Impatient Newbie shoulda, coulda, woulda

[TIMMYTIME]

First and foremost this is my very first post. I have been reading all of your posts and just want to say thanks for sharing your knowledge and experiences.
Anyway here is the long story short,
So my wife buys me Blade 400 for X-Mas. Having some RC plane experience with no more than 3 ch, I stare at it for 2 weeks telling myself i will purchase sim and log many hours before I raise Blade to the sky. WRONG!!!
I justified trying it out by installing lightweight fiberglass pole 18 inches long with a golf ball size wiffle ball on each end and zip tied to the skid.
Here is how it went, fired it up and managed to hoover maybe 12 inches off ground after few adjustments. As suggested in Manual, I decide to raise to three feet and move around a little to get familiar. So I give it a little stick and she raises a little faster than expected to about 6 feet and I instinctively respond by backing off and she touches ground at slight angle. I may have had those zip ties to tight cuz one broke off when Blade touched ground. Main Rotor blade and Flybar paddles strike training pole and/or ground. Blades stay intact but one loses outer skin and both Flybar paddles slightly bent.
One thing I wish i had done was to have been better mentally prepared for a crash. I did not hit the throttle hold immediately.
Assessment of the damage will require some feedback from you guys who know all the stuff i wish i knew. Let me give you the scenario. Front servo and top servo of the two stacked both have gear stripped. With motor disconnected and transmitter turned on, upon connecting battery front servo motor kicks on noisier than you know what and the other damaged servo does also intermitently. I can get them both to stop by moving swashplate manually. I have not checked for further damage as #1- I'm not entirely sure what to look for and #2- It still makes me sick to my stomach to see the damage and try to swallow the result of my own stupidity.
Where do I want to go from here? If I want to continue to fly heli's, I need to obviously get one that is good for beginner. I realize that the DX6i is a good transmitter that i could definately utilize with my planes of past and future. I have thought about selling the Blade 400 as is -vs- repairing it and saving it for the day i am ready but i think i first need to have a complete assessment of the damage. With that said, I certainly would appreciate your feedback and/or assistance. Thanks, Tim

[o2begrn]

i just got my blade today in the mail from READY HELI great price and shipping,,,well i got as far as to open the box and started to read the books,,my wife asked if i was going to fly it and i told her "nope im waiting for my training gear..i was temped to lift off the ground but after reading your post i shall wait.......meanwhile i will just fly my sim at least there i just have to hit a reset button to repair my heli.....good luck dont give up get a sim to practice....

[LockMD]

Timmy,

I strongly recommend an FP heli, like the Honey Bee, it is very cheap, somewhat easy to fly and it can take a beating and when things do break its very cheap to fix.

I also STRONGLY recommend Radds School: http://www.dream-models.com/eco/flying-index.html I pretty much followed it to the letter except I kept my training gear on.

I started with the CX2, went to the CP Pro, (sunk ALOT of money in it) so I backed up to the Honey Bee FP, and now I also have the B400. The 400 is my cadilac, I am pretty cautious with it. Had it for almost a month now and no crashes YET but I pretty much just hover it no higher then 10 feet and just do slight movements all tail in.

Good Luck and keep us posted with your progess.

[carlo_the_wonder_frog]

First and foremost this is my very first post. I have been reading all of your posts and just want to say thanks for sharing your knowledge and experiences.
Anyway here is the long story short,
So my wife buys me Blade 400 for X-Mas. Having some RC plane experience with no more than 3 ch, I stare at it for 2 weeks telling myself i will purchase sim and log many hours before I raise Blade to the sky. WRONG!!!
I justified trying it out by installing lightweight fiberglass pole 18 inches long with a golf ball size wiffle ball on each end and zip tied to the skid.
Here is how it went, fired it up and managed to hoover maybe 12 inches off ground after few adjustments. As suggested in Manual, I decide to raise to three feet and move around a little to get familiar. So I give it a little stick and she raises a little faster than expected to about 6 feet and I instinctively respond by backing off and she touches ground at slight angle. I may have had those zip ties to tight cuz one broke off when Blade touched ground. Main Rotor blade and Flybar paddles strike training pole and/or ground. Blades stay intact but one loses outer skin and both Flybar paddles slightly bent.
One thing I wish i had done was to have been better mentally prepared for a crash. I did not hit the throttle hold immediately.
Assessment of the damage will require some feedback from you guys who know all the stuff i wish i knew. Let me give you the scenario. Front servo and top servo of the two stacked both have gear stripped. With motor disconnected and transmitter turned on, upon connecting battery front servo motor kicks on noisier than you know what and the other damaged servo does also intermitently. I can get them both to stop by moving swashplate manually. I have not checked for further damage as #1- I'm not entirely sure what to look for and #2- It still makes me sick to my stomach to see the damage and try to swallow the result of my own stupidity.
Where do I want to go from here? If I want to continue to fly heli's, I need to obviously get one that is good for beginner. I realize that the DX6i is a good transmitter that i could definately utilize with my planes of past and future. I have thought about selling the Blade 400 as is -vs- repairing it and saving it for the day i am ready but i think i first need to have a complete assessment of the damage. With that said, I certainly would appreciate your feedback and/or assistance. Thanks, Tim


Very common problem with the servos stripping gears out on a crash, you can buy gear sets and replace the gears, OR you can buy some Hitec HS65MG servos, they fit in the same locations , but have metal gears that are very difficult to strip. also you can use JR DS285MG metal geared servos. Each servo will run about $30-$40. Well worth the investment. New flybar will be needed and also a new set of blades. You will probably only replace the servos once with the MG ones, flybar and blades should cost less than $20 total. You probably also bent either the main shaft or the feathering shaft, my money is on a slightly bent feathering shaft. You can check this by taking the blades out and 1 blade grip off, turn the feathering shaft and if the 1 remaining blade grip oscillates or moves up and down then the shaft is bent and must be replaced. Feathering shafts are also really cheap. If it weren't for the weak servo gears you would be looking at an easy and cheap fix to get back flying.

[TIMMYTIME]

I think i am gonna go with Hitec. What is all the motor noise i discribed? I dont know if that is expected with a stripped servo or if I damaged the ESC.

[TIMMYTIME]

I think i am gonna go with Hitec. What is all the motor noise i discribed? I dont know if that is expected with a stripped servo or if I damaged the ESC.

[sokal]

my stock tail servo made a buzz and eventually if froze on me i was told the eflite servos should be silent my ds285 and 3400g make a buzz noise carlo told me that its normal for those because they update thier position at a very fast rate

my suggestion go with good servos all the way around and burn the eflite servos
mine found a home on my cp pro seems to do well on that platform

[carlo_the_wonder_frog]

Foamie planks are good homes for the e-flite servos, or lightweight parkfliers too. Work ok on the small 1/18 scale cars for steering. they work ok as long as they aren't relegated to precision duties, like on a heli!

[sokal]

i second that.........

[BKF]

What you did is pretty much what I did when I got mine, except I had no RC plane experience, and I figured my reflexes were fast enough that I wouldn't need training gear to start...

Haha... riiiiight.

Tipped mine over on it's side, stripped out a servo (which made a horrible whining noise as you describe). I swapped the gears out and all was well.

I then leveled the swashplate (after doing some reading). Then I proceeded to make some training gear using 12" 3/8" dowels, a small 1" block drilled out to accept the dowels in the middle, and some 3" styrofoam balls on the ends.

With that I got to see just how bad I was without doing damage (well... TOO much damage...). Went through a couple tail rotors, some main blades and another set of gears in the same servo. On my 3rd or 4th trip to the hobby place, the guy asked me how it was flying. When I couldn't answer, he says "you do know how to fly a heli, right?". I told him... "uhhh... kinda". He said "get a sim". Another customer standing next to me chimes in, and also tells me to get a sim.... Saying he wished he bought it sooner to avoid all the damage he caused to his bird.

I didn't want to spend the money, but did it anyways, thinking it a small price to pay in the big picture. Took it home and just played on the sim for a couple weeks. Now I'm hovering it, forward and reverse flight, etc... I'm still a little sketchy on nose-in, so the training gear is still on.

However, this weekend I switched over to Hitec HS65MG servos. I should mention that they do NOT fit. They are 1mm wider than stock and require modification to fit in the 2 rear positions. I had to take a file to the plastic towards the front of the hole, as there's not much material to the rear. It fits fine in the forward elevator location. Also, the linkages are at angles now, since the servos stick out farther than stock. You have to mount the ball links on the inside of the horns, and even then it's not perfectly aligned up/down.

Then I had to reverse all the swash mixes to their opposite numbers (all + became - and vice versa). I had all the servos connected properly, and reversing the servo in the reverse menu didn't work. It caused wierd interactions with the swashplate.

So I can't say that installing the HS65MG servos are something a total newbie should do. I've got a background in mechanical & electrical engineering, otherwise I'd have been in a lot of trouble. Even then, I needed some help from a forum or two because I haven't seen anyone mention anything about all the trouble that you have to go through to install these servos.

I then put in a JR DS3400G servo for the tail and a Futaba GY401 gyro. I took it out this morning in my driveway to see how it went. It needs a little dialing in, but the tail looks to be much better. However, there's an odd side-to-side flexing of the end of the boom that I have to figure out.

I think i am gonna go with Hitec. What is all the motor noise i discribed? I dont know if that is expected with a stripped servo or if I damaged the ESC.

[ctony66]

simmmmmmm:lol: