Maiden flight log for the 6s 450 stretch.

[Cap231ex]

I'm a little late to the party but here now.

I'm currently working on a stretched 450 I plan on installing in an Eurocopter EC-145 , the fuselage is junk it is from TFModels and I wouldn't recommend it as it has very poor fit and finish to it compared to my other Century Fun-key and Heliartise fuselages.
I mainly got it because it was on sell and to see if this would even work , I'm using a highly modified CopterX 4-blade head that will be spinning 425mm narrow scale CF blades and mCPX main blades on the tail.

I've been working on the fuselage trying to make something out of it and I just about have all the doors on it , still have the pilot door yet to install.
I have nothing else to do with it as I wait for my scale blades to arrive and a few other small parts.

Anyhow here are some pics if you're interested

[Luvmyhelis]

Originally Posted by desertstalker

Where are you putting the sats with all that CF everywhere?

One out on the boom structure. It is mounted on the 600 cf boom support. And the other is mounted right inside the CF skid braces.

Originally Posted by gmcallister

=] that is a huge swept area you have there Randy!

Well, this heli is gone! I tore the motor and esc out and sent it in a build I was doing for free for a good friend over in Bankok. But, not all is lost here!

Once the news came in that Scorpion Research division sent me out a few prototype 12s 450 motors I tore the heli up and started customizing the body.

Two full days now covered with carbonfibre and aluminum dust. One thing I can say, the two 1300ma 6s batts do fit under the carbonfibre canopy. And now it is neither a trex, nor a B400 in any form. It is fitted with an CC HV30 esc, and a ProBec. I of coarse already modded the esc with a new custom fabbed heat sync. I bought the esc last year for half price at HD as I was hoping this was going to happen one day.

I spent alot of time talking to Dan at GoBrushless but he really isn't interested in building custom motors due to how incredibly busy he already is. Also finding the right cans to do this with turned out to be nearly impossible. When Scorp said yes, I got pretty excited!

My brother who is in the research management end of Boeing, the black box division came by tonight. I was right in the middle of a test assembly and he walked in and was stunned. I will post up some new pics when I get all the parts rolling true. If anything is even off a thousandth, the mainshaft wont roll perfectly with a 3 bearing main support in the new widebody system.

Nothing like the complexity of doing a scale though Cap31, I would think?

[helihaven]

Originally Posted by Luvmyhelis

If anything is even off a thousandth, the mainshaft wont roll perfectly with a 3 bearing main support in the new widebody system.

When i make my parts...i *TRY* to get within .01mm (.0005") hehee...so yeah..i know exactly whatcha mean Randy...

[desertstalker]

Originally Posted by helihaven

When i make my parts...i *TRY* to get within .01mm (.0005") hehee...so yeah..i know exactly whatcha mean Randy...

Heh, I saw the thousandth and thought he was nuts, then realised it was inches and he wasnt going for micron level tolerances

[Cap231ex]

I finally got my blades I plan on using for this project and milled the root ( grip area ) down from 8mm to 5.5mm to fit my CopterX rigid head grips.

I've been running it through some test flights with a 2 lb. ballist weight zip tied to the bottom of the airframe to simulate the fuselage.

The problem I'm have is that the motor I'm using (a Z-power) is getting very hot (over 160* F) and cutting out.

I had a 11t pinion on it and was running the TC at 80% , I have now changed to a 10t pinion and have the TC at 88% to keep my HS the same 1880. I have yet to get a chance to test it and see if this helped or hurt , but if there is no change and if still gets hot and cuts out I will probably change to a Scorpion type motor like this one.
http://www.experiencerc.com/store/nd...tor-p-344.html

Here are a few pics and a short video , at the end of the video you can see the motor cuts out and I land the heli safely.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2YOMwBWdD4[/ame]

[Luvmyhelis]

Nicely done! Sounds like the pwm rate and or timing are off on the esc if it is getting that hot. Then again, that is alot of upper mass it is having to push around. Usually 6s calms down things and the electrics run cool. All my modded 3s helis ran hot.

[Cap231ex]

That was the first thing I checked was the timing because I too thought that but the timing on the ESC is set at auto and when I changed it things only got worst.

According to the data logger on the ESC it only has pulled 29amps for 3:38 minutes and the ESC has only gotten upto 110* F for 2:10 minutes.
So it doesn't seem like it should be cutting out.

However I did change to a 10t pinion and I got a 7:30 minute flight out of it with no cut out and the motor temp was down to 148*F compared to a 3:00 flight w/11t pinion and a temp of over 160*f.
So i may have hit on something here with the lower pinion size , I'll keep you in the loop and what I find out with fearther testing.

[Luvmyhelis]

Geez, 29amps? Wow, my newly maidened 6s heli is only pulling 5. And that is swinging 420s. I dont think my 600 will pull that much very often. Drop your pinion a size or two?

Man am I glad last month is over. 3 helis that went up in flames due to castle cremation issues with 3 different products. I was about ready to bag this hobby. Unless I win the lotto (which I would have to start playing) I probably will never recover. That sucked. I cannot wait till Skookum gets the glitch taken care of so I can start actual flight vibe logging again. I am dying to see what this heli is producing.

[georgi UK]

Originally Posted by Luvmyhelis

Man am I glad last month is over. 3 helis that went up in flames due to castle cremation issues with 3 different products. I was about ready to bag this hobby. Unless I win the lotto (which I would have to start playing) I probably will never recover. That sucked. I cannot wait till Skookum gets the glitch taken care of so I can start actual flight vibe logging again. I am dying to see what this heli is producing.

=] bad luck there bro, they say things happen in 3's, so lets hope you have nothing but the very best luck there is, in which case DO the lotto!!

[Cap231ex]

5amps spinning how many 420mm blades?

May I ask what motor and gear combo you are running on that machine and is it a T-rex or T-clone?

Yeah I have no CC ESC's anymore , I got rid of my last one after they were blaming their customers for the reason their HV ESC's were burning up.
That's not a company I want to be doing business with , besides HobbyWing makes some of the best and most reliable ESC's on the market in my honest oppinion. I've been running them on 5 of my 8 helis for years now , and they work great with the V-bar gov.

[Luvmyhelis]

It is only running two MsComposite 420mm blades on a custom made DFC head. I am currently running a factory stock 6s 2221-2010 Scorp, Ice50, and a Rhino hardened 9t pinion on a 144t Microheli delrin main. I do have a Yge (Yep HK) clone coming so I can actually use the Sk gov. The heli isn't a trex or clone. I custom built this new body myself. Although I did have an SeV2 totally customized I did side by side vibe logging with earlier. I robbed parts off it for this build. The two bearing main support it had was abysmal. As was every single factory part. My version consistantly knocked down 1/5 the vibes in every area even when identically modded.

I used a wider Kde aluminum body plate with custom cut 2mm carbonfibre plates so I could inside mount the Ice and also run a decent full coverage plate inside the back area for mounting the Sk720. Then hand cut the lower frame, and doubled up the upper Cnc heli B400 CF frame. Which I also carved out to allow the forward servo to be mounted up in the upper head area. This gave me a bulletproof super rigid upper head area. It also has 3 Helihaven 11mm custom bearing supports. Here is a link to the earlier pics. And a couple with the new setup. I did tear the head off and upper bearing support out today as the Trueblood dampeners gave me a severe head shake that nearly caused a crash. Full 3 to 4 inch skid movements it got so bad. But when I tore it apart I noticed the upper bearing cradle had stretched, and the ceramics that I bought from HD were too sloppy. Makes me wonder if they were even ceramics I had in the trex that I robbed to replace the destroyed ones? I also had to tighten up the delrin ball insert on my new swash as it was also too loose for my project.

I do not plan on rebuilding the trex since Helihaven is in process of offering new 480 custom frames that are simply brilliant. Plus I had to rob the MksDs95 servos out of it since all 4 of the ones I was using burned up friday due to a ProBec that flamed out midflight on me. Looks like I may have a bagful of custom parts I cannot use to sell here on the FS section dirt cheap.

The coaxial in the background is a custom brushless one I just built for a friend and completed late last night. (in my spare time, lollz).
https://www.helifreak.com/showthread...=432139&page=4

[Cap231ex]

Well after looking at the data logger on the ESC after swapping to the 10t pinion I found the max amps have dropped to 17amps.

That is hard to beleave from just a 1 tooth pinion difference but I guess it is correct sence I have no other way to check it out.

I have a friend of my sending me a Scorp 2221-10 3000Kv that I'll be swapping out so I hope that will fix this motor issue.

That is some machine you have made up there , I couldn't see myself going to that extent for a scale mechanics but I bet it is quite a great 3D machine.

Thanks for the info Luvmyhelis.

[Luvmyhelis]

No problem, and nice build you have going yourself. Any time a guys steps outside the box it shows a certain creativity and above average skill sets. Not speaking of myself here but I admire guys that build scalers. They are several cuts above what I am doing.

[Cap231ex]

Well installed the Scorpion 2221-10 and have performed several test flights with the added ballist weight of 2lbs to sim the fuselage and I proud to say everything is working great.

I have a few new 4000mah 40C 3s packs come and should be here in a day or so in which I plan on testing a couple more times in pod & boom mode and if everything checks out I will be moving on to installing the airframe in the fuselage.

That in its self should be big fun as the first order of business will be figuring out how to convert the 500 sized raised tail section to a 450-500 raised tail section.

Most likely it will be stepped down from a 500 size tail boom tube ( which is what it is now) to a 450 size tail boom to mount my 450 tail gearbox to.

This is just one of many problems that along the way I will need to figure out and over come as to the best of my knowledge this is the first time someone has atempted such a stupid thing like fitting a stretched 450 mechanics in a 500 size fuselage.

[Cap231ex]

Hey LMH I have a question for you on your stretched 450.

What HS are you running on it and does it calculate the same when you figure it on a HS calculator?

[Luvmyhelis]

Originally Posted by Cap231ex

Hey LMH I have a question for you on your stretched 450.

What HS are you running on it and does it calculate the same when you figure it on a HS calculator?

My Ice log and vibe log both tell me what I am flying and were accurate within 20 to 50rpm. I also have a digital headspeed tool coming. Used to be at 32 to 3600 but I "tamed" it down since all the changes and disasters. Now I dropped a low tooth Rhino into it and maxxed the HS at 2500 for now. Then reduced the pitch to 12/12. The reason being, I believe the proactive Sk gov will take up any of the previous lagging from the Ice Gov with lower headspeeds and quicker response. Plus I have something chewing me up and my hands and fingers recently lost a ton of speed, so I am no longer attempting any of the harder 3D stuff. But oh man was this thing nasty at 3600! That and 16/16 pitch range, plus the lightning quick servos and this heli rolled over on itself in a blur. No bragging, I feel anyone can do this stuff and I am certainly not special. But this made me a firm believer in quality products.

[Cap231ex]

Yeah I hear ya on quality products , that is why I've been testing this one of mine for more than 6 months.

I settled on an 11t pinion and 1440 for normal , 1530 for ideal up #1 , and 1620 for ideal up #2 all are governed and a flat TC.

I am getting about 8:00-8:30 minutes of flight time on it hauling around 2lbs. 8.5ozs to sim the fuselage weight , I have adult ADD so anything longer than that and I'd most likely start to get bord with it.

I'm starting to figure out how I want to mount the mechanics in the fuselage and sence it's never been done before I need to take my time and get it right the first time.

Once I have something more I post some pics for ya to check out.

[Luvmyhelis]

Well, out of the ashes as they say.

I cobbled together a new 6s/12s 450 out of what I had left in my parts drawers. It will be 6s for the next half of this week until the new Castle HV40 shows up in the mail. And with thier track record lately who knows how that will work out? My last one cooked the new prototype Scorp 12s motor. Then I had a couple other Castle equipped helis burn down and one more faceplant when I stripped a gear. I also have a brand new rewound 12 pole 12s Scorp motor waiting in the wings to test with the new esc. I packed it with 23 gauge high density copper wire and should have reduced the KV rating down to roughly 800 from the previous 1020. Oddly the Yep esc ran this motor well on 6s but the HV 40 wouldn't spin it. Even at 6s! What a pile!

I pulled the 540 out of my 600 since that project is still waiting for a Helihaven raised tail to complete it the way I want it to be in its final flying form. And really all I had to do is to install it and change a few rpm settings in the gov along with the pole/rpm formula and it was good to go. A while back our own local SK guru sent me one of his used Hyperion phase sensors, so it went into this heli. I simply soldered in a small bullet connector into one of the motor bullet leads and plugged it in.

The heli is a basic prepped $20 clone Sev2, nothing fancy except I straightened out the waffled Kde body plate that my last heli had left over from a pile of smoldering carbonfibre, and installed it. Then used a Tarot solid 2 bearing mainshaft guide with ceramics. Some leftover MH delrin mains, and a MH delrin tail drive assembly but modded with ceramics also. This insured both the main gears and tail drive assembly rotated true and concentrically.

The rear boom support is a cheapo Exi. And the boom itself is just cheap HK $4 12mm CF cut to length for the extended 572mxl belt I needed to run the HH raised tail. That tail was earlier mangled and rebuilt this week also in my (um) spare time between other builds. It was shipped over to Bankok and the heli it was on suffered a brown out. The results weren't pretty. Needless to say I have a full day just into the tail again and all the custom fab work needed to stuff new oversized flanged bearings into it after getting it straightened out. The four blade hub was also wacked, so I did my best to index it, installed Heimjoints china weights into the mix, and ceramic'd it also. Kbdd orange 59mm blades are riding in it.

Since this heli is a hodgepodge of parts nothing fit. So you can imagine the rest of the process. I also stripped the Dan @ Gobrushless hand wound 2221-2010 motor down, ceramic'd it, then found a new cheapo HK motor plate that was straight, and set it in place with a hardened Rhino 10t pinion and new shaft, .

Then since this heli will be flown solely over deep grass flying fields that rarely get mowed I opted to set in place some old used 600 skids and shortened tubes I had lying around. I set an old HK orange sat on one of the skid arms and shrink wrapped it in place after I velcroed it to keep it from moving around. I also did the same thing on the cheapo $3 set of CF boom supports from HK. So I have a sat up front and one in the back. They run into the Sk540 I mounted in the rear cavity at the back on simple 3M double sided sticky.

One of the things I detest about low mount motor align designs is the total lack of room in the body for electrical components, not to mention the crap roll rates the helis get due to the nasty low cog. Oh well, this is all I had to work with. So my new HK 45Yep (YGE clone) esc is mounted underneath on double sided sticky and velcroed down into place with the sink facing up. When I got this esc I was simply stunned at the high build quality. Nuff said there. I promptly tore it down and added in my own carved down heat sink in place and shrink wrapped it up. After a long run hard run today with this heli the esc wasn't even warm. Dead serious. Better yet, it tied right into the Sk540 gov like butter on a hot muffin. Nice!

I have a custom fabbed up DFC head that I run with my 420mm composite blades. But I am now out of those blades since my last crashes and such. So I pulled an old set of HK composite 360mm blades out of my drawer and an old custom carved on HK Rjx clone fbl head that I balanced and stuffed new Kbdd orange damps in. I don't like these damps in larger helis but for the 450s that I stretch these things rock. I hand cut these grips to handle 7.25mm blade roots but wont need all that here. But why let them sit unused? So here they are. Then I cut down a B400 shaft since it doesn't have that stupid dumb @ss align undercut area that weakens all their mainshafts and slid it into place at exactly the right height to match the center of the tail rotor.

This is a big deal because it totally eliminates RH skid dip!!!! None, nada, not a single deg of dip. And this holds true on every heli I have equipped with Helihavens raised tail systems. HH, this is for you bro...

AP, if you are seeing this the raised tail is headed your way again just as soon as I am sure it is flying perfectly. I already hogged out a Tarot boom holder to 16mm so I can run a 16mm boom on this heli. HH tells me he has that size of a raised tail getting ready for me to replace this with. Now that is awesome!


Next I installed a new Tarot swash I modded. I undercut all the servo ball arms so that I can get a full twist on the swash without binding against the servo links. Then custom fabbed up some 2.5mm stainless and installed it into the Quick UK delrin link ends I now am in love with. Delrin baby! It self lubes, doesn't bind and stays tight inspite of repeated removals. Then stays in shape after that. I will never fly without these again. I did these in orange in case I wreck again. Ever tried to find black links when you wreck in the grass?

Then I did the same thing with the swash to grip links but used polished 2.5mm rod here to look a little better and black ends since I ran low on the oranges. I also fabbed up a long double tubed cf rear servo link doing the same thing. Then installed the already balanced blades and the head was done. These 360s probably have 4 to 500 flights on them at 32 to 3600rpm and never missed a beat. Best $6 I ever spent. One has alot of balancing tape on it as the set is mismatched from some earlier wrecks. Again, it is what I had.

I checked over my last remaining set of MksDs95 servos and installed them. These have roughly 3000 flights on them and are still tight and smooth as a baby's behind that is covered with talcom. No kidding, they still feel like new and are all that is left of my last incredible 12s heli. My other set got burned up when my Castle ProBec spit flames and crashed the heli. Odd since it was only pulling 3amps?

So I ended up cutting down the forward battery tray and moving it into an 85deg angle to mount my dual 1300 6s packs. This way I can run them in parallel for 6s or series for 12s. The batteries are mismatched and probably have well over 300 flights on each one. My last new ones burned like the 4th of july and put on a spectacular smoke show. All I can say is it is good I got them out before they went off. They were taco'd pretty severely. Then I double stickied an old strip of male velcro in place over the top of the tray to hold the batts in place and snugged them down with a cheap $3 Turnigy battery strap. Good thing I had misgivings the day my last heli went down in a heap and left my new Carbonfibre canopy laying on my dresser that day. I decided to run a different one and it got munched badly. So the highlight of this build is I still have the very first 450 Carbonfibre canopy they offerred to the public. Yay!

Next I bound the new/used sats to the 540 and ran it though the wiz. Insanely easy since SL is not an option needing attention. Plugged in the used Hyperion sensor (again, Georgi ) and enabled the gov, then setup the TX and Norm plus 1 and 2 headspeed ranges. The gov runs in with the TX setup at Th 40 and the transition isn't even noticeable except for the rpm ramp. I ran the new Yep esc through its setup with the card a few times since setup is kind of confusing with two folding instruction panels that lay on top of each other. But it is identical down to a t to the YGE. And is rumored to be the exact same esc since YGE supposedly farms them out to china. For $23 this is simply the best 450 esc I have ever laid my hands on! Notice I still added a heat sync just for extra insurance though.

Spooled up the heli on my rotating upside down Lazy susan to test the gov and functions. All looked good so I then did the same with the heli strapped down fully bladed. That also looked good so out we went for its maiden. Dang smooth wicked fast heli is all I am going to say. And the Skookum gov? Stunning, simply bloody amazing and unlike any esc based gov I have ever used. Again, the Yep esc didn't even get warm, and I pushed it! I had the gov hitting the wall. Plus it was setup to run the 2221-2010 at the same high pwm settings where the Ice50 was getting up to 180deg! I may miss the data logging, but today? Nope.

I flew my maiden in todays winds which hit gusts up to 25mph and it was stable as an anvil. Tail hold was also as expected. Locked in like a cold steel vice. Skookum, you guys did it again!!!

I have to add, who needs SL when a heli is this locked in and easy to fly?