteries all connected. Dan can shorten them later if he would like to. The esc install ends up being nice and clean wiothout too much extra wire or wrap laying around, and having it up high also makes for a little better cooling as the downwash enters the top of the canopy. Many of you have seen the hot pad joke I posted earlier about this esc, but all kidding aside, the esc is performing quite nicely. I have not had any over temp issues yet, it comes down at ambient temp and has no trouble feeding power to the motor. this ESC motor combination is working out to be a nice powerful combination for this bird and I am impressed.

[nexgen]

Ep6 Final Thoughts




I had alot of fun building this helicopter. Everythign went together fairly smoothly, and the manual made it pretty easy to follow without too much second guessing. There were a couple spots where I found myself thumbing back and forth to make sure I was putting everything together the way it was supposed to be, but it was still an easy read. I like the stance of the helicopter, and the shape of the canopy, it is long and sleek, making the bird seem to want to be in motion even sitting still. The head setup is great, and having the option to lower the headbloc is a plus for those that like a lower disc. Everything is purpose built for stability and rigidity, and there is a relatively low parts count for a bird this size. in the air it has an aggressive prescence, being a .50 class heli it is quite stable andtracks very well, but also is very agile around the cyclic. The drivetrain is versitale enough to allow for 6 to 12 cell setups by swapping the motor and pinion, as well as allowing for a few different blade length options as well. I would say that Outrage did a great job with the Fusion 50 and i hope to some day have one of my own in my fleet.

[nexgen]

Thanks for taking the time to read my build thread, and feel free to check out the other ones I have done here and on my blog.

[kydoan]

Great job , thks for sharing.

[Slyster]

Nice work from the state of Minnesota nexgen!

NOTE to Fusion 50 owners... and I did hear it mentioned... all 6 (main/tail/TT) gears are now available in the new and improved black verions.. so do not use any white gears. Yes this is a great heli! I have 115 flight on it so far.. and I just installed the new Outrage motor and can't wait to try it out tomorrow.

[dankreed]

Very nice job Rob.. I cant wait to give that Heli a try.. I am excited to experience the power of the that 12S 600 sized machine.

And as always.. you did a fantastic job on the build thread..

You ROCK

[Spindle]

nexgen where did ur friend get the optipower packs? Also how do u like them so far? BTW great thread will be very helpful when I get a fusion

[ericcolon]

awesome review. right on time for my build. thanks!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[nexgen]

Originally Posted by Spindle

nexgen where did ur friend get the optipower packs? Also how do u like them so far? BTW great thread will be very helpful when I get a fusion

The OptiPower packs we are reviewing in conjunction with the folks at OptiFuel in the UK. They are not currently available in the US market but OptiFuel is looking to make them available in the states shortly. They are currently available at FastLad and other European stores, and for the US will be competitively priced near the price point of the Volts or other comparable packs. You can check out the "Some new packs Im testing (flight report and vid)" for some more detailed info on performance. I am really liking them so far and previous testing shows this brand holding strong after over a hundred hard competition level 3D flights from sponsored pilots across the pond. Stay tuned for more info about them.

[ericcolon]

I was going over the manual and it says to put "strong threadlock" on the spindle shaft bolt. Is that the case? Anywhere else in the head that requires red threadlock?

Also, how good are those hyperion servos in comparison to the align 610s, etc?

[BaconRaygun]

Very nice nexgen! Love the pictures and write-up... gonna check out the videos after work.

160 flights and loving it!