Finally loving my Mini Titan

[crabfu]

Well after over a month of tweaking, I am now LOVING my mini titan :)

I first got the mini titan because I had a surplus of electronics, and wanted to put it into another heli. I've got 2 trex 450se V2's already, so I figured it's time to find out what all of the hype is on the e325. At first I didn't like it, felt sloppy, could never get the blades to track perfectly with the stock blades or align carbon & woodies, tail often had a hard time keeping up, and I just didn't feel as connected to it as I do with the trex. I finally managed to crash it, and decided to go with metal head and tail from xmseller (offer accepted on ebay for $135 + shipping for both). Well after a bunch of testing different setups, finally got it where I am loving the feel of it.... at least as good as my trex, if not.... dare I say... better? :)

I am lazy.... one of the things that I do often, is looking though forums and copy exactly someone else's setup that they love. So figured it's my turn to share the setup that I am really digging. So here it is...

stock esc & motor

fp evo 25's

Align carbon blades (although align woodies did awesome as well)

metal head and tail from xmseller, washout arm ball links moved to outer hole, used all original stock ball links

hs65-hb's for cyclic

s9650 for tail

logitec 2100 gyro, mounted inside the frame. A bit hard to see, but only needed to set it once :)

align carbon tail control rod, with align ball links on one side (stock ball link is too small for 9650 servo horn). I was able to push the tail servo all the way forward, to get better center of gravity.

K&B tail blades (probably the biggest difference, tail had problems keeping up with the stock, or align batman tail blades)

Align plastic tail fin - had to modify the holes to mount to the metal tail case (the stock e325 tail fin also will not mount correctly to the metal tail)

Gorilla paddles with half weight (no weight felt a bit too twitchy for my taste)

Align 220mm flybar

RX - Spektrum AR6000

TX- DX7
collective +-10 degrees (at 11 degrees, it bogs the motor quite a bit)
cyclic 7 degrees
idle 1 @ 100 95 90 95 100, idle2 @ 95% flat - can't tell the difference at my level

With this setup, it is very stable, yet responsive. Flip rates are good without feeling too twitchy, ff feels great with just a slight tendency to want to pitch up. Very stable.... did I mention that already? Inverted hover just feels like a breeze. My only minor complaint is that the motor bogs fairly easily, and you have to be careful on the collective. I almost lost it a few times bogging it down to a point where tail was kicking out. Finally with 10 degrees collective instead of 11, it feels much better. It has quite a bit of lift at 10 degrees... I guess the blade grips makes it act more like 335mm blades. Disclaimer.... I am not a real 3D guy, just 2 & 1/2 D maybe, able to do ff, flips, rolls, loops, inverted hover, and a occasional tic toc here and there.

Anyway, overall I am really happy now with this setup, it really flies like it's on rails.

-Crabfu

[cmb2003svt]

crabfu,
Thats awesome to hear. I am basically a complete noob to flying. Moving from a CX i bought an Axe CP and I finally bought my titan after the unsuccessful attempts with the Axe CP. I am at the hover with some nose in stage. I wish i could fly more to advance more but such is life. I have flown nothing else in real life except for the Mini and i am thankful that it is stable. Once i crash i have Gorilla landing gear, Gorilla paddles, Micro Heli metal Flybar cage, Micro Heli mixing arms and Align paint stirrers to replace the broken bits. I use RF3.5 with the mini titan and have added paddle weight to # 10 to calm it down. I think / hope the Gorilla paddles with the whole weight installed will be the same as the sim and the stock paddles. Was the Align 220mm flybar a better flybar in regards to material or just a replacement? I believe the stock one is 220mm as well but i could be wrong. The reason i ask is that i have read a few mm "Calms" down a bird for noobs along with more paddle weight. Anyhow, glad to hear you like the mini and it's good to hear that when i do get better flying skills i won't be disappointed.

[crabfu]

Hey cmb,
To tell you the truth, after my crash, I replaced the flybar with the align 220mm because I had a bunch on hand at the time. I believe the stock mini titan was shorter but don't know for sure. I've had great sucess with the 220mm on my trexes, made it more stable, but also more responsive, which made no sense but it does. I've also tried align heavier paddles (8g) with the 220mm, but perffered gorilla with half weights (6G I believe).

More weight on the paddles does make it calmer, less input basically, but I don't like using too much, as it just feels sluggish. I use a bit of expo instead. If you feel the need to add more weight, may want to try adding a bit more expo first for a quick hover test. It's easier to change expo than to add/remove weights, flybars, paddles etc, so worth a try to see if it makes a difference for you. If you still want more weight, trex stock comes with weights that slides on the flybar, and you can move in and out to get the feel you need. But with gorilla full weights, I don't think you'd need more.

Overall the mini titan is just a stable beast, and a bit easier compared to trex I think to start on, so good choice. Mini titan feels a tad slower in forward flight than trex, less zippy across the sky, better for milder flying. The only thing that I think trex has over e325 is better parts availability and slightly lower price for spares. Luckily some parts are interchangeable :) I just replaced all of the stock ball links to aligns last night... took forever, but I feel much more comfy now, as the align ones are much bigger, and hard to pop off. Stock mini titan ball links scares me a little, how easy it is to pop off by hand.... although it never happened in flight, but I've only have about 40 flights on it so far, and probably only 10 flights that I've pushed it a bit.

Anyway cmb, practice on the sim is the best way to learn, at least it worked for me. Once you get over the hover stage, and start casually flying across the sky, I guarantee you that your smile will stretch ear to ear, and your pants will be brown :) Keep practicing, you'd be surprised how easy everything else becomes when you can hover in all orientations without thinking! Everything is built on foundations, so although hovering may seem challenging and not all that much fun, it is more important than it seems, to be able to hover in all orientations. I wished that I had worked on that more before moving onto ff and circuits, probably would have saved me a crash or two :)

-Crabfu

[Bunter]

Thanks for sharing that Crabfu. My tail also does not hold too well with rapid pitch changes and realising that the tail is affected by many factors (head speed, gyro, servo, linkage etc. etc) I had wondered about changing tail blades. So it was very interesting to see your comment about the K&B blades - so I've just ordered some!

Cheers

Bill

[crabfu]

yeah cool Bill.... the tail held ok most of the time before, but I often had a heck of a time trying to make fast right turns, feeling like it's not having enough torque to turn (but head speed doesn't sound bogged enough to do that), then suddenly it catches up and whips around in almost an uncontrollable fashion. I assumed it was a combination of many factors.... head speed, tail servo (Futaba 3154) , tail blades (stock and align), gyro, linkages etc. It was still doing that a bit after the xmseller metal tail, align carbon tube linkage, and switching to a s9650 tail servo.

Once I switched to K&B tail blades ( forgot to mention that I also used longer bolts & align washers & nylon bolts on the tail blade grips, a lazy version of the chinese tail weight mod) it did the trick. I had to lower gyro settings quite a bit on the tx, and now it holds solid, and no issues what so ever with whipping those fast right turns, and tail never kicks out in stationary flips (always did a bit before, even with gyro set to just about to wag). Of course I've also learned not to bog down the motor much better now, so that helps. But it surprised me how much the tail blades made a difference, or maybe it's that combined with the lazy chinese weight mod, but since it flew beautifully, I never bothered to try it without the longer bolts weight. It just made for a much more enjoyable flying experience now, not afraid that my rudder inputs will have no effect, then all of the sudden swing over so fast that it gives me a heart attack :) Anyway the K&B blades don't feel THAT much stiffer compared to other tail blades, but it sure performs beyond my expectations. Highly recommend them, especially if you're anything like me.... at my skill level, I can't afford to my heli do the unexpected and expect me to be able to adapt and recover :)

-Crabfu

[Bunter]

Nice...any chance of some pics of your lazy chinese tail mod please?

Bill

[crabfu]

Nice...any chance of some pics of your lazy chinese tail mod please?

Bill

Yeah I'll take some pics tonight when I get home. Again I've only tried out the K&B blades with the long bolts, should someday test out one at a time.... so not sure how much of a factor the weights really contributed to a better tail, but it sure didn't hurt :)

-Crabfu

[crabfu]

here ya go, lazyman's chinese weight mod.... just a jesus bolt, align washer, and a nylon nut on the other side. I took the time and did the chinese weight mod with the fireup's jig with my trex's correctly, but when I decided to try the k&b blades on the mini titan, I just quickly bolted it on in this fashion to test it out, and it worked really great with my setup, so I never bothered to change it. Again, I'm not sure if the improvement is mostly in the k&b tail blades or this, but no issues or complaints about my mt anymore.... now I have no excuses the next time I crash.... maybe I can blame it on the stickers on my canopy :)

-Crabfu

[Bunter]

Thanks Crabfu!

Cheers

Bill

[LITHIUMSTATIC]

Crabfu what size bolt and nuts for the tail weight mod?

Thanks

[Bunter]

Here is a pic of what I've just completed. It's a M2 bolt cut down with an M2 nut on the bolt head side and a M2 nyloc nut on the other side (threadlocked too). You add anything much deeper on the boom side because it can clash with the pitch slider control arm assembly.

I was expecting a dramatic reduction in how much force it took to move the pitch slider with the tail moving but was a bit disappointed, it didn't seem to make much difference.

Bill

[crabfu]

Hey Bill, sorry that to hear that the weight didn't make any difference.... did you try it with the K&B blades? Mine is holding perfectly with this setup, got more tail authority than I'd ever be able to use :) Someone else said the K&B blades didn't make much of a difference either..... for some reason, I saw a big improvement when I changed to the bolts weight and k&b blades.

And lithiumstatic.... yeah just a jesus bolt, standard one that Bill used. I had some that were long enough to secure a lock nut & washer without having to cut off the ends.

Anyway, I was able to sneak in a couple of packs this morning, before the storm came back again... boy it got windy, had a hard time keeping a inverted hover long enough for pics. A few more pics here http://flickr.com/photos/68422197@N00/sets/72157603638807878/detail/

-Crabfu