Heli-max axe cx micro mods

[RaymondJ]

Hello, my name is ray. Big noob to heli's, got my axe cx a while ago.
I've been reading up on them, lots of bad reviews due to fragile parts. But I like mine so far. It was cheap, and it flies very nice. I dont have any experience with helicopters obviously, but right out of the box first time flying I could hover in my living room, so that says a little something I guess.

Anyway, I dont see many threads with guys modifying them. I figured I would add my projects.

A couple days ago I tried running my swash plate linkages on the outer holes of my servo arms. It made the heli much quicker! It was fun, up until I switched directions quickly and had a nasty rotor stalling blade strike. So, swapped back to stock.

But I tried fabbing up my own inner shaft. Its quite! A bit longer than stock, I made it so long just so I can cut it down as I play around. But I am trying to sepperate the blades a bit, maybe keeping them from striking as easily with the more aggressive settings.


This is it drying, I jb welded the shaft in the old plastic hub. Tomorrow I will make a spacer of some sort and give it a whirl.

[RaymondJ]

Looks goofy, but it is pretty dece!

Minus the taped up broken landing gear.

I've been running the outer servo arm holes, its much quicker. I didn't get one blade strike, and it almost seems more stable. But that could be me dreamin' it up

[RaymondJ]

Also some guys are having problems with the battery mounts always cracking, like me. I bought a couple before I tried this.

This works great. Just krazy glue a piece of thin plastic across the battery retainers and it improves strength by a ton!

[RaymondJ]

Made a better copper spacer that actually rides on the inner bearing race. Holds the upper rotor more steady.

I guess the best bet would be to make a longer outer shaft, but if this continues to work its easier.
Then I made a carbon fiber tail boom to replace the steel shaft, little bit lighter. Was experimenting with tail fins too. I made a couple that I can pull out and reinstall.

[enderello]

Hey Chronic,

Thanks for the thread and detailed information. I've been flying my Axe a lot these past few days after abandoning it since Christmas when I got it.

I modified the inner shaft by drilling 1/16 holes to replace the plastic nipples that keep breaking. That works really well just make sure they are centered otherwise the blades won't track properly and it will vibrate a lot.

A couple of days ago I got a second heli from my friend. We bought them at the same time but he was tired of fixing it, and tired of the cost to keep it flying. It costs me around $5.00 per day to fly. Mainly now from replacing about 2 upper blades per day from blade strikes when I either hit the wall or from acute banked turns. If I slow it down I do quite well but I really like seeing the Axe haul ass back and forth in my living room.

I will be modding the upper blades probably today so that they fold. Hopefully this will reduce losing blades so much. I will post pictures later.

[enderello]

Oh yeah I'm a big noob too. Just learned to fly this past christmas on a MCX and on the Axe CX. the MCX practically flies itself but it taught me the controls and then the Axe taught me to improve my hovering since it requires more stick input. It also taught me to mess around with the gain settings and repairs.
Just this past few days I've been learning to fly circles and figure 8's nose first. I will try tail first later.

[enderello]

Oh yeah and I just got an E-flite CP+ and I've been hovering that no problem. 20 battery charges later and I'm improving a lot. I'm in no rush to remove the training gear though.

[RaymondJ]

Cool! I just got a honey bee fp from ebay. Dont have money for it, but the heli thing is becoming another one of those hobbies...

Yeah, I have been using metal pins in my blade hub. Last night I actually made a metal carrier. Its crude, but it should work. Just worried about it being remotely balanced or not. We'll see.

I've been flying mine outside alot lately, yesterday was a perfect day. Very calm and surprisingly I never hit any trees, I was having a blast getting some speed ripping around forwards and backwards. But then I was descending pretty quick backwards, and I switched to forwards and that was a bit much I guess, my blades were able to touch and since it was cold! outside, my lower blade shattered lol But it was over grass and nothing else broke except for the canopy.

I think I will try and rig up some folding blades here too.


I tried to get a good pic of the hub, but its hard. And all you can see if JB weld lol, thats basically what its made of haha.
But yeah, I drilled out a piece of brass to hold the shaft and the two blade pins. Then I had the center shaft stick up and I cut the old fly bar holder off the plastic hub and mounted it on top of the brass piece.

[RaymondJ]

Huh, good news my steel hub is damn near perfectly aligned. Blades track very true, I was really impressed.

[enderello]

I saw your battery tray mod and I followed suit. I had been thinking of doing different things including reinforcing the weak points where it's prone to break but I never came up with anything I liked.

I must say your mod must be pretty good because today I dropped the heli from about 15 feet and I broke the landing skid instead of the battery tray.

I [IMG][/IMG]

Then here is the picture os the inner shaft mod. I do this by hand and I should mount my dremel to a table or something so that I can just rotate the shaft and I can place the hole at the same level (vertically on the shaft) for better tracking. I did this today but I forgot to check to see if the blades were tracking. I will test that tomorrow and I actually have two other shafts I can work on and see if I come up with a system to drill the holes more accurately.

[IMG][/IMG]

I honestly think you have a better system. I'm liking your idea of putting a pice of aluminum rod in place of the plastic. I will look into that tomorrow.

Here is a picture of one of my Axe CX's. I try to keep them both running. The other one has a plane blue canopy. I ordered a yellow one today.

[IMG][/IMG]

Keep up the good work. We should work on the blades next.

[RaymondJ]

I'm glad that worked! Because yeah that was the first thing to break on me and after I glued it all I have broken now is landing gear.

Definitely should work on blades now.

[enderello]

Well here it is:

She flies

[RaymondJ]

Right on!

Have you hit anything yet? How tight are they? I am definitely doing this soon here.

[enderello]

I haven't had a chance to test them. Keep in mind though, although I'm sure they will be more durable than the original blades. By modding our blades we will be able to use other blades Esky Lama blades which are a fraction of the cost. Here is a link to an ebay auction of 60 Esky Lama blades for $16.99

http://cgi.ebay.com/60x-Helicopter-M...3A1%7C294%3A50

This was in another thread so it's not my idea and whoever did it has already tested those blades on the Axe CX Micro.

Anyway I will be testing my mod within the next few days and give you an update then.

[enderello]

Oh yeah,

theyr'e tight enough so that they don't slide around when you shake the heli hard tilting it on its side, but you can still adjust them with your hand. I purposely left them off balance and spun the motor and it lines them up, so this works.

I wish I could use some kind of plastic fastener instead of a screw but I can't think of anything at this time.

[RaymondJ]

That is beautiful! I am going to try this on the weekend! I can't argue with how cheap blades are, and now that I am getting better I dont crash as often. But having more leeway is very nice!

The plastic screws is a good question, I feel like I have ideas as to where you would find them, but its not poping up lol. Maybe some misc auto parts store would carry some, or computer depots?

I dunno... worst case scenario you could probably find aluminum for a little less weight, or even brass.

[RaymondJ]

Well, never got to doing the blades last weekend. Really should have since I tried landing on an old car at my parents tonight and dropped a little too quick in the wind and knocked a blade off on a mirror lol Dont know if a folding blade could have saved that though.

Any other ideas you've come up with lately?

I added some more weight to my flybar tonight using thin solder. Just wrapped it around the bar infront of the stock weights.

I kind of like it, but not... I like it because it holds the heli in one path very true! But it kind of holds it back almost. Reduces response if its too much weight. Not really an axe cx specific mod though.

[enderello]

Well,
I did the foldng blade mod to the bottom as well.
I don't know if the eBay blades come in both types but I did the mod because
The top blades were a bit heavier and the heli kept spinning.
It's weird, that only started to happen a few days later.
Anyway, the screws are too heavy we need to find plastic screws.

Also, don't do the mod to the bottom blades the heli flew uncontrollably.
Unless you have a scale and balance the blades I guess. I dnt yet have a scale.

The blade folding mod has saved me blades though. I was abusing the hell out of
the heli and it just took it. It even minimizes brown blades due to mid air blade strikes.

I broke the tail boom where it joins the frame. I need a mod for it you got any suggestions?

[BS-AV8TOR]

well looks like i finally found a good forum for one of my heli's, you guys have it going on. the mods are great. I will definetly try some of them. Here is a pic of my axe cx micro. tweaked. just a little. ha ha.

[enderello]

Welcome aboard BS-AV8TOR

Wow your heli looks sweet. Which canopy is that?
It never even crossed my mind to change out the canopy.