C R Mudgeon
03-10-2008, 09:18 PM
It's getting pretty stale using the sim. I use Heli-Sim. session after session and not really using a heli is pretty wearing. I've been flying my Lama 4 around the house and that is fun but is is only teaching me orientation. My first flight outside with the TREX 450 resulted in a crash and a resignation that I have more to learn. I needed to fly indoors as a clear ( not raining ) windless days seem to be in short supply. I decided to spice up fleet with a Honey Bee FP. It seemed to be a simple machine but man it was a handful in the living room. I crashed it a few times and found one of it's first assets. Parts are cheap. They are not at the local hobby shop but avaliable mail order in a few days. I found the second of it's assets No cnc parts available. There are no parts to distract you from what you really need to do which is to put it back together and just fly. (But I wish someone would make metal parts as the plastic parts are just sooo sloppy) I did find some upgrade parts that are almost nessary.
First Super Skids or Super Skidz ( the clone ) get rid of the OEM landing gear and get these. They are unbreakable and give the heli a nice thing to bounce on for landing.
Second get rid of the 2mm carbon fiber fly bar ( keep it in you tool box ) and use an Esky Honey Bee CP flybar. You will not break it. You will have to use a piece of shrink wrap on the threads to make up the thickness of the 2mm rod or you can use the HBCP or Blade cp or AxeCp paddles. Keep the 2mm rod as it has uses for tail rotor axle, battery holders, and tail rotor protectors.
After a week l'm still bouncing the HBFP around the room but I'm breaking less parts.
I found the controls of the HBFP to be sluggish. I move the controls and the heli reacts in slow motion. So I took off the flybar weights all together. It respond much better. But it is still pretty twitchy. I found if I angle the paddles up a little bit it makes the hover better. Now I think this is just slowing down the head speed. But it is still twitchy.
I found a product by Dimension Enginerring - Expo Duo- this adds expo on two channels. This allows the cheap Esky Tx to have a expo without spending a fortune. Get it while you can as this product has been discontinued. With this I can fly in the living room for a couple of minutes at a time.:thumbup:
So what are my lessons learned.
1) There can be too much weight on the fly bar. It will make the controls sluggish. ( I think this led to the TREX crash )
2) You need some expo on the control. I'm not steady around the center of the sticks yet. I need some expo but there is that fine line of not enough and too much.
3) Setup is everything. A heli will almost hover by itself with a good setup. From there it's just small control input to keep it there.
The Honey Bee FP is not a great heli, but any heli will teach you lessons. It's fun to fly and crash indoors and it just a change up from the sim.
First Super Skids or Super Skidz ( the clone ) get rid of the OEM landing gear and get these. They are unbreakable and give the heli a nice thing to bounce on for landing.
Second get rid of the 2mm carbon fiber fly bar ( keep it in you tool box ) and use an Esky Honey Bee CP flybar. You will not break it. You will have to use a piece of shrink wrap on the threads to make up the thickness of the 2mm rod or you can use the HBCP or Blade cp or AxeCp paddles. Keep the 2mm rod as it has uses for tail rotor axle, battery holders, and tail rotor protectors.
After a week l'm still bouncing the HBFP around the room but I'm breaking less parts.
I found the controls of the HBFP to be sluggish. I move the controls and the heli reacts in slow motion. So I took off the flybar weights all together. It respond much better. But it is still pretty twitchy. I found if I angle the paddles up a little bit it makes the hover better. Now I think this is just slowing down the head speed. But it is still twitchy.
I found a product by Dimension Enginerring - Expo Duo- this adds expo on two channels. This allows the cheap Esky Tx to have a expo without spending a fortune. Get it while you can as this product has been discontinued. With this I can fly in the living room for a couple of minutes at a time.:thumbup:
So what are my lessons learned.
1) There can be too much weight on the fly bar. It will make the controls sluggish. ( I think this led to the TREX crash )
2) You need some expo on the control. I'm not steady around the center of the sticks yet. I need some expo but there is that fine line of not enough and too much.
3) Setup is everything. A heli will almost hover by itself with a good setup. From there it's just small control input to keep it there.
The Honey Bee FP is not a great heli, but any heli will teach you lessons. It's fun to fly and crash indoors and it just a change up from the sim.