Honey Bee FP

[C R Mudgeon]

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.

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.

[Mike SVOR]

Wow, my take on that is you're having a lot of problems with your HBFP.
Sorry to hear this.
Mine is flying fine.
I bought 4 feet of carbon fiber .080 rod from the hobby store for 4 bucks. Then I made new landing gear out of it that is 1 inch taller than the old landing gear.
Then I made a new flybar that is 2 inches longer than the stock one.

It flies even better now.
You should try a longer flybar rod.

and you should probably try clipping the roots of the main blades to raise head speed up.

[wibble]

Mike, good info, I'm gonna do what you suggested with the fly bar. Thanks for that.

[C R Mudgeon]

Originally Posted by Mike SVOR

Wow, my take on that is you're having a lot of problems with your HBFP.
Sorry to hear this.
Mine is flying fine.
I bought 4 feet of carbon fiber .080 rod from the hobby store for 4 bucks. Then I made new landing gear out of it that is 1 inch taller than the old landing gear.
Then I made a new flybar that is 2 inches longer than the stock one.

It flies even better now.
You should try a longer flybar rod.

and you should probably try clipping the roots of the main blades to raise head speed up.

Sorry I left the impression Im having a lot of problems. On the contrary! It's my primary bird I fly in my living room since conditions are not not quite right to learn outside yet.
My reason was to share some of struggles with this finiky bird and some of the solutions to those problems.

Since writing I did find one more thing I would put on a must do to the honey bee fp is get rid of the Z Bends. They add quite a bit of slop to the system. It does not take much to get control input into the system so any slop will make the FP pretty twitchy. The take away line is, it takes balls, get a pair .... and a pair of ball ends.


Also, I found out today that KR's Hobbies has CNC aluminium parts for the FP head comming in. I have a set on order. They can be found here.

Cheers!

[kodak_jack]

I have Super Skids on my heli and have since day one. I think they are essential for a beginner. I like the looks of the tooling balls on the CNC machined parts, but, if you beef up all of those parts, what becomes the weakest link? I think you'll eventually get down to the main shaft if everything else is metal.
I've often read about the effects from the flybars. If you want to learn to hover, like me, what about increasing the surface area - bigger paddles? I've been hopping around for months and it just doesn't seem to be getting any better!!

[C R Mudgeon]

Originally Posted by kodak_jack

II've often read about the effects from the flybars. If you want to learn to hover, like me, what about increasing the surface area - bigger paddles? I've been hopping around for months and it just doesn't seem to be getting any better!!

Put positive pitch on the paddles. I put about 20 degrees on them. Yeah I know it sounds like a lot but it will calm it down so that you can hover without being a wall banger!
It will make FF like crap but if you want to fly in a garage and just hover it is just the ticket!

[kodak_jack]

Thanks! I'll try it.

[wibble]

Originally Posted by C R Mudgeon

Put positive pitch on the paddles. I put about 20 degrees on them. Yeah I know it sounds like a lot but it will calm it down so that you can hover without being a wall banger!
It will make FF like crap but if you want to fly in a garage and just hover it is just the ticket!

WOW, that's very interesting.

[DeepEastKilla]

i hope to get a fp v2 after christmas. ive already got some spares and upgrade blades

[Luke Warmwater]

Wow...talk about threads being ressurected! This one was brought back to life today, from April last year! I know things are slow around here this week, but that's awesome!

[dayshaddow]

dont wanna sound dumb but what are z bends just peeked at my bee and im not seeing any

maybe they came off in a crash

[imq707s]

Yeah, those HBFP are fun heli's to fly inside, but they are worlthess outside if there is any wind. Even though I have a Blade 400 now and am working on a CopterX 450, I still fly my HBFP all the time....just to keep my fingers quick You really have to concentrate on keeping it stable or it will get away from you. I just wish mine had more power. I have the Lipo battery for it, but it still seems really underpowered....but I'm comparing that to a 450 CP heli....

[Bugster]

Originally Posted by imq707s

I just wish mine had more power. I have the Lipo battery for it, but it still seems really underpowered....but I'm comparing that to a 450 CP heli....

No comparison with a 450 I'm afraid. But if you treat the HBFP as an indoor heli which can be used outside with little or no wind it's great

[Viet-Lama]

Originally Posted by dayshaddow

dont wanna sound dumb but what are z bends just peeked at my bee and im not seeing any

maybe they came off in a crash

"Came off in a crash "

No DS, he means the servo to swash links and personally I like that name

[dayshaddow]

now that makes sence cheers V-L

[rcook30]

just built this trex 450. i have all programming in dx6i set(i think) but the respond time is so slow. when it goes left i try to get it back center but the stick will be all the way to the right. i don't understand what to set or adjust. d/r expo is set all at 100. gyro is set at 87.5 and 20.
please help me guys. i have been flying a simulator and maybe i just used to it.but i just thought that the 450 would react faster.
thanks for all the help

[Bugster]

Hi rook30 and welcome to the Freak

I have a 450 clone and my DX6i is set at 65% HH gyro gain. Yours seems a bit high to me - so could be worth a bit of adjustment to find out the effect

[imq707s]

Originally Posted by rcook30

just built this trex 450. i have all programming in dx6i set(i think) but the respond time is so slow. when it goes left i try to get it back center but the stick will be all the way to the right. i don't understand what to set or adjust. d/r expo is set all at 100. gyro is set at 87.5 and 20.
please help me guys. i have been flying a simulator and maybe i just used to it.but i just thought that the 450 would react faster.
thanks for all the help

But you have 0 expo dialed in right? The left numbers should read 100% on all of your settings....and your right column should say INH....unless you have a little EXPO dialed in. You don't have the right column set for 100% do you?