Dang it!

I crashed my 250 on my 2nd session with my new Zeal 210mm blades :(. While doing a nose in turn I lost orientation and crashed.  This has been happening a lot lately :(. I really need more practice and need to try and save it instead of giving up and flipping the hold switch. 

This happened at SEFSD on Sunday 10/25/15. And for a change there were more helis than quads this time!  Woohoo!  

Ming's friend Richard's helis. 

Hoyt Park, Tuesday 10/20/15

I wanted to try and flip my mCpx, but it bogged so much it dropped like a rock, and I crashed, breaking a ball link on the swash plate.  Once I get that replaced, I'll try again, but higher up!  LOL!

The 250 was flying well enough that I tried doing some flips with it. I need to put in more negative pitch and the tail wagged some during the flip. I turned down the tail gain and it's been getting better. 

I'm heading back out to Hoyt again after work to test the 250 and 450. 

Hoyt park session, not!

I tried to get a few flights in at Hoyt Saturday morning 10/17/15, on my way to the track, but it looked like someone was there cleaning trash from the field?  So I decided to head straight to SDRC instead and fly in the parking lot there, before the track opened. 

The 250 flew well and I was able to fly smooth figure 8's, which I was having trouble doing at Hoyt. The headspeed still felt slow though, as it was less than a rocket doing full pitch climb outs. 

I decided to turn off my governor and use a flat 100% throttle curve instead. While doing this will achieve higher headspeed, the headspeed will decrease during the flight and may bog more often.  I'll need to gear up to get the headspeed I want with the governor. The only problem is figuring out how to get the glued on pinion gear off. 

At 100% throttle, the 250 felt much better!  Nice pop on full pitch climbs but with a slight bog. It was also a rocket for about the 1 minute of the flight, until the battery voltage leveled off. I'll need to take some headspeed measurements to find out what the headspeed actually is. 

The 250 at SDRC. 

Trex 250 and 450 test session

I rushed out to Hoyt to get some flights in on the 250 and 450. I still need to get used to flying the 250 (feels like the headspeed is too slow) and test the Brain on the 450 (need to tune the flight banks, expo, and tail gain). 

Charging packs when I arrived. About 15 min to charge the 250 packs at 3C and 25 min for the 450 packs at 2C. I changed a setting for the 450 packs program which will hopefully decrease the charge time. 

The 450 ready to fly!

With the clouds coming in and blocking the sun, it got too dark to fly about 20 minutes before sunset.  There's only about an hour of usable light left now after I'm able to get to the field :(

Trex 450 ready for testing!

I finally got around to replacing the servo which burnt out while testing the self level feature on the bench :-/  I've since disable this feature for the time being, just in case it decides to burn up another servo. 

I had to reassemble the frame and reroute all the servo leads (again!), then level the swash (again!), then complete the collective and cyclic pitch setup (again!).  At least I'm getting faster at using my Soko kit. Lol!

The 450 is now flight ready for testing of the Brain FC I transferred to it from my still down 550. 

Trex 250 maiden session, Friday 10/9/15

This would be my 1st session flying the 250!  I hovered it a few times in front of my garage, but didn't fly around due to the limited space. 

It flew well, but I could probably use more headspeed. With the stock gearing the Castle governor maxed out at about 4200 to 4300 rpm. I had the governor set to 3800, 4000, and 4200 rpm.  I think I'll try 4300 for the next session and increase the governor gain. 

My flying buddy had his Mikado 480 and 550 out this time!  They were cool, but he didn't fly them as aggressive as his small helis. 

The 480

The 550

I forgot to take pics of the 250 since I was busy getting my flights in before it got too dark. 

380 repair underway!

I decided to start repairing my 380 that I crashed a couple of weeks ago, while waiting for my 450 replacement servo to arrive. First up was to replace the bent blade grip arms and inspect the spindle shaft. Luckily the spindle shaft wasn't bent in the crash :). After installing the new blade grip arms, I reassembled the rotor head. Job done!

Next up I removed all the cyclic servos, as they all broke in the crash. It was a pain to get the servo case apart!  Then when I did, it popped open so I didn't have a chance to take a photo of the gear positions!  Luckily I found a photo online of a similar servo and was able to figure it out. I then took a photo of the new installed gear set as a future reference. It was a pain to line all the gears up on their shafts!  Especially the center shaft as it went though 2 gears.  I coated the gears with some white lithium grease and closed up the case. Job done!

It turns out that the output shaft which the servo horn attaches to snapped in half during the crash. Probably because this shaft has many steps and features on it. Once the servo was assembled I plugged it into the servo test port of my iCharger 4010 Duo.  It worked!  Whew!  Onto the other 2 servos. 

The repair of the other 2 servos went much smoother, as now I knew what to expect. 

Gear set of the 2nd broken servo.  You can see the split in the output shaft. 

The broken output shafts of each servo.