15s Ion-x on the way!

[TomC]

How much tesion should it be on the belt. Should I be able to press it in 2, 5 or 10mm?

/N

Nic,

Not using belts yet, just the 20:1 double staged gear setup for now. Maybe check with Ion-x2 build threads on this one.

Cheers,
Tom C

[TomC]

Mates,

Today I maidened this 15s beast and it was breath-taking!

Just to recap, this was with an Ion-x1, PowerJazz esc, Neu 1521/2Y (788kv), 3x 5s1p Evo20 3700 packs, and 20:1 ratio (50t secondary gear).

I spooled up the motor to 100% gov mode and got a nice smooth run-up 2330 rpm hs. I dialed down this to 1950 hs and flew it around a bit.

With +/-11 deg pitch, the performance was unlike anything I've flown before; raw, constant power!

When I went into a flip it felt like I was pulled through it. Sort of like if you were on the end of a few ice- skaters, whipping you through a turn. Really hard to describe, I've never felt anything like it before.

On the one flight I put on my Wattusp meter I recorded 2.8 kw and 50 amps peak. All this power and my 50t secodary gear did not show any white dust wear.

Pretty early days, and I will try a couple more gears (52t and 54t).

Cheers,
Tom C

[misskimo]

hey , YEH! now you talking about the power I been getting with the HV. right now the only think I got in HV form is my trex on 12s , no wear on the gears on that thing either , good pulling power for 6 min. the 32-3 just pulls and pulls on it , the weak link on this machine is my oneway , about 40 to 50 flights I will need to change it . yeh on the watts up , on my 12s Razor with the 32-3 , I pulled about 2200 watts , but the reaction was what I felt was GREAT
what you got on there " 7s and a 8s pack? or 3 5s packs ? make sure the batteries are all matched before plugging them up ,

[TomC]

Tony,

I'm using 3x 5s Evo 3700 packs, matched with age/formula and +/- 0.01v. Man, this 15s Ion-x rocks! Except for a 50 sized heli, 12s is just not enough imop.

Cheers,
Tom C

[TomC]

Just a quick 15s update Mates.

One thing I forgot to mention earlier is the Neu 1521/2y (788kv) motor is the same size as my old 1521/1.5 (1050kv) but the motor mount holes on ALL current Neu 1521 series motors are now 4mm (instead of 3mm), but with the same centre-line dimensions. No big deal, I just had to drill out the motor mount holes to 4mm and find 4x 4mm bolts, 6mm long (thread length). If you are using the upgraded Ion-x1 5mm motor mount plate you will need them to be ~8mm long. Just make sure that the mounting bolts do not go into the motor casing more than 5mm or they will rub on the windings and damage the motor.

Also, I changed the 50t secondary and put in a 54t. This should bring the zero pitch unloaded hs down to ~ 2150, which is a lot more sane than the original 2330 I got with the 50t, and should provide enough headroom for me to target ~1900-1950 gov'd hs.

I think that the 1521/2Y motor I got is a little higher kv than advertised (788kv), probably more like ~825kv. It also could be that on 15s, the voltage drop is much lower, in proportion to 10s. Anyway, my initial expected hs was higher, so I just geared it down. Maybe I'll find that this does not give me enough headroom so it that case I'll just try a 52t one.

I'm having a lot of fun trying to get the PowerJazz govenor to work consistantly. That is, I want to be able to select my targetted hs at startup and not have to spoolup at 100% throttle, then idle-switch it down. Thanks to Mel's PM coaching I tried it again today, with my newly installed 54t secondary gear.

As advised, I set my normal flight mode to 0-50-100 and normal pitch to ~ -0.5 deg (48% pitch). I used the PJ esc prog card and reset throttle to fixed (not APM) and set my low/high throttle endpoints. I should also mention that my throttle ATV's are +/- 110%. I usually find that +/-100% throttle ATV's are a good place to start with any new esc.

I started the heli up in normal mode and slowly advanced the throttle and tached the hs. I got 1850 at 78%, 1950 at 85% and a max 2140 at 90%. So I thought, man, this is too easy, and got ready to shut the heli down to re-program my Tx idle-ups. Then, DISASTER happened!!!

Instead of just slowly dropping the throttle down on normal mode, my instincts took over and I simply flicked the throttle hold on (my normal shutdown proceedure). Well, given the blades were going 2140 hs and I was at 90% throttle ( or ~ +11 deg throttle hold pitch), even unpowered, the heli went up ~ 30 feet like it was shot out of a cannon! My last-ditch auto attempt softened the final blow a bit, but not enough to prevent a pretty good boom-wack.

Total damage was; one 700mm zigsaw main blade, CF boom, torque tube, one boom support rod, and one set of fut9252 servo gears. Not too bad, if you say it fast enough (I'm practicing this for telling my wife later).

Fortunately I bought a used, bare-bones Ion-x (very cheap) earlier this year for spares. Also, I had a set of servo gears and a spare set of main blades. So, within 2 hours of getting this poor heli home, it's re-built, batteries re-charged, and it's ready to go again!

I was even thinking about taking it out for a quick late afternoon test fly but since I was still a bit pissed off with myself I thought I'd better wait until tomorrow.

Anyway, I'll try it again tomorrow with a better check-list. At least I've got some good P.Jazz % throttle numbers to play with!

Cheers,
Tom C

[LITHIUMSTATIC]

TomC I've enjoyed reading this thread. Thanks!!

[TomC]

Thanks Jeremy, I hope I enjoy writting it more tomorrow Mate!

Cheers,
Tom C

[TomC]

G'day Mates,

A rather uneventful day today compared to yesterday, thank goodness!

Only thing not right was the weather. It was blowing a gail here today, 25 knots with gusts up to 35 knots. Made for lots fun trying to maiden my repaired bird, track blades, reset gyro, and tack/adjust PJazz gov settings.

Anyway, all done and the heli flys like new. Also got the gov mode finally working properly (thanks Mel) so now I can startup in any head speed I want to.

I tried a few hs's and settled on ~1900 rpm. The heli just felt good at that hs. Went through 3x 15s packs and now they are charging away. Sure wish someone would come out with a 15s charger/balancer. I'm charging/balancing 2x5s packs together on one charger and the other 5s pack on another. Bit of a pain, but at least I've got 4 chargers so it's not too bad. So far the voltage of the single charged cell seems to match the other very well (+/- 0.01-0.02v).

The 54t gear seems to be a good choice. This gear was brand new and after 3 flights there was zero wear and NO white dust. Pretty early days but maybe I'm not going to need Ion-x2 belts after all.

Hopefully the wind will die down a bit tomorrow and I'll start throwing it around a bit more.

Cheers,
Tom C

[Chachin]

Good to hear you got the PJ working properly Tom since I should be ordering mine in a week or two and I was a little worried about your experiences on spool-up. At least I have the programming card here with me.

I've had the same thing happen to me once with my Eco-8. I was testing rpm settings with a "fixed pitch" when I instinctively hit throttle hold to turn it off just to see my little Eco shoot straight up in the air and bounce back down :(. Surprisingly it had no damage but yeah I almost kicked myself.

Man so 15S is giving you less gear wear huh. No white dust is a very good sign of longevity :D. I'm still a bit undecided on the 6S batteries I will be ordering for my X2. I'm torn between the 6S 3850 V2 and the 4500's. I think the 4500's will provide more power due to higher amp rating (larger capacity) even though they are a bit heavier.

I am also following this thread closely.

Chachin..

[Mr. Ben]

Tom,
So, what do you do to make the Power Jazz work properly?

Ben

[TomC]

Chachin,

No white dust so far, but I really have not thrown it around much yet. I may still need to go to X2 belts in the end, time will tell.

On 12s, I'd probably favour the larger 4500 cells. They should provide a little more pop and longer duration. Also, you might want to think about making a rear mounting plate for your PJazz so you can get it's extra weight behind the main shaft. This should help the nose-heavy 12s CG problem of the X2 a little bit. Main thing is, if you mount it forward, like where your hacker esc is now, the extra ~+160g (220g PJ vs 60g hacker) is going to make this CG problem worse.

Ben,

Pretty easy, just use the prog card to set fixed throttle and high/lo endpoints. I also set the brake on to my lo settings. I have the brake disabled anyway and thought this might be needed to complete the fixed endpoint calibration, but I'm not really sure it's necessary.

While you can then do a 0-50-100 straight-line normal throttle curve and flat-line -0.5 deg pitich curve then slowly ramp it up and note the rpm at throttle points along the way. These can be used as a rough guide for what you'll need to set your idle-up's to.

If I was going to do this all over again, after setting it up with the prog card, I'd forget this ramp up proceedure. I'd set flat throttle curves for my Idle-up 2 to 90%, Idle 1 to 60% and idle 0 (normal) to 50%, all with full pitch curves (+/- 11 deg in my case).

I'd the startup the heli in idle 0 (~50% throttle) at mid stick (zero pitch) and let the heli spoolup until it stablises and tack the hs. This should be a lot lower hs than you want. Then flick it into idle 1 (~60%) and note this (higher) hs.

If this is still a bit low, hit throttle hold and spool down, but do not unplug/turn off the esc. Reset your tx idle 0 to 65% and idle 1 to 70% and repeat this process. It does not take long to hone into your target hs doing this. I got 1850 at 62% and 1950 at 70%. My max at 90% was 2150, so unless you are sure your gearing is ok and that the heli will not spoolup too high (+2200) I'd avoid flicking into idle2 for now. Just reset this later to another target hs.

Hope this helps Ben.

Cheers,
Tom C

[Mr. Ben]

Hi Tom,
I'm enjoying this thread. Most of the postings are about the little 600's, seems they are by far the most popular.
So, you think your problem with the PJ was the end points were not set correctly? Like you said the instructions should be used for scratch paper, for all the good they do. I start a little differently than you. After I turn my Tx on, I hit hold and then arm the ESC. I then go to ID-1, mid stick, then turn hold off. It spools up nice, and I wait for the rpm's to stabilize before I lift off. I use about 5 to 6 sec delay( in the Tx) when switching from ID-1 to ID-2.

Ben

[TomC]

Thanks Ben,

Yes there are lots of 600 posts (and even more 450-500 ones) and while I really enjoy my 10s Trex600, I get a little tired of hearing from guys telling me that they are running a 6s setup, think it's HV and are impossible to convince that higher cell counts (10-12s for 600's imop) are the way to go.

I'm glad you figured out a way to get your target hs's. You are right about the PJ and prog card instructions, they are just awful. In my case, setting the endpoints helped but it still required a bit of trial and error to get my final, stable hs's. Anyway, got them now so I'm pretty happy.

I got 3x 7 minute runs in today, at 1850-1950 hs's (I still have not decided which one I like best, probably 1900 so far). The most my 3x5s Evo20 3700 packs took out was 2300 mahr so it looks like my estimated 7-8 min runtime should work out about right. Esc temps were cool to touch and the batteries were barely warm (body temp). My neu 1521/2y motor was 165 deg f without a PC fan blowing on it and 150 deg f with it so I think that the fan is worthwhile and I'll continue to use it.

The only 15s problem I now have is trying to measure things properly. Most onboard meters, including my Watt's Up meter have an upper voltage limit of 60v so are really only good to 14s. Many only go to 50v so are barely good to 12s.

I did not think that this was going to be a problem with my 60v one since usually there is a little room for error and I was only going to be at 62.9v at most with freshly charged packs. But, this does not seem to be the case. Right now, my WU meter is reading about 0.7 volts below actual 5s pack voltages (compared to a proper high$ hand-held meter) so it seems that by going to slightly higher than spec voltage, the WU meter has recalibrated itself. This is only ~3% error but it makes me wonder how this might effect the other readings.

From the few runs I did with the WU meter, the results looked reasonable; 45-50 amps peak and 2.5-2.8 watts peak. Also, the battery usage (mahr) was pretty close to what the charger put back in.

Right now I cannot seem to find an onboard monitoring system that will handle 15s properly. I think I could use an EagleTree system hooked up to a rx battery and use an optional wire clamp to measure amps. Also it could be used to then measure hs as well. But, I would not be able to get watts, volts, and flight battery usage.

If anyone has some bright ideas, please let me know. In the meantime, I'll just do it the old fashion way and monitor the things I can; tacked hs's, temps and battery usage put back by the charger. Oh yes, and overall flight performance as well!

Also, still no secondary gear wear. The new 54t gear still looks like new and I can still even see the black magic marker line I painted on one tooth that I used to help do a tooth count (although MA have never sent the wrong gear, I still check).

It seems like Tony's theory that HV systems are not only more powerful, they also provide a more constant power that is actually easier on your components, is proving to be the case.

Anyway, so far so good Mates. 15s rules (until someone comes out with a 20s esc anyway)!

Cheers,
Tom C

[Mr. Ben]

Tom,
The eagle-Tree pro can be up graded to handle 70 volts. The first thing I do after flying is download the data to see whats happening. It's a great tool.

Ben

[TomC]

Ben,

I did not know that a 70v option was available. I'l look into it for sure! Many thanks.

Cheers,
Tom C

[dcbinkowski]

Can I ask you something about what hapenned? I don't understand it. Why would your helicopter shoot up in the air when you hit throttle hold?

[TomC]

Can I ask you something about what hapenned? I don't understand it. Why would your helicopter shoot up in the air when you hit throttle hold?

You are kidding? You want to make me suffer again, trying to explain it to you???

OK, just this once!

I was using a straight line 0-50-100 normal throttle curve together with a flatline normal pitch curve = 48%, or ~ neg 0.5 deg. The purpose of this was to tack my head speed and coorelate this to % Throttle setting so I could calibrate my PowerJazz esc govenor settings.

My throttle hold pitch curve is 0-50-100, which is equal to -12deg - 0 deg - +12 deg.

So, I got a max hs of just under 2200 rpm at 90% throttle. Then, instead of just staying in normal mode and pulling the throttle down to 0%, which is what I should have done, I flicked the Throttle Hold switch which immediately put 90% TH pitch, or about +11 deg on each blade. The 700mm blades had enough inertia in them, spinning at ~2200 rpm to give it a pretty good climb rate.

Ok, have you got it now? Good, cause I won't be explaining it ever again.

But, please feel free to try this yourself if you are not convinced. Just don't try it in your garage! Just kidding, of course. Please to not try this at home kids!!!

Cheers,

Tom C

[TomC]

Just a very quick (I promise!) 15s update mates.

I'm now using a 56t secondary gear. This gives me a 100% gov mode hs of ~2030-2080 rom, depending on which generation of Evo 3700 packs I'm using. Evo 25 packs give the the highest, Evo20 new formula packs give the lowest, and my old formula Evo20's and Evolite's give something inbetween.

My gov'd hs @ ~80% gov is 1920-1960 rpm (again depending on the packs used.

I'm slowly sneaking up on the pitch/cyclic since I do not have any on-board monitoring equipment that can handle 63v. The new Eagletree 70v system should be out mid Nov and I plan to buy one.

So far this 15s heli is performing very well. The pulling power using 11 deg pitch is pretty amazing and this does not drop down over the course of 7 min flights. Also, there is no gear wear apparent, after ~15 flights. All temp are fine.

So, all I can really say is, so far so good!

Cheers,

Tom C

[DebianDog]

Video and tic-tocs please! :)

[TomC]

Video and tic-tocs please! :)

Dog,

Once I'm 100% happy with my setup I'll get a local 3d hotshot to put it through it's paces and video it. One thing I can tell you is that mine will never be as jerky-scary as Bobby Watt's +/- 17 deg pitch setup. I would never go above +/- 12 deg pitch myself since I pay for all my bits!

Also, have a 55t on order and want to try this as well.

Cheers,

Tom C

[TomC]

Just a quick 15s update Mates;

Not a very productive 15s day today. On one flight, after about 2 minutes into it, I noticed my headspeed drop quite a bit. I quickly landed and found that one of my old formula 5s1p Evo20 packs had puffed (2 cells, one middle and one outer cell on the same pack). I'll send this pack back to our local FP supplier and see what he can do for me. A similar thing happened to me last month with my 10s SS Ion-x. I asked him if he would send me a new Evo25 pack at a 50% discount and he actually sent me one for free. I hope I'm as lucky this time!

I had a couple more flights and everything was going really well and I also started to push the runtimes to ~7.5 minutes @1950 hs. The main thing I noticed was that the neu 1521/2Y motor temps got up to 185 deg f, which is a bit hot for me. I also started to see a bit of white dust from the 56t secondary gear. About 5 minutes into the next flight I heard the tell-tail sound of gears stripping (many DS users will know what this sounds like). I hit throttle hold and autoed it in ok. Sure enough, there were not very many pointy bits left on the 56t secondary gear!

Previously, I had been running 1900 hs with a 54t gear and all seemed pretty good, although I had not really pushed the heli hard for +7 min before. I just got a new 55t gear from our local X-cell supplier (thanks Glenn) so I might try this, and drop the hs back down to ~1900 again. I also have a new 58t gear in stock and I might try this but it would mean that I would have to govern it down to ~1800-1850 hs. This might be a little easier on the Neu motor, but governing it down more with the 55t (and hence less volts to it) might also be easier on it (and the geartrain) as well.

While I believe that the 15s is easier on gears, the higher motor temps (and hence pinion temps) are not. At this point, I'm not really sure what the best 15s way forward is.

Man, I knew I should have waited for someone smarter to do this first!

Cheers,

Tom C

[TomC]

Another, not very productive, 15s update;

I changed the stripped gear for a new 55t one and tried it again a couple of days ago. This time the PowerJazz would not complete the spool-up. It would go for 2-3 seconds and then stop. I reprogramed the esc, switched battery packs, but nothing seemed to help.

I finally got it to spool-up by going to a 0-50-100 normal throttle curve and slowly advanced the throttle. This seemed to fix the problem since the next startup in Idle-up was fine. After about 3 minutes I started to get a high pitched beeping noise, which I assumed was coming from the Esc. So I thought, o-boy, now my PowerJazz esc is stuffed.

I checked all my wiring and connectors and tried it again today. I had one failed spool-up but the next one was ok. The beeping noise I thought I heard ysterday sounded more like a very high pitched whining noise and the frequency seemed to increase with headspeed increases. So, I thought, maybe it's a motor bearing or maybe a main shaft bearing.

I just took the motor off my heli and sure enough, stuffed motor bearings, and shaft end-play that was not there before. So, one new Neu 1521/2y with ~15 flights will be sent back to Steve Neu to repair.

I'll test out the PowerJazz on my 10s SS Ion-x later this week, but I'm sure it's fine.

Looks like I'm out of the 15s business for a month or so, but I'll be back!

Cheers,

Tom C

[DebianDog]

I think with out the belt drive the gears just may be too hard on the motor. :dontknow That is a lot of torque with no "give"

[TomC]

I think with out the belt drive the gears just may be too hard on the motor. :dontknow That is a lot of torque with no "give"


You might be right Dawg. Once I get the motor back and ratio's sorted out, I think I'll order the X2 upgrade and try belts.

Cheers,

Tom C

[DebianDog]

I watched a lot of MA's pro pilots tear up a lot of gears when they tried moving to bigger packs and motors with both the one and 2 stage kits. The new X2 has (2) main gears if I remember correctly ;)