The New Ion-X2 Preview

[carey shurley]

you can check out a preview of the new belt drive Ion-X2 Here (http://www.miniatureaircraftusa.com/helicopterkits/new_model/kit_preview.asp)

[gosha]

Site mentions that tail is Tube Driven...

[OICU812]

They mean tourqe tube drive, and that is just great. Getting excited, bring it on! :smokin:

[misskimo]

gosha torque tube for the tail, belt is on the motor going to the secondary pully , then gear teeth on out to the main gear , reason, endless amount of gearing , like 6 to 1 all the way to 23 to 1 , anywhere in there

[bob00]

Looking forward to it man - want that battery tray ;).

- R

[TomC]

Tony,

That's great, but at 21-23:1, which most of us Neu 1521/1.5f guys on 12s will want to go, this means that with the current 90/15 = 6:1 ratio on top, the bottom belt ratio is going to be ~3.5-3.8:1. This seems a lot higher than the max bottom 2.5:1 belt ratio recommended by Chris (ex-MA) for low maintenance in his excellent Razor Power Systems report.

Edit; This report is pretty hard to find on MA's WebPages. Last time I saw it I could view and print it, but not save it to file. Some have had to save it to file, then read it. I guess it depends on your Adobe version and settings. Anyway it was at;

http://www.miniatureaircraftusa.com/Support/Instructions/xcell_razor_600e_power_systems_guide_current.pdf

To get below a 2.5:1 bottom belt ratio would require going to a ~100/10t top grear. This is only going to transfer the problem to lots of main gear wear imop.

Imop there is nothing wrong with the current 2 stage Ion set-up that a good quality, perhaps thicker, harder (maybe even steel) CNC secondary gear could not have handled, esp with a proper cnc metal motor mount. Even Mikado and Century have both figured out that a cnc metal motor mount was a good idea! It's not only stronger, but it acts as a bit of a heat sink as well.

The new CC HV escs have an option to give a very slow spool-up an low/gentle throttle response which will help reduce gear wear as well.

As far as bigger battery packs go, a simpler solution would be a wider Ion canopy and use longer front canopy spacers. I really do not like the one-sided Ionx-2 bat pack location. Sure it raises the CG a little, but it does not help the lateral CG and makes long, higher capacity packs unusable. I don't see any nitro heli's mounting their fuel tanks up that high (which could be done with regulated fuel pumps).

The new Razor looks great except it really should have had a torque tube (TT) drive to begin with. I've only seen one Razor and there is lots of vetical belt slippage imop.

Maybe a better Ion-v2 upgrade option would have been to widen and lengthen the Razor frames to accomodate larger bat packs, or raised them to allow for another pack on top. A TT drive and a longer, better looking canopy would be nice as well.

I really do not know what MA is thinking right now. Maybe they have it right, but right now, I kind of do not think so.

Cheers,

Tom C

[ducatiderrick]

Yall talk as if the ION-X was never a torque tube ...

[TomC]

Yall talk as if the ION-X was never a torque tube ...

No, just the Razor, and it's stretched prototype have belt driven tails. The Ion, like all other curent Xcell kits, always has had a torque tube tail.

Cheers,

Tom C

[misskimo]

yeh! Tom , yeh I can see all that too. whats hard is , what will the newer lipos be like in a few years, the version 1 Ion was designed around the older cell packs , changing the exsiting Ion for the new batteries with out redesigning the wheel , is all they can do , well , as far as the high RPM neu motors , Ill let yall worry about that , Im staying with the lower high torque motors , I get about twce the life out of the actro bearing that the 50000 rpms yall want to turn, gearings easy , torques great , and its all I need. plenty of power

[skywalkertje]

Did the Ion X2 fly at B-Ham? If so can we expect some nice video footage...

[Clintstone]

There were 2 conversion proto-types and 2 production kits which flew. There were various power setups in each as we are testing which gear rations and battery combinations will work for each pilot. I think there are videos coming and I think there is even a video of my IonX 2 bailing out of an auto nice and smooth even with soft start on a CC HV 110. The heli flies great .