So after completing the grip flip recently I decided to test some of my PowerFlite Stuff. Unfortuantly I am one of about 3 people that have ever had a problem with PowerFlite... The product is great but I recieved a defective part that we (PowerFlite and I) did not isolate until just now. (1/20/03) Problem was that my battery to the 10x was defective and read 8.3 volts which means that it is destroyed so I sent it back and had a new one shipped out to me. So no problem I have time but then when I plugged the charger into the 10x it was constantly saying that the 10x pack was fully charged... I ran the battery down to 11.6 volts where it should have easily been able to detect it low and it still read "fully charged." What was happening was there was an incorrect something-or-other in the charger to begin with and was taking power from the battery instead of giving it out. That is why the 10x pack was bad to begin with. So they sent me out a new charger 2nd day FedEx and I plugged in the 10x battery to the charger and it worked like a charm! ...however now since there was never a question about the rx side of the old charger being bad I plugged in my 2000mah rx pack that was reading 7.6 volts and the new charger should have started charging it. Guess what it said? "fully charged" "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh damn you!" I yelled at the charger and proceded to get on the phone with PowerFlite and talk to them yet again. What had happend is when I had the rx pack on the original charger it had somehow hurt my rx battery but could not be detected until now. Sometimes new batteries act a little odd on voltage so we just assumed that it would kick in when the voltage was aroud 7.6 volts. At that time it was around 8 volts but at 7.6 it still read, "Fully Charged." I kept my cool and told them what I thought about it and they said send it back and it will be checked. I hung up and went to the box where I began to pack it. Then I said to myself, '...what if something else is wrong?' I then found a much larger box and put every single PowerFlite thing I had into it and wrote a letter saying I would like to have EVERYTHING checked and double checked. Their customer sevice is outstanding and they are as upset as I am about this, seeing as it almost never happens. However if something comes back after the "check-up" and there is yet another problem I am just going to return it and buy Duralites. Now onto another problem I had and a secret I found... When I got the Rotortech blades from www.centuryheli.com one of them made a rattling noise inside. After talking on RunRyder about it for a while we all came to the conclusion that the weights inside the blades were loose... 'Oh goodie! I get to send something else back!' :( This is where found out the key (secret) to Centuryheli. If you read on Forums about particular store ratings from people you will find that most people don't like the customer service from Centuryheli. When I called them I got some heavily accented Chinese woman (I think Chinese) that I could barely understand at all. She did not know much about what I was talking about so I asked for "the boss" And I got him. I think his name is Don or Dave, something like that, he obviously knew what I was claiming and he charged me $90 for a new set of blades and when I shipped the old ones back he would drop the payment. Overall he seemed pretty nice and I ended up with a positive experiance and a set of really nice, new blades. The point is, always ask for him when you call and you should be fine. Beside the PowerFlite thing not being resolved and the defective blades everything else on the heli has gone together like clockwork. CCPM setup was a breeze with the 9202's and 10x. A few other mods that I did were the carbon fiber boom supports and carbon fiber tail rotor pushrod. When you make the tail pushrod you have to place it on the bottom of the star on the servo horn. It cannot be lined up directly with the tail ball but I am optomistic that it should preform just nicely. Here is a drawing of what I mean: Also I added the Carbon fiber boom supports mainly because if I spent an extra $15 on www.ronlund.com I could get free shipping. I figured that shipping was about $10 anyways I might as well spend the extra $5 and get some nice carbon boom supports with purple aluminium ends. They are infact a lot stiffer than the old ones and look much better. I can't wait to fly the heli but right now (1/24/03) it is about 0* out my window and there is another -10* that can be tacked on due to wind chill... |
I recieved the helicopter around Thanksgiving of 2002 from Heliproz.com. Having built a few helicopters before I figured I could have this heli up and flying in about a week or so with school and other things going on as well. ...this proved out wrong and to date it still has not flown... Not because the heli was hard to put together or anything but rather because of some defective parts from other suppliers and a lack of actual flying time. My heli's specs are as follows: |
- Kyosho Calbier 30 - Thunder Tiger .39 Engine - JR 10x Radio (1300mah PowerFlite Lithium-ion battery) - GY-401/9253 Gyro/Servo Combo - PowerFlite 2000mah Lithium-ion Battery - Rotortech Main & Tail Carbon Fiber Blades - GV-1 Governor (with optical sensor, not magnet) - (3) Futaba 9202 Servos - (1) Hitec HS-425bb Throttle Servo - JR 649 PCM 9 Channel Reciever - Quick UK Swashplate - Carbon Fiber Tail Pushrod, Boom Supports, and Servo Mount Support - DBC/Hayes Header Tank - Enya #3 Glow Plug - Century Torpedo Muffler - X-cell Flybar Paddles (3D) |
Kyosho Caliber 30 |
My setup complete with pictures |
Caliber 30 |
I began to assemble the heli the day that it came. Considering it is an ARF there is not much you can really do except for some initial setup and electronics. However, I had heard that some of the TT .39 engines were sent out of the factories with little bits of metal shavings in them that would easily score the piston wall. I took the engine apart and inspected it and found that mine had been spared the shredding and appeared to be in great shape. I quickly had the engine in the heli and the rest of the electronics came in soon afterwards. As far as I can see there are no malfunctions in the design process of the heli except for two. One is that it suffers from wobbles at low RPM and the other that the servo mount is very flexabile. To solve this I asked a friend in Florida to make me a Carbon Fiber mount to brace the frame. If you look in one of the top pictures you can see it there. I got that out of the way pretty quick but still there was this major problem with wobbles at low RPM. Most people have just kept the speed around 1800 RPM to get around it but there was no solution to fix it. Then one day on RunRyder Wayne Mann explained how he knew to change the delta 3 angle to get the max out of the heli's head. It was rather simple. All you do is flip the blade grips and some parts on the shaft to get the required effect. Now the swashplate moves down when you give positive collective and visa-versa. Evidentally he can get his heli down to 1200 RPM and no wobbles! Wayne Mann even claims that his Caliber 30 will hover better than his $3k Caliber 90! Here are some pictures of what "CK_" (The man who I bought the servo mount from) did and what I did as well. Quote from Wayne Mann on the Delta 3 Angle Mod: "If any of you guys that own Caliber 30s and want to flip the blade grips over, there are several things to keep in mind. The bell mixers that pivot on the flybar have an extra hole on the other side of the flybar. Do not try an use that hole. I do not understand why Kyosho extended the bell mixer to the other side of the flybar. You can not use that hole as it will reverse the cyclic inputs to the rotorblades. The swashplate will be controling the flybar paddles in the right direction, but the blades will be receiving backwards inputs. The metal bell mixers on the Caliber 90 are the same way. In one of the RC Technique issues they showed a picture of a Caliber 30 at the flying field in a test of the machine. They had a ball on each side of the flybar on the bell mixer in the photo. I don't know if they tried to fly the machine this way, but needless to say they would not have had many positive things to say about the flight performance with the controls fighting one another. I know someone who tried to fly the Caliber 90 like this. He called me and said this thing hovers like sh*t. Finally we figured out what was going on. Also the washout arm block has to be flipped over so that the bolts that hold the washout arms to the block are on the opposite side. The washout pins have to be pulled out, the hole drilled completely through the block with a drill bit just a hair smaller than the hole that the pins are in. This will allow you to press the pins through the block and out the other side so that you can flip the block. This is to provide clearance for the pushrod that goes from the swashplate to the bell mixer once the blade grips are flipped over. The bell mixers have to be pulled off the flybar, rotated around so that the drooped end of the mixer is now pointing away from the other side of the flybar and the drooped end of the mixer is still pointing down. The flybar control arms need to be flipped around so that they are controling the trailing edge of the paddles also. This is a push-pull arrangement do it really doesn't make any difference which side you are controling. The swashplate will be going down for positive pitch with this arrangement. You will basically have to go back through the initial set up procedures in order to get the pitches right. The pushrods going from the bell mixers to the pitch arm ball will have to be shortened also." Look at CKs picture to understand how the Bell Mixers should look and you're good to go. I thought the cyclic on the C30 was a bit slow with the stock head. With the flipped head, I am using the inner hole on the bell mixer to increase swash input (CKs picture shows the outer hole). I also have KSJ paddles (using the front hole). I have flown enough to know that the wobbles are gone. I have not done extensive flight tests, but the cyclics appear plenty reactive. To say that it's brisk here in AK would be an understatement. I don't think my neighbors would be thrilled if I started doing Kaoses (to test the cyclic rate) in my driveway while standing in my garage to keep warm |
So after completing the grip flip recently I decided to test some of my PowerFlite Stuff. Unfortuantly I am one of about 3 people that have ever had a problem with PowerFlite... The product is great but I recieved a defective part that we (PowerFlite and I) did not isolate until just now. (1/20/03) Problem was that my battery to the 10x was defective and read 8.3 volts which means that it is destroyed so I sent it back and had a new one shipped out to me. So no problem I have time but then when I plugged the charger into the 10x it was constantly saying that the 10x pack was fully charged... I ran the battery down to 11.6 volts where it should have easily been able to detect it low and it still read "fully charged." What was happening was there was an incorrect something-or-other in the charger to begin with and was taking power from the battery instead of giving it out. That is why the 10x pack was bad to begin with. So they sent me out a new charger 2nd day FedEx and I plugged in the 10x battery to the charger and it worked like a charm! ...however now since there was never a question about the rx side of the old charger being bad I plugged in my 2000mah rx pack that was reading 7.6 volts and the new charger should have started charging it. Guess what it said? "fully charged" "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh damn you!" I yelled at the charger and proceded to get on the phone with PowerFlite and talk to them yet again. What had happend is when I had the rx pack on the original charger it had somehow hurt my rx battery but could not be detected until now. Sometimes new batteries act a little odd on voltage so we just assumed that it would kick in when the voltage was aroud 7.6 volts. At that time it was around 8 volts but at 7.6 it still read, "Fully Charged." I kept my cool and told them what I thought about it and they said send it back and it will be checked. I hung up and went to the box where I began to pack it. Then I said to myself, '...what if something else is wrong?' I then found a much larger box and put every single PowerFlite thing I had into it and wrote a letter saying I would like to have EVERYTHING checked and double checked. Their customer sevice is outstanding and they are as upset as I am about this, seeing as it almost never happens. However if something comes back after the "check-up" and there is yet another problem I am just going to return it and buy Duralites. Now onto another problem I had and a secret I found... When I got the Rotortech blades from www.centuryheli.com one of them made a rattling noise inside. After talking on RunRyder about it for a while we all came to the conclusion that the weights inside the blades were loose... 'Oh goodie! I get to send something else back!' :( This is where found out the key (secret) to Centuryheli. If you read on Forums about particular store ratings from people you will find that most people don't like the customer service from Centuryheli. When I called them I got some heavily accented Chinese woman (I think Chinese) that I could barely understand at all. She did not know much about what I was talking about so I asked for "the boss" And I got him. I think his name is Don or Dave, something like that, he obviously knew what I was claiming and he charged me $90 for a new set of blades and when I shipped the old ones back he would drop the payment. Overall he seemed pretty nice and I ended up with a positive experiance and a set of really nice, new blades. The point is, always ask for him when you call and you should be fine. Beside the PowerFlite thing not being resolved and the defective blades everything else on the heli has gone together like clockwork. CCPM setup was a breeze with the 9202's and 10x. A few other mods that I did were the carbon fiber boom supports and carbon fiber tail rotor pushrod. When you make the tail pushrod you have to place it on the bottom of the star on the servo horn. It cannot be lined up directly with the tail ball but I am optomistic that it should preform just nicely. Here is a drawing of what I mean: Also I added the Carbon fiber boom supports mainly because if I spent an extra $15 on www.ronlund.com I could get free shipping. I figured that shipping was about $10 anyways I might as well spend the extra $5 and get some nice carbon boom supports with purple aluminium ends. They are infact a lot stiffer than the old ones and look much better. I can't wait to fly the heli but right now (1/24/03) it is about 0* out my window and there is another -10* that can be tacked on due to wind chill... |
