Quick 50 Pro Heli Kit....

[JuanRodriguez]

Hi all,

After a soggy start to the weekend (Saturday a washout), I made it out to the RAM's "open house" funfly in Macedon. I had asked Ray Stacy to have Kyle fly the Q-50 and was prepared to capture the flight on video.

While in the hovering pad before the flight, I was in the process of checking the tracking after making some link changes to the head. The tracking was right on. I was also making some adjustments to the headspeed on the TJPro from 1750 to 1900. As I spooled up during one of the test hops, I noticed a tremendous vibration !! I immediately shut things down to see what was going on. Well, one of tail rotor blade grips was lying on the ground next to the back of the machine !!

Upon inspection, it appears that there was no loctite on the screw that attaches the grip to the hub. The other blade grip was fine. I could "feel" it as I removed the second bolt and could see the remnants of the loctite on the bolt as well. I degreased both screws, replaced the link that had been damaged while flopping around and re-assembled the whole thing.

I have to say that I have never liked factory "pre-assembled" parts (or ARF's) and will kick myself in the butt for not taking the time to make sure the tail parts were properly secured....THAT IS CLEARLY MY RESPONSIBILITY !!! I've been in this helicopter thing long enough to know better !!! ..... I consider myself "lucky" THIS TIME.....as the incident happened on the ground and no damage resulted.

So now I'm "ready to go".......or so I thought. Later in the day I got the opportunity to fire the Q50 up again (in between the planks flying) with the thought of having Kyle fly the machine. Ray took it up first to see what the machine was like. A a minute or two into the flight, the motor (OS 50) sounded like it was sagging. Ray made a turn nose in to land so that we could richen the mix a bit and all of a sudden we both heard a "pop" and the engine immediately died..... Ray did a very nice job with the auto but flying was obviously over for the day when we discovered that the "pop" both of us had heard was a friggin hole being blown into the top of the piston !!!

I don't particularly believe in "fate" but I guess my "master plan" did not work out.... There will be a next time for sure.....with a Hyper as a replacement.....

Hope you'all had a nice weekend....

Till the next time.

PS- Who the heck is the Murphy guy anyway ????

Later when I get home from work, I'll post a pic of the nice paint job my buddy Rodney did on the canopy. That canopy has survived two "emergency" autos !!


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[DebianDog]

Did it look like this?

[JuanRodriguez]

How did you guess ???

[JuanRodriguez]

[WillJames]

Cool to see Kyle wearing his Team JR shirt. Nice kid and great flyer!!

[JuanRodriguez]

Nice kid and great flyer!!

Couldn't have said it better myself !!

Kyle put on a few demo flights with his R90 at the RAM's open house that would just simply knock your socks off !! He's getting better and smoother with every flight.

[JuanRodriguez]

Update....

It's been a month since my last "update" to this thread and this will probably be my last....

The Q50 continues to fly well and I'm getting more comfortable with it each time I fly it. It certainly is "different" from other machines I have owned and flown in the 50 size category. The Q50 is definitely a little heavier than my R50s and both machines certainly have their own flying characteristics.... The Q50 is precise, very stable in the hover, tracks very well in forward and fast forward flight and is more capable than I will probably ever be when it comes to aerobatics.....

This past weekend was our Northeast Helicopter Jamboree. Although today is a washout, we were very lucky yesterday to have been spared by the rain. It was threatening all day long along with some nasty cloud cover.... but the high winds did not kick in. The attendance was pretty decent by both pilots and spectators and a good time and lots of flying was had by all.

I asked Curtis if he could take a moment to take the Q50 for a spin. The following link is a video of the flight. The video quality is not great so when you go to the site, click on the smaller screen option, bottom right corner of the video window....looks much better that way...

Rochester, NY, RC Helicopter FunFly (5 min 53 sec)

I hope you all enjoy the video and that your summer flying has been great.