Giving my Beam E4 the royal treatment.

[Tjomp]

Hi guys.

Just wanted to share my excitement with all of my good friends here in this forum. I have pulled the trigger on a major upgrade to my beloved Beam E4.
Quite some time ago now, I crashed it. Haven´t been able to decided if this was due to dumb thumbs or a servo failure. In a sharp turn of fast forward flight, the heli leaning sideways, I lost altitude. I banged the sticks all the way to the ground and was late with TH as usual :-)
The damage wasn´t all that bad considering the speed it had on impact. Boom, blades, feathering shaft, flybar, landing struts, canopy bolt, maingear and at least two of the cyclic servos. I replaced the parts that I had in stock but was still short of the landing gear and canopy bolt. I decided to bin all of the cyclic servos just in case, and they where really tail servos that wasn´t a very good fit anyway.
After that the Beam and my flying have been more or less neglected. Mostly due to me being overall a busy guy. It´s time to shape up and make sure I am really prepared for the spring so I have put in and order that will make both me and my Beam very happy.

3 x Hitec HS-5065MG for cyclic.
Scorpion 2221-8 motor
Caste Creations Ice Lite 50 ESC
BeastX Microbeast
Beam FBL head.
Hitec Basic Telemetry pack.

And for good measure I included some bits and pieces for my 250 and a Canomod canopy for both my 250 and my Protos.
The Futaba GY-520 that is on the Beam now will be mounted on the Protos as I am not completely happy with the JR one on there now.

The cyclic and telemetry have arrived already but the rest is on it´s way by mail.



Here is a picture of my radio with the telemetry modul, Optical RPM sensor, and the two temperature sensors. The marker pen is there to give impression of size.

[Tomstoy2]

And, yet, another convert to be initiated in to the 'dark arts' of fbl!

Congradulations, buddy, are you ever in for a thrill! Jeeze, that thing is just going to come alive, you just can't imagine! Not only are you going with an excellent motor, (might I recommend you go with some very high C-rated batterys), but also the increase fbl gives you too boot!
I can only think of one other recomendation, go 6s! Just in case you still think there might be a power issue,

You'll really enjoy the servo's. What do you plan on the tail? 5084 I find to still be a damn fine servo still.

I like that you went with the Ice lite, keep the weight down, every gram helps.

From what I've seen of your flying on Phoenix, it's about time, you're ready and this rig will be a fine performer, one you won't be able to out grow.

Might as well add a fbl head for the Protos, gonna happen anyway, trust me.

[Tjomp]

Thanks, Tom. It´s not like my Beam was slow before and now it sure will be able to tear up the sky. Some 40C batteries are on my wishlist but I don´t feel any rush here. I got a few 25C that will be fine for general flying and a few 35C that will be good when I feel confident to trow it around. Although my flying in Phoenix is progressing nicely I am not that confident in real life. I hope that will change when I get more real stick time. A 6S setup on this bird ? Damn, I´d shit my pants.

I will keep my current tailservo which infact is the Hitec HS-5084MG. It´s been a solid performer both on the Beam and my 250. I see no need to swap that one out.

Knowing myself and the adiction of this hobby, I know this will not be my last FBL heli. Just the first. I wanted to try out an FBL setup and was considering which heli would get the honor to be the first. I decided on the Beam because it needed some work anyway and I´d like to fly my Protos more in stock condition before making any changes to it. So I can really compare.
a FBL kit for the Protos costs peanuts. Would probably be cheaper to convert than my 250. So there is only a question of time

[Tjomp]

OK. So with a FBL system coming soon, the question had to pop up. How do you measure pitch on a FBL head ?
I did some research and discovered something that was completely new to me and still so simple that it is obvious.

I downloaded and tried various apps for my iPhone to measure pitch, but found it hard to keep the phone level on the bladegrips. I couldn´t help getting a feeling there is huge room for error doing it this way. Then I came across and app that would calculate the pitch by entering the blade length and the length between the blades when folded next to each other. Of-bloddy-course. So simple. Easy to do. And works with any head, FBL or not. Why would we ever need a pitchgauge when all we need is a digital calipper ?

The iPhone app is called "PitchCalc" and is available in German and English. Developers website have an online version with instructions that are in German only.

http://www.icer.ch/cms/Unternehmen/f...erechnung.html

You guys with Windows mobile phones better start begging Raf to make a new version of Heliport

[sutty]

You can also screw a special little holder into the top of the head, where the head button goes, and put in an old flybar, you'll have those spare now, lol. Works okay, but if you have a clever little app, go for it. I don't have a fancy phone of any sort, so I can't do that. I actually went ahead and bought a digital pitch gauge though. Zero'd the blades by folding them back, like you said, then put them out again and mounted and zero'd my gauge. Works a treat.

Bet you're looking forward to getting all your little bits, and getting to work.

Enjoy!

Cheers

Sutty

[Tjomp]

The formula to calculate this for yourself is actually quite simple.

Pitch = Inverse Sinus ((Distance between blades/2)/Blade length)

[dauste]

Here you go mate, https://www.helifreak.com/showthread.php?t=258445

You can do measurements for Cyclic pitch as well with this.

I think using these formulas Raf could give us another nice extra tool for HeliPort!

[ragge1]

Originally Posted by Tjomp

OK. So with a FBL system coming soon, the question had to pop up. How do you measure pitch on a FBL head ?

just take a 10 min drive and can borrow my
https://www.helifreak.com/showthread.php?t=268589

[Tjomp]

@Dauste. Thats a very nice writeup. All posted right here in my home forum and I missed it. Me thinks this is a good way to measure pitch.

@Ragge1. Thanks. Would be nice to double check my settings with that Bevelbox. But surely I need to be able to do this myself without pestering you to part with your Bevel everytime I need to check pitch

[Tjomp]

my oh my oh my oh my !!!

Two parcels arrived today. Here is the most essential of their contents. Are still missing the CasteLink and Canopy bolts.

[UPGl2AYDD]

Just like Christmas! I see you splurged and going to bling the hell out of'em both!

Love the canopies!

[Tjomp]

Thanks Mike. I really couldn´t resist those Canopies. The Protos canopy was going for only $30 because of some minor imperfections that really can´t be spotted.

I´ve gotten around to assemble the FBL head and my new swashplate. Nothing wrong with the old swash, though. Just thought I keep the old head complete and maybe use it later as a drop in fit on some other 450.

Here´s some pictures.

[redbird300]

Waw, that's one hell of a nice FBL head Tomas !

[UPGl2AYDD]

+1 that's one slick looking head, has a real "scale" look to it, never seen the carbon attachments before for grips either other than MA's.

Very hot stuff...

[Tomstoy2]

The thing about the cf control arms is that they are sacrificial. My 450, I've had to replace all the metal gears in the Hitec servos after a crash. All that force gets transmitted directly to those gears. Nice to have something to protect them.

[knutenf]

Vakkert, lyst på!! (Nice, want one)

[UPGl2AYDD]

On the control arms I'd be curious in that case, on the servos themselves, terrible idea! I put those bloody "sub-zero" carbon fiber horns on the wheels of my servos on the 500. Damn it was so crisp and tracked beautifully, as no flimsy Hitec plastic horns anymore to distort input. Did it ever hurt in a crash, every time I stripped every MG servo out and even destroyed the pots to the point they did not center, any pressure on the servos caused them to "dance" around.

I think they need to make "shear away" linkages or something... lol Servo gears are expensive and tedious to work on once installed - especially on 450's.. lol

[Tjomp]

Thought I just follow up here with some pictures of my Beam with all the shiny gear installed. Wireing was a bitch with all that equipment in a small airframe but it turned out ok. If you take a close look at the maingear in the second picture you will see the wireing from the two front servos missing it only by a hair.

I´ve only had one flight with it so far and it mostly turned out ok. Tail is holding good but wags a little when I fly really fast. Will need to lower gain a triffle. The cyclic was very sensitive so I added a little expo. I generally don´t like expo but probably will need it on this setup.
One thing that puzzles me, though. If I put the Beam in a hands-off hover it will hold for a sec and then bank right. At first I thought I might have let the BeastX initialize while the heli wasn´t completely level so I redid that to make sure but the same result. How is that even possible ? shouldnt the FBL system compensate and make sure it stays level when it gets no input ?

One thing is for sure. When these little things are sorted out I will absolutely love this setup. My first impression was indeed satisfactory.

[ragge1]

Tjomp : was really wondering what happened to your beam project
ok the beast is not a stabilization system but if set right its possible to hover handsfree for a while ,
offtopic : are you working next week , according to the weatherforcast gonna be nice weather , maybe we can have fun on the field

[sutty]

It shouldn't roll though. It will often drift, because it has no translational sensors, but it should stay flat, as you say Roger for a hands free hover, either way up. Yesterday and today I did many inverted hovers, some extremely low down, and did not require any cyclic input. Couple of times I took my hand off the cyclic, and it hovered better that when I had my hand on it, lol. As we discussed Tomas, right roll is almost certainly as a result of vibration, and most likely from the tail.

Good luck with it.

Cheers

Sutty