View Full Version : Excellent
Mike and I finished and flew our Intrepid EB's today and are very happy with it. We had to do a little sorting on them as they are a bit tail heavy if you use light batteries like Duralites, etc.
I think I am going to put a 4 or 6 Cell C size pack on the front with a regulator instead of the duralites so I can replace some of the lead 'bar' with something usefull :D
The machine feels very stable, we only got them up into a hover today but it was pretty smooth.
As soon as Mike started his engine with 2 pulls and no support equipment I was sold on the whole gasser concept.
v22chap
04-13-2005, 07:20 PM
with 2 pulls and no support equipment
Pretty cool huh !!! Wait till you get it all dialed in and start forward flight.... if you own any other birds,,,, they will soon just be setting :wink: :cool: :mrgreen:
Larry C
WillJames
04-13-2005, 07:52 PM
Larry is right. You are gonna LOVE the gas end of helis!! :)
Congratulations!!!
tapeworm321
04-13-2005, 08:16 PM
This is how I have my EB setup. It's 2 four cell 4500mah packs 1.4lbs. It seem very stable to me. It will hover hands off no problem. It's when I put my hands on I run into problems. :roll: :? :shock:
Well we've had mixed success so far, one of the heli's is flying OK at the moment and we're pretty happy with it.
The other heli suffered some MAJOR wobble on spool-down on Sunday (on Pavement) and we have to order some parts for it. Fortunately the V-Blades are still OK! Should be here Friday, gotta love next day air. Right now we're pretty nervous to spool either of them up on hard surfaces again.
We experimented with two setups. The one that is flying OK had the .015 shim between the head block and blade grip with, the one which had problems had the .015 and .008 so we could see the difference in feel between with different size shims.
We're not quite sure why it wobbled so bad but once we get it back together we are going to go through it with a fine tooth comb and straighten it out. We have thought about a combination of blade tracking and the tight head damping causing the problem. On grass this heli had a little shake on spool-up/down but on pavement it was nuts.
One other question I have is I noticed that some of the control arms have a very slight wobble to them even after redoing the lock nuts and the whole works. An example is one hiller mixer arm being solid, but the other one rocks a little bit(about .5 to 1 mm at the tip of the arm). I redid this arm 5 times the other night and just can't get it rock solid, I think there is a very slight machining tolerance issue here or perhaps a tolerance issue with a couple of bearings. I'm just curious if this is 'normal' and 'ok' or if I should be concerned about it. Both heli's have a couple control arms like this.
BTW we weighed in around 15.5 or 16 pounds(not a super accurate scale) is that normal?
This is what we did for ballast up front. We are going to melt these down again and move more of the mass up to the front of the radio tray and hopefully drop some more weight there.
tapeworm321
04-13-2005, 11:31 PM
I would say toss the lead and go for battery weight. You don't have to go crazy like me. I wanted mine to be very heavy-stable.
wolfdad
04-14-2005, 08:34 AM
Jon,
Purely out of curiosity, how much weight is up on the nose? One thing I found out...sorta the hard way (with batteries way out on the radio tray) was that the moment of that much weight that far out to the front gave me some problems with flexing of the radio tray and subsequent wear and tear on the forward tray mount points. Two things I did that have helped (can't say solved because I keep getting gooned from other sources), was reversing the fuel bottle so the nose is in toward the engine, then mounting my two battery packs cross-wise, just forward of the fuel bottle. The EB radio tray helped, in that it has a few more mounting slots to facilitate gear mounting. Just some thoughts.
Doc
What's the difference between battery packs and lead? I appreciate the responses but I don't understand what the difference is. The duralites work fine for the battery pack and we don't need huge batteries, other than that it's all dead weight, batteries or not.
The lead is about a pound or pound and ahalf max.
keith shaw
04-14-2005, 05:27 PM
Sar, regarding the .5 to 1mm movement in one of the hiller arms, may I ask if you are using any bonding compound between the outer race of the bearing and the ID of the arm? I use a drop of Green Loctite(not sure of #), but it is the shaft retaining formula, on the outer race of the bearings before I install them into the arms. I am very careful in doing this, using a flat toothpick with a single drop on it to insure I don't get any into the bearing itself. This has really helped me rid much unwanted movement in the arms/bearings.
Keith
WillJames
04-14-2005, 05:48 PM
SWEET Tip Keith!! I am doing it now on my Observer!! Thank you!! :smokin:
keith shaw
04-14-2005, 05:52 PM
Will! :wink:
Keith :thumbup:
Keith, I used a tiny bit of red on the ones which seemed loose during assembly. I'll try to get some green and redo them tomorrow evening and see if that makes a difference. I didn't realize they had a formula for this kind of thing :)
WillJames
04-14-2005, 09:38 PM
My Observer is back ready to ROCK! +12.5 to -5 in Hold, +10 - -5 in Normal. Finally spent the time to figure it out. When you are used to MA everything 90 and easy, the Bergen Push-Pull system is definitely kinda intimidating. You just have to use your eyes and EARS to hear when things are right. Once I worked on it in my camper instead of my shop where a bunch of rack mounted computers with loud fans are, you can immediately hear when servos are binding.
I will be test flying Sat at the Baaaaahhhhhh
Nice! Looking forward to seeing some pics and vids of it!
manzer74
04-15-2005, 01:49 PM
regarding the push pull system, i assume if you have the links a little to tight it will make the system a little harder to move?? maybe i made mine a little too snug to keep out any play.
keith shaw
04-15-2005, 05:25 PM
Since I don't speak well in terms of geometry, all I can say is pay close attention to angles specified in the manual. You'll notice the mounting points for the balls on the servo wheels all fall just forward of center. With one link disconnected from the ball on the servo wheel, check maximum travel in both directions to verify there is no difference between the loose end and open ball at either extreme. If any difference is found, adjustments need to be made to keep the travel of both linkages the same. Hope this helps, 'cause this "difference in travel" is the source of most binding. :shock:
WillJames
04-17-2005, 04:02 PM
I had the 2 threaded rods coming out of my elevator yoke assembly were bent ever so slightly causing the swash to rotate enough to cause a bunch of binding but not really noticable to the eye. Once I found this out, it was a lot easier.
I had a quick question if someone knows, I noticed some people are running the carb without an aircleaner, do you have to shorten the carb bolts to do this?
WillJames
04-17-2005, 07:14 PM
You may need to. You could also substitute the Bergen Velocity stack to make up the difference in thickness. OR... just cut them off.
cbergen
04-17-2005, 07:25 PM
If you want to do away with the aircleaner, I definitely recommend using the velocity stack. It helps to straighten out the airflow going in to the carb.
WillJames
04-17-2005, 07:38 PM
The Bergen Velocity Stack definitely runs great and looks great on my TRM 231 and 260.
What sort of mixture changes do you experience going to the velocity stack?
cbergen
04-18-2005, 01:38 AM
Need to go a touch richer with the needles, as there is less air restriction with the venturi.
OK Thanks of rthe information!