Installed the CopterX Head, Did my First Roll!

March 21, 2009 on 7:19 pm | In 3D, Flying | No Comments

As mentioned in my previous post, I totaled the stock, plastic SA head attempting a roll. In hindsight, there were a lot of problems with my last attempt. I had the flybar weights on, and my swashplate settings weren’t set right. My pitch was also set up improperly, and when I went inverted, I didn’t have enough power to pull me through the roll.

Instead of trying to rebuild the plastic head, I ordered the CopterX head from ebay for $40 shipped, and it’s beautiful. No vibrations and very stable flight. I really can’t see any difference between this and the Align head that costs 3x as much. Hopefully my next crash won’t be as bad since I now have a metal head, but if I ever total it again, $40 isn’t too bad for a quick fix.

Today I tried the roll again, this time with the aforementioned adjustments, and I pulled it off! It wasn’t pretty and I was nervous, but I did it. My wife only got the first one on tape, the second one looked a little better, and hopefully tomorrow I can give it a few more shots. It really is a lot like the Realflight simulator so in the mean time I’ll keep practicing on my computer.

Trashed my TREX 450 Plastic Head and Ordered a Metal CopterX Head from China

March 16, 2009 on 11:18 am | In Crash | 1 Comment

A couple of weeks ago I had my first huge crash in my TREX 450. It’s a shame I don’t have it on film, since the crash was so spectacular. I was attempting a role too close to the ground, and the bird met tera firma blade first almost completely inverted. Damage to the head was total. The SA has a mostly plastic head and therefore I broke mostly every piece of it. Since I was in stunt mode, the gear was chewed up pretty badly since it took me a second to kill the motor. The main shaft was bent at almost a 100 degree angle. Amazingly the wooden blades were just fine, since the bladegrips and the rest of the head took all the impact I guess.

I priced out replacing the pieces for the head, and decided to just replace it with a full metal CopterX head. The one I ordered was only $40 shipped from China, and reading reviews on helifreak.com it seems that it’s almost as good as the Align setup (at a fraction of the cost). Having ordered R/C stuff from China in the past, I know that it can take up to 20 days to receive it, but I need that time to fly no the simulator and get this last crash out of my system. I’m also going to spend a lot of time making sure that my head is setup perfectly this time. helifreak.com has great videos by “finless bob” that show the proper way to set up the collective and pitch of the head. My SA came fully assembled, so I pretty much just put in the servos and started flying. Looking back, it seems that if I had had more negative pitch available during my role that I would have been able to pull it off. Although I really have no idea where it was.

Once I get my new head on and setup, I’ll write up a review of the CopterX head compared to my plastic Align head. I’ll also be sure to catch my next roll attempt on video.