Cheap fbl conversion- raptor .30

[Twostroke00]

probably been done before, but I haven’t seen it.
Was bored during the lock down so I decided to rebuild an old raptor .30 that hasn’t seen the light of day in about 15 years!
Whilst stripping, cleaning, lubing and rebuilding I was looking and the head and decided it would be an easy fbl conversion.
I just removed the entire fly bar system, flipped the blade grips around to leading edge control, added longer links directly from the swash to the blade grips then robbed the spirit pro unit off of my 450.
Bingo! All done.
Quick test flight and all working great!!
Getting about 12 degrees positive and 10 degrees negative pitch.

[davidbrou]

Nice job.

How do you go about preventing the swash driver from falling of the pin?

[Twostroke00]

Cheers,
Sorry, should have mentioned that part!!
I currently have a wide tie wrap around the shaft to limit the downward movement of the swash so the washout assembly can’t slide down enough to disengage the pins, also have pitch reduced in the transmitter to suit.
This obviously reduces negative pitch to around 5 or 6 degrees.
Next time the wife goes to bed early (so I can use the kitchen table) I will drill a 3mm hole through the washout slider and put a 2.5 bolt through the main shaft.
At the moment its not a problem though as I cannot fly inverted yet!

[davidbrou]

Good luck drilling the mainshaft. These are usually pretty hard and requires special drill bits.

Also, not the best place to make a hole in a mainshaft as this a location where you likely get large bending force.

Adding a sleeve, like your tie wrap, is safer IMHO.

[BC]

Nice and easy! I might try that on a nexus I have sitting here...nothing to lose on that one

Are you using FB type blades?

Edit: wont work on nexus

[Twostroke00]

Not using fbl blades yet, have ordered some for it but haven’t arrived due to shipping delays.
Have flown it with the original wooden blades and so far so good!

[cmulder]

Have a similair setup and drilled 2 small holls in the side of the pitch slider. 2 small m3 set screws lock the slider on those 2 guide pins from the head block.
ANother way is to use longer bolts and clamp the slider in place that way.
Reducing the amount of mechanical parts reduces failure points but keep in mind that the servo's now have to work harder so upgrading those might be a good idea.

I also cut off the top part for the flybar and mounted a head buton to slow the head down quicker after landing. The state of the dampeners also influences the perfrmance and harder ones are better without a fly bar.

[forjer]

Intrigued. Aside from anchoring the swash driver and potential Sx upgrade, are there any gotchas or issues with doing this? Does FBL put a lot of extra strain on the stock blade grips? Seems like a simple way to ease into FBL.

[rcjames]

bump for free haha i want to get notification. I'm thinking to do the same too