My frustrating 600

[Gladius]

I also wanted to put the frame stiffener mod that I made. When I cut the frame to install the larger motor, it left only a narrow strip of material between the motor mount and 3rd bearing mount. So I repurposed the piece of CF that I cut out to double up the frame at that spot.

[Gladius]

Two more flights this morning. Seems like everything is breaking in nicely. The heli is flying very smoothly, with only a little cyclic wobble. Once I get my larger pinion in, I'll try raising the headspeed from 2000 to 2200-2300, and see how it responds. Then I'll start tweaking my gains.

[Gladius]

Absolutely beautiful weather today! Got in 2 more flights. I need more batteries!

[jmtyndall]

Pouring rain here, but I ALSO need more batteries

[Gladius]

You guys sure need the rain!

[jmtyndall]

Yeah but usually there's breaks to fly in. Not this time!

[Gladius]

We had a light snowfall this morning, and I thought to myself, "It would be awesome to fly in this!" Charged up my batteries, and headed out to one of my local fields. I must have been excited, because I wasn't paying careful enough attention to what I was doing, and suddenly realized that I had given the heli nose down pitch, with too much negative collective. Full negative collective with full nose down cyclic, and I pulled off my inverted loop (I don't even know what to call it) without crashing! I only came within 5-6 feet of the ground! :

But... a second later, the heli lost power. (A review of the CC error codes revealed that it went into Low Voltage Cutout.) I quickly hit TH, and brought the heli down for my first ever successful Auto! It wasn't pretty, and the snow definitely helped to cushion the impact, but my initial assessment was No Damage! : I'll check everything over a lot more carefully, and may very well find something that wasn't immediately obvious, but I'm pretty happy right now.

My question is: Does the cold weather somehow cause battery voltage to droop under load more than usual? I was only 40 sec. into my flight with a pair of freshly charged Glacier 3300mah 45C batteries. I'm flying a CC Edge HV 80A ESC, and the motor is a Scorpion 4035-530KV motor.

[jmtyndall]

Overcurrent and undervoltage codes always confuse me at the field. I always get them mixed up. Double check using the logs and report the voltage and current during the "panic bailout" move.

Short answer, yes, cold weather negatively affects lipo performance. However if the lipos are kept warm, then placed in the heli and flown right away that shouldnt be an issue. The lipo is affected by internal temp, not as much by the temperature of the air

[Gladius]

I keep my Lipos in the garage, so they are always a little cool. They had been in the car for a few minutes while I drove to the field, but not long enough to really warm up (even when sitting on the heated seats!). I've been doing a little more reading on the battery forum, and I'm almost positive that that is what happened. If they had been allowed to run for a few minutes before my "bailout" move, they would have warmed up, and may not have hit LVC, but when it happened, they just hadn't had enough time to warm up.

[jmtyndall]

Bingo! Store them on the shelf of a closet inside. Keep them in an ice chest (no ice) before use. Should help a bit

[Gladius]

So after checking everything over, and a couple of test flights last night, the total damage was a notchy main bearing, and my Jesus bolt was bent. Otherwise, she's flying great!

[TR450ZS]

Hey Gladius, good to read that you are starting to enjoy your 600, they are great helis. Hopefully sometime soon you will be able to edit the name of this thread

[Gladius]

I probably should, huh? Or maybe just let it die and post my updates somewhere else.

[Gladius]

So, a couple of weeks ago, I was flying at my old LHS, and the motor lost power on me twice. It came back up to speed immediately - the first time, I wasn't really sure that it had in fact happened, but when it happened again, it removed all doubt, and I quickly landed.

At first, I thought that I had lost the link between my reciever and transmitter (more on that later), but as I thought about it, I realized that I had maintained servo control the whole time, so it was probably a problem with my motor. Took a closer look at my motor connectors, and realized that one was different than the other two. They are all 4mm bullet connectors, but one of them had a separate "bird cage" that can rotate around the male pin. Those are horrible at transferring current, create a high resistance point and extra heat! So, I replaced them all with 5.5mm Castle connectors, and test flew it this morning.

I have been getting some tail kick in pitch pumps, and noticeable bogging. Bogging is much less now, and the tail kick is down to 10-15 degrees. Need to make some adjustments to my FBL to get it completely locked in.

When I flew the heli at the LHS, my datapod showed that I had 2 Rx Failsafes, which is what made me think that the motor problems I had were due to my RF link. Aside from the motor losing power, I never noticed when the receiver failsafes happened, but I'd prefer to not risk that when I go back to the LHS. Most of the time, I'm flying in empty fields, so my DSM2 Sat receivers are fine (zero failsafes), but at the LHS, where there are a ton of other Spektrum users, it was obviously a problem. So I bought a DSMX full receiver with satellite that I'm going to put on the heli, and that should really help when I'm in a busier RF environment. I'm really hoping that fixes the problem, because I really don't want to spend a bunch of cash on a Futaba transmitter and receivers right now.

[Atomic Skull]

One thing you quickly discover buying used helis is that a lot of people out there have no idea how to properly care for a helicopter. The last used heli I got wasn't so much "purchased" as it was "rescued" from it's previous owner.

[Gladius]

Ain't that the truth!

On top of all that, I now have to replace my head too! It's the standard Align FBL non-clamping head, and it's loose on the main shaft. Because of this, it's destroying the Jesus bolt. After the auto that I mentioned above, I found the bent Jesus bolt and replaced it. Well, I haven't had anything like that happen since, but the new Jesus bolt looks exactly like the old one! So I'm done with this head. Ordered the KDE head from A-Main this morning.

[CrashNburn420]

Originally Posted by Atomic Skull

One thing you quickly discover buying used helis is that a lot of people out there have no idea how to properly care for a helicopter. The last used heli I got wasn't so much "purchased" as it was "rescued" from it's previous owner.

+1 I bought a supposed bnf heli, if I had tried flying it like it was it would have never left the ground. Had to replace every bearing in it, all the servo screws were stripped badly, replaced a few parts and major cleaning. Pretty sure the guy used two bottles of loctite on it. Was still a fair deal in the end but was not exactly as described.

[Gladius]

The KDE head is real nice. It lowers the head by a quarter of an inch or so, so I had to shorten my main linkages. My dremel and a die kit made short work of that. Now I just need to redo my setup, and she'll be back in the air! I can't wait to try out this new head!

[Gladius]

Test flew the heli today. Realized that I had the governor turned on in my VX1e, which is pretty interesting, considering that it had no rpm input with which to measure and adjust rpm... Turned that off, and definitely noticed a difference in spool up and final headspeed. Heli felt more locked in, but now it has a pretty good tail shake. It's not a constant shake, like you would expect from gain being too high. I think it's due to one of my linkages, which has always been a little tight. I'm going to replace that and see if it helps. The saga continues....

[Gladius]

Replaced the linkage, tail still shaking. Lowered my tail and rotor gains, and stopped the shaking tail! So I learned something else! Heli flies beautifully now! I need to bump the governor gain on the castle back up a few points, and she'll be just about perfect!