Sluggish response after crash

[srhadden]

Hi all,

I crashed my HPFB at about a 45 degree angle into the pavement and broke the wooden blades and only the blade grips.

I replaced the main shaft and replaced the blade grips, all looks good.

But when I fly, it seems very sluggish to controls. Throttle is good but any alieron or elevator is really sluggish, I can't control it, I have to almost max the control to get alieron or elevator.

Any ideas what this could be? I made sure my blades were balanced, and I maded sure the flybar is level. I also removed the flybar weights which made no difference I could tell.

Thanks

:dontknow

[RotaryBoy]

It sounds like you stripped one or both of your servo's in your crash. :shock:

Power the Rx and heli up, then work the collective sticks. Does either servo hum? Do they both move fluidly up and down as they should?

When you power up, the servo's should center up, it is also possible that you through one of the arms off center. If you power it up and your servo's center, but one of your arms is not straight, take the screw out and put the arm at 90 degrees like it should be. If you came in hard and had the cyclic pressed in the opposite direction you could have stripped a servo or possible moved the arm out of center.

Let us know how it turns out! :hug:

[srhadden]

I'll check that out. I noticed my swash was not level. I assume on the HB the swash should be totally level? I dunno how the swash got so tilted because I didn't change the servo arm lengths. But NOW I did to make it level.

The servo arms are 90 degrees, seems good.

The elevator servo buzzes when I hold the control all the way down. The other direction, no. The other servo doesn't hum either direction.

I did think maybe I stripped them, but they SEEMED to move ok.

[Heli Yea!]

Move the servo link in a hole or two this will prevent the buzzing caused by too much servo movement. Notice how the main gear moves up and down with full servo input. Move the links in one hole at a time until the servo movement does not lift the main gear. that should fix er' if not your servo is missing teeth as mentioned by RotaryBoy.

[RotaryBoy]

srhadden,

Heli Yea! has a good point, but you should not be using complete throw on the servo's. You should never push your sticks to the extremes, so your servo's should only be moving about 45 degrees in each direction from center. So if it is buzzing at the extreme (75-90 degrees from center), I wouldn't worry about moving holes around on the servo arms. If you move the holes in on the servo arm, you lose some collective throw and your sticks will be less responsive...

However, if you are having problems flying and you want to slow your sticks down, then I would go with Heli's suggestion and move one hold toward the screw on each servo. Ensure that you match it up, if you move one, move both so your sticks are even going both ways.

[srhadden]

I will give it a try within the next couple days, thanks for your suggestions. How can I tell if I stripped my servo gears? It seems pretty solid through the full range of motion, so it's probably not the servos, right? I did replace a link to the flybar which was kind of stiff, so I fixed that but haven't been able to get out yet! arg

[RotaryBoy]

All your ball joints should move freely..... If you have scratches on the balls of the joint, it will cause the ball link to be stiff and create issues with movement. :roll:

If you had a stiff arm, that might have been the cause of your issues previously. Power up your Tx and Heli and move your collective stick in a full 360 degree motion and watch your servos react, is everything working together as it should? :confused:

[UAV_PILOT]

Yeah I just crashed mine into the grass today nose first and I was hauling a$$ too. The only damage I had was a cracked canopy, popped off the front servo joint and actually separated the swashplate. My servos however are still good. I am thinking about changing the servos on my hbfp with tower sg90's but I will just wait until these go out.

[srhadden]

I wonder if the plastic blades are just too low of headspeed to fight the wind. I had these wooden ones on prior to the crash and maybe they made a huge diffence with wind?

[RotaryBoy]

I wonder if the plastic blades are just too low of headspeed to fight the wind. I had these wooden ones on prior to the crash and maybe they made a huge diffence with wind?

Two issues here srhadden...

1) Weight.... These little heli's just get tossed around period, they don't have the weight of a 450 size heli to hold them stable in small gusts

2) Pitch.... You will find that with the stock blades, you will fight the wind constantly! If you move to some M24's or Extreme woodies, the pitch is less meaning more headspeed for lift. This will stabilize the little heli quite well, I fly pretty good with the M24's in wind around 5mph.

I have actually found that a constant wind is easy to live with, you just fight it using whatever collective management it takes and when you put her into FF at the wind, give it more throttle because it force the heli toward the ground. Gusts is what really kicks me in the tail when I'm flying, you cannot be "proactive" on the sticks and work with it, you have to quickly "react" to get her back on track.

[srhadden]

Yeah, I think I was getting better head speed with the wooden blades. A tthis point it seems I just have no more power coming out of the motor. So I guess I will replace it and see if that fixes it. Maybe I burnted the thing out during my crash. I dunno. Just ain't right no mo'.