Tail and Swash upgrade Innova 550 v2

[imhereithink]

Morning all,

Thought I would share my recent upgrades to the Innova 550.

I was getting fed up with the amount of play in the tail grips, so i found out that the Trex 600 v2 Tail grips are a perfect match! Look great and perform great. I no longer fear that my tail is going to de construct mid flight.



Next on the list was the v2 swash plate. Not sure if any one else had this, but my swash had a bit of play in it, which could not be tightened up, even though you can fully service this swash. Ended up swapping this out for a Trex 600 DFC swash, again perfect fit, looks and performs great.




Really happy with the heli now, had it around a year and ticks all the boxes i want from a heli

[Atomic Skull]

The Align grips are designed to use dogbone links. Doesn't putting ball links on the tail rotor like that put negative delta into the grips? Some helicopters like the Goblin use positive delta but negative delta is probably bad because it will have the opposite effect.

Here's what I did to reduce play in the tail grips:

https://www.helifreak.com/showthread.php?t=698512

I also upgraded the tail slider:

https://www.helifreak.com/showthread.php?t=693488

An Align Trex 700 (or Gartt/Assualt 700) rudder servo mount also works better than the stock one.

https://www.helifreak.com/showthread.php?t=713315

[imhereithink]

Thanks Atomic,

I had no idea about detlas etc until you posted that. Done a bit more research on it and i think i understand it . . atleast more than i did.

It looks like i have been pretty lucky in my setup, the ball link i used is slightly shorter than the KDS one. So once made up it looks like it is pretty much neutral witht the tail shaft, see pic below:


Here is a comparison of both tail grips where you can see the difference in lengths due to the use of ball/ dog bone links, bit rough but you get the idea:


Have test flown it and all seems ok, same piro rate and end points for pitch, so should be all good . . . time will tell ofcourse. Might look into converting over to the Align dogbone links and slider, my mate has some spares i can play around with

[Arvidsson]

Interesting!

Suppose thesame thing goes for the 600? Perhaps same tail on 550/600?

Eitherway, more Align parts = good

I would like to get the tailbelt more smooth, some anoying sound in mine, even that ALL parts are new.. slack it "a lot" makes it silent, maybe just need to wear in a bit.

Hmm.. We should do a sticky with smart/good upgrades/mods. Much easier to find it then.

[Atomic Skull]

Originally Posted by Arvidsson

Interesting!

Suppose thesame thing goes for the 600? Perhaps same tail on 550/600?

Eitherway, more Align parts = good

I would like to get the tailbelt more smooth, some anoying sound in mine, even that ALL parts are new.. slack it "a lot" makes it silent, maybe just need to wear in a bit.

Hmm.. We should do a sticky with smart/good upgrades/mods. Much easier to find it then.

550, 600 and 700 all have the same tail.

[imhereithink]

Little update,

Put three batteries through the Heli at the weekend and all seems to be working well. It did not self destruct mid flight( locktite has a bit to play here )

The tail is holding great and no noticable differences to the way it operates. Piro rates look to be the same, and hard stops all seem fine.

For the peace of mind in getting rid of the slop in the system, for me it was worth the little extra cash to swap out to the align products.

Happy flying

[imhereithink]

Another update since these upgrades were performed:

The Heli is still flying great with no issues with the new tail grips or swash setup Has to be my favourite heli at the moment. The 550 is a very light heli and is very agile in the air. Here is a small video from last weekend. Was pretty windy so mostly fast sport/ light 3D

KDS Innova 550 V2 - 3D flight (4 min 47 sec)

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KDS Innova 550 V2 - 3D flight (4 min 47 sec)

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