Maiden Flights today

[Teej]

Well, the mish-mash took to the air today. :D

As it stands I have:

Gohbee complete metal head

Raptor frames

Ergo boom with the locator notches _slightly_ elongated as the belt was too tight.

Vario landing gear

Hacker 12L
Phoenix HV85
10s5000 Prodigy packs

I was just testing with 600mm blades (cheaper in case the maiden wasn't successful...) - will be getting 700s mounted

Initial flight I didn't have the camera on of course.

2nd battery run I had the camera on in video mode (no servos hooked up on the mount yet). Will post a video snippet later. Looked good on the little LCD playback.


I do wish this combo put out some more RPM though. I got about 1450 headspeed. Either that or I sure hope there is a _drastic_ increase in lift with the 700s. Should be with 30% more rotor disc...

I _really_ wouldn't want to auto this weight on 600s. :O

[Teej]

A clip from my first video flight.

Note: It's just a coupla boring takeoffs and some hovering...the 'copter was way underpowered with 600 blades. From the onboard video it doesn't look bad, but when you punch it from a hover and it moves upward grudgingly...you know it's not happy. :)

http://www.magsairsoft.com/Movie_0002.wmv

Teej

[MLaBoyteaux]

It's addicting.......

How much does it weigh?

I'm running 660 semi's and mine weighs 13lb 10oz. Are you running the R30 gearing or the R50?

[Teej]

I haven't weighed it but I'm guessing it's one of the heavier ones. The gohbee metal head isn't light, I'm not running a BEC so I have a 2400mah nimh receiver pack...and I've got 3 strips of particle board (temporary - looking for G10 or CF) for battery and receiver mounting.

I'm running the R50 gearing - 85/10. A guy opti-tached it at ~ 1450 in a hover at 100%.

[MLaBoyteaux]

With a 12S and R50 gearing and a 10S pack, shouldn't your headspeed be quite a bit higher?

I'm a rookie when it comes to electric, but if you calculate it out, a 12S motor has a Kv of 492. With an estimated pack voltage of 37 volts and the R50 gearing, shouldn't the 100% headspeed be closer to 2100 rpm?

[Teej]

I went with the 12L, not the 12S, since that was the recommendation of Gary & DJ for running the big stretcher (I'm running the uncut Ergo boom with clearance for 710s)

The 12L is a 355kv lump - 37v puts it at the 12L's 13,000 rpm "limit" (per Hacker). On 8.5 gearing that gives 1514rpm theoretical....so 1450 is right there.

My motor temp was hitting approx 150 after several liftoffs and hovers...and that was in ~ 70 degree ambient.

I'm not sure how conservative the motor voltage ratings are. I noticed the pamphlet from Hacker listed 8s as the max power for the 12L so I'm already exceeding that...but it seems like another cell (11s) might be the magic number. That should hit 1700 even with 700 blades.

[MLaBoyteaux]

Doooh! My mistake, you're correct! :oops:

I found a long running thread on rc universe where Gary was testing the 12L motor. He mentioned oiling the large bearing in the motor several times. I noticed after a couple of flights my 16S had slung a lot of silicone grease out around the top of the motor. So Gary suggests oiling this bearing early on.

[Teej]

OK, why does search not seem to work jack squat for me over there?

Got a link to the thread? I'm sure hoping I don't need to remove the motor to oil it. :P

[dreslism]

Teej,

I think you will need to remove the motor to oil it. You need to get into the slots at the top of the motor (black part of motor at top) (where the shaft enters it, where the motor leads come out at).

I don't think you can do it without droping the motor. You don't want to oil from the bottom and have it drip on the windings.

I'll tell you what though, I had the A50-12s. Had an easy 50 flights on it. A week ago I oiled it for the first time, that same week, it let the smoke out of itself. Literally, it started puffing out smoke in flight, when I landed, the can was over 200 degrees.

I bought a new A50-16s from hacker because I could not wait for them to repair it.

I sent my old smoked one in to hacker, we'll see what they say, they should be getting to it this week.

I'm hoping I can just get a credit for the motor I bought from them as I don't need another one. I also heard that some of the early A50-12s had bearing issues, and they replaced the bearings in later ones. I got one of the early ones, so hopefully that was it just giving up with a bad bearing since it was one of the early ones.

Needless to say, I'm now gun shy of oiling the motor.

If you guys do oil yours, let me know what you use.

Thanks

[GGoodrum]

First of all, forget the limits that Hacker lists. That's for continuous use in an airplane.

Here's something wlse you could do to get the headspeed up, if you need it. See if you can get a 2s-5000 Prodigy pack. Lose the Rx pack and hook a UBEC to this 2-cell pack, and then wire this 2s-5000 pack in series with your 10s setup (make sure the 2-cell is the first in line, so that the ground on the UBEC is the negative side on the newly combined 12s-5000 setup.

A 12s setup will get the h/s up to about 1800 with the 85T/10T gearing, or about 1600 with the R30's 86T/9T combo. Durations will go up as well.

As for oiling the big bearing, a few drops of TriFlo usually does the trick, right in between where the rotating can meets the non-rotating base. I think Scott just had a bad motor, with a short in the windings. It happens. Early on I was putting oil everywhere and it looked like I just dropped it in a bucket of the stuff. :) It worked fine, and is still going strong, I might add.

-- Gary

[Teej]

The 700s have made a _huge_ difference. But since they weren't tracking very well, I'm not yet confident that they're enough. I've got to re-do some of the setup process (due to using the recommended-for-3D throws, I'm using ~ 1/3 of the servo travel - 33 to 66%) and my 700s aren't tracking quite right.

I plan to resume flight testing by Thursday (perhaps sooner) and maybe be shooting some practice stills this weekend. Then I can evaluate whether I need to kick it up to 1800.

However, I did 2 little punch climbs and there was, as expected, drastically more lift than with 600s.

(I'm swinging 700mm MAH right now)

T

I also need to get some good static pictures of the camera ship, too. :D