TRex 450 SE nV2 to 500E Makeover ...

[SimonV6]

Was doing some great high speed circuits, figure 8's when suddenly, while doing a low level pass the tail spun round and I hit the ground :(
my fault, I lost orientation and panicked....too low I guess :(

blades
flybar
flybar craddle
spindle
main shaft
main gear
Tail Boom
and body has a few holes knocked into it :(

need lots of epoxy and red/blue paint ;)

Simon

[SimonV6]

All fixed now but does anyone know what colour Red and Blue these have, there are a huge amount of different reds in the world lol....
Just needs a little touching up thats all ;) :)



Simon

[Snarf]

Here are some pics of my 500D. I was going to wrap the scale fuselage around my much loved 450SEV2 but my wife said "you CAN'T treat her like that!" so I bought an "S" with her blessing.

512975129851299

The body is a HeliArtist fuselage from Fastlad Performance here in the UK. They have them in stock too

http://www.fast-lad.co.uk/

All up weight is 1078g of which 182g is the 2200 mAh 25C LiPo. She is a bit tail heavy but I chose not to add extra weight up front. I replaced the standard Align head with one from RC-Tek which has an overslung flybar. The idea was to avoid the flybar hitting the fuselage at extremes of movement. It's better but it can still hit although I have no idea how extreme the maneuver would have to be - unlikely to be scale!

Blades are Align 325 pro woodies and headspeed is about 2400 drawing 17 amps in the hover. The rest of the electrics are Spektrum AR6200 RX, 3 x Hitec HS65MG on the swash, Futaba 401 gyro and a Robbe FS61 BB on the tail. Motor and ESC are stock Align.

I'm really pleased with how she flies. Landing has to be careful though because the CofG is quite high so she tips easily, especially if there is any wind (that huge body).

I have no vibration issues but took care to ensure no parts of the mechanics touch the body other than at the mounting points. I used foam to pack the boom at the back of the tail in place of the wood stars that came with the kit. I also mounted the fin direct on the tail gearbox using studs made from some spare links and carbon tube stand offs. Here is a picture of the tail.

51300

All in all an excellent addition to my hangar

[SimonV6]

Looks sweet mate :)



Simon

[Dale691]

Hi all, All your heli's look great. Just a couple of questions. Is the Align and the Heli artist the same fuselage? Do they both require the moving of the pitch servo? and do any of the Heli Artist fuselages have an easier build for a first scale?

Cheers

[BlackTitanium]

Hi all, All your heli's look great. Just a couple of questions. Is the Align and the Heli artist the same fuselage? Do they both require the moving of the pitch servo? and do any of the Heli Artist fuselages have an easier build for a first scale?

Cheers

The Align Hughes 500E's are manufactured by HeliArtist.
You do not have to move the Elevator servo, that mod is a user's option.

The Jet Ranger is the easiest HeliArtist fuselage to build, but currently, you have to remove screws to access the battery, it does not have magnets on the nose section..

[Dale691]

Thanks for that, Do you know what the build is like on the 109 or the blue airwolf?

[trexflyer02]

Just finished this up for my dad. Hope I'm not hijacking your thread too much. :)

[warpspeed]

Not at all. She looks great!
Except for that weird blue anodizing. (Not just yours, ALL the V1's including mine) The color doesn't look bad on the yellow versions like Snarf's, but on the red/blue or mil paint schemes it's just, well, wrong. I haven't looked at V1 parts in awhile but I wonder if they're available in other colors like they've done with the T600?
Of course it's crazy to replace perfectly good parts......Me thinks a little oven cleaner is in order-at least bare aluminum would look more realistic.

[trexflyer02]

Not at all. She looks great!
Except for that weird blue anodizing. (Not just yours, ALL the V1's including mine) The color doesn't look bad on the yellow versions like Snarf's, but on the red/blue or mil paint schemes it's just, well, wrong. I haven't looked at V1 parts in awhile but I wonder if they're available in other colors like they've done with the T600?
Of course it's crazy to replace perfectly good parts......Me thinks a little oven cleaner is in order-at least bare aluminum would look more realistic.

T-Rex 450 parts are available in gunmetal gray as well.

We're not going to do anything about it however ... looks good enough flying and it's "sport scale" anyways! :thumbup:

[ChasHeliCop]

......Me thinks a little oven cleaner is in order-at least bare aluminum would look more realistic.

I took a dremel and a brass wire brush to the tail and took all the anodizing off. Now it has a brushed aluminum look. I will see if I can snap a shot of it for you. Worked great, except the few times I slipped and hit my fingers.

[feefee1]

Hi people, i'm from Aus, great thread and forum and top blokes allways willing to share there ideas, i dont want to bore you but can someone please steer me in the right direction. i have only been flying helis for about 6 months so please bare with me as i do best to explain. i have a T rex se v2 with the stock motor and speed controller, i have installed it in the 500e, i hover for about 2 mins and then she just shuts down, all power, it gets so hot, please help, this is my gear, am i missing something
bl35x esc 430xl motor
12 tooth pinion and align wooden 325 blades
servos hs 65mg
gyro 401 and futaba tail servo 'mod done for installing servo'
tx is only a xp662 '3 point throttle pitch curves not 5 like most i have read
8 ch jr receiver
is any one using this tx and can help with pitch and throttle curves so i can try and get it to run cooler, i have added no extra weight except for a small scale light on front which balances my heli beautifully, i do have very light training gear on as a precaution when i am testing it, i have a heat sink on motor and esc mounted on side opposite main shaft, coolest spot,,,,,,,,,can pitch curves and throttle curves be so far out it is overheating?

[feefee1]

i posted that question twice by accident so i replaced it with this apology, thanks for any replies

[helichoper]

Sounds like your throttle curve is to low,you want the motor to be running at 100% efficiency and thats flat out or close to it,if not your motor and esc will get hot and as you have found the esc will reduce power to the heli adjust your throttle curves and even run 90-100%curves in idle up and im sure your temps will come down,if your head speed is to high when running these curves you will need a smaller pinion gear 11 or even 10 tooth hope this helps
Cheers
Grant.

[warpspeed]

Do you have any airflow at all over your electronics? If you've installed all the windows it would help to remove the two small top pieces. As thescrivs mentioned it will also help to drop a tooth on your pinion, as well as switching to 335 mains.
I know you said the training gear is 'light', but the weight of the fuse alone is already almost about as much weight as the little rex can handle. If you're not comfortable removing it you may want to consider flying without the fuse until you're ready-sure hate to see you trash such an expensive item!
Also check to make sure nothing's binding, in particular your pinion to main gear mesh, and belt tension.

[feefee1]

thanks for your replies fellas, i will change pinions to a 11 and make sure its not to tight on main gear when i put it on, although the other one is fairly loose to main gear i have on at the moment, i will take the training legs off also, i only had these on it for testing it, i was lucky i did and i was only 2 foot up or i wouldn't have handled it, i will cry if she over heats now fellas....i do have the trex 450xl as my practice heli and have just started flying figure 8's and small circuts but like the scale look so much better, i will test in next day or two, fingers crossed she dont overheat, thanks again for your replies

[PilotSmith]

...

[PilotSmith]

I started to put mine together tonight. Need to fiddle with the tail servo to figure out how to get it positioned right. Right now the rod is pushing against the fuselage. It looks much larger than I expected. Hope it still has enough power with the extra weight for fun flying. I plan to put a stop on the head so that if I do something crazy the flybar can't smack to fuselage. Don't think I can resist not doing some mild stuff like rolls and loops with it despite the body. I'll probably remove the blue anodized finish from the head and leave it silver. My tail is already the green/gray color that matches the military look. I have not decided if I will put my light kit back on or just keep it simple. The lights are 15 grams so not much extra weight but she has gained quite a bit of extra weight with that new body.

http://www.helifreak.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=55089&stc=1&d=1216199949

http://www.helifreak.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=55090&stc=1&d=1216199949

http://www.helifreak.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=55091&stc=1&d=1216199949

[PilotSmith]

Tip to casual flyers like me. Do not buy a dark green body! The extra size does not help you see it better to stay oriented. By now you can guess how my first flight went... :( I took her out in front of my house and was keeping her rather close. Was probably no more than 35 feet away when I finished banking I totally lost orientation on which way it was leaning. Next thing it smacks into the gutter right against the street and cement curb. That was one sick sound followed by some smoke and the smell of friend electrical components. :shock:

I could really feel the extra weight flying it. For a one heli guy, I think I will go back to my stock setup. If I had 2 helis I'd like to have a scale heli but I think I would miss the carefree more aggressive sport flying that I did with my stock setup if I only had one heli. Then again, I didn't get to the point of tuning this one for optimum performance. It could be that if I had reached that point that it would fly with more pep once set up right.

This body was not that bad to put together and I think it is a great value for the money. The hardest part was figuring out how to get my tail servo in without hitting anything. Thanks to ChasHeliCop I got that sorted out and the setup worked perfect. I didn't have any vibration issues with the tail either. I used 1/2 of a 2 piece servo mount plus the stock plastic Align servo mount to get the tail servo in. I have the Airtronics servo so my setup likely would not work with the Futaba servo as it was a freak coincidence how the mount fit in the Airtronics servo.

For now I will pull the guts out, hope that nothing too expensive fried, and put my stock 450 back together. The scale body has a few cracks that can be repaired. If I ever decide to use it again I will first repaint it with more visible colors. I stay pretty well oriented with my small white, neon lemon and blue canopy. Never thought with the much larger scale body that I would loose the orientation so easily. Lesson learned and will not make the same mistake again of going with a dark color. :arggg:

I posted photos below of the damage which from my brief exam during my walk of shame back to my garage included: wasted new main CF blades, bent linkages on the head, bent main shaft, feathering shaft, left skid rod, bent flybar, various cracks to fiberglass fuselage.

I enjoyed my very brief adventure into scale but I have a lot more flying and learning I need to do before doing this again.

[USNAviationjay]

ok well just got my N503MP 500D in.
it was previously owned so alot of the recommended mods are already done.
weights.. magnets.. and some tail linkage dremel work.
but it was on a B400 so the platforms are fully built up.. (and expoxied)
need to figure out how to separate the wood blocks down to the Trex level.

also kinda worried about getting the tail servo to fit right.

[ChasHeliCop]

Separate the wood blocks in the middle, cut them with a exacto then sand them down to correct height and epoxy back together. I might have some extra wood slats if you need a couple.

[USNAviationjay]

sigh I'm ready to give up already.. been working on it 6 hours.
burned up a brand new S3154 (kiss 40 bucks goodbye) tail servo I bought to avoid the problems with the larger tail servos like my 9257 didnt even get to spin it up and it burned out during trial fitting the fuse.

I cant for the life of me make a mount to work with this crap.

I cant figure out the wood blocks mounting system either.

I guess I'm not really cut out for this modeling crap.

[PilotSmith]

sigh I'm ready to give up already...

I cant for the life of me make a mount to work with this crap...

http://www.helifreak.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=55339&d=1216402343

Got the idea from ChasHeliCop and worked great for me. (The 2 full minutes until I smacked up my 500E agaist the curb...) Just mount it right under the boom. For my Airtronics servo the fit was great and the exit out the back was perfect too with no rubbing.

[PilotSmith]

Separate the wood blocks in the middle, cut them with a exacto then sand them down to correct height and epoxy back together. I might have some extra wood slats if you need a couple.

In my crash one of the blocks separated between the layers. Layer was not glued all that great. You might be able to pry with a blade between the layers and get one to pop apart. Then sand to desired level and re-glue.

[USNAviationjay]

my servo doesnt have mounts like that its a 9257 just the 4 standard holes..
I need a ready made or easy solution since i dont have drill presses or dremels or any of that crap.
thats why I bought the micro servro as Blacktitanium used it on his build and it doesnt require any strange mounts.

but it burned up during fitting it was just working too hard.