General

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Helicopters

Unweighted blades have less flex then weighted. You want more flex when you have a multi-blade rotor head. This will give you better overall stability.

You dont need one, but it is highly recommended. Without a multi-head gyro your helicopter will be very unstable in the air. We recommend the Skookum 720 or 360. The 720 is a full 3 axis gyro incorporating the tail as well. The 720 also doubles as a receiver if you have a spectrum radio. For those of you who already have a tail gyro, you can use the sk360. This is a 2 axis gyro that is capable of stabilizing just the rotor head/swash plate.

Most of the flybarless gyro systems on the market will work with multi-blade rotor heads. The gyro really does not care about the rotor head or how many blades you have. Its job is to stabilize the swash plate.

Lets keep in mind that in order to spin more than 2 blades takes more energy/power. In some cases such as a 3 blade it may not be so important, but when you start thinking about using a 4 blade or 5 blade, this takes some serious power and torque to run the rotor head.

Lets take for example our 600 size Blackhawk. The fuselage weighs just less than 2 lbs. with weapons set. If you choose to fly this fuselage on a stock align or chaos 600 helicopters, using the stock rotor head, you should be just fine without any modifications. If you choose to add the 4 blade rotor head and possibly the tail, there are some factors that need to be addressed.

Motor: Because you are using a 4 blade rotor head, the rpms needed to fly the helicopter are much lower due to the increased lift of 4 blades. The problem when you use a stock 600 set up with 1100kv and 100 amp esc is that the kv/rpm will be too high for the rotor head and will also require too much torque for that stock high rpm motor to handle. If you do not change these and choose to run the stock set up with a multi-blade head, it may work at first, but you may find that your esc and motor will be quite hot and flight times decreased significantly.

In our Blackhawk we have used primarily two different types of motors. A560kv and 630kv motor. The 560 kv would be used with a 12S set up and the 630kv would be used for a 10S set up. This gives us about 15 min flight time with two 6S 5000 batteries wired together to produce 12S 5000mah. Basically in this set up, anything above 8S would be a high voltage system. High voltage systems result in greater efficiency , less heat generated, longer flight times and longer longevity to your electronics.

ESC (Speed Controller): The speed controller I typically use is a Castle Creations HV controller. In our Blackhawk set up, because we are running 12S, the amps used are very low. Its basically sipping the power from the battery packs. The Castle 80HV is adequate unless you decided to fly 3d with it,,( not recommended )

Batteries: Lets keep in mind that we are not flying 3d so the C rating is not as important as flying 3d. It is ok to use a 20-25c pack when flying high voltage systems. There is plenty of power on a 10S or 12S system, so the C rating is not so critical. This will also save you money as well. However, if you have 6S packs of a higher rating from maybe your 3D helicopters, this does not hurt to use a higher rating.

Separate BEC: Most speed controllers now have a built in BEC (Battery Eliminator Circuit) I highly recommend using a separate BEC unit. The reason is the speed controllers tend to be pretty reliable; however, if your speed controller should fail in flight, this could result in the inability to control the servos.

Because of the high demand and stress of the speed controller, its just safer to use a separate BEC to power the receiver/servos. Why take the chance on such an expensive machine.

So typically I wire the BEC onto the connector that goes to the battery / same side as the wires from the ESC . Then plug the BEC into the receiver. Most BECs have a universal or / JR connector for this reason. In the Blackhawk build, we used a Castle Creations BEC Pro 20 amp. Anything above 10 amps will work.

Flight Times: Remember that more volts = less amps drawn = less heat = more flight times. We actually tested our system until the batteries ran down; this was 18 minutes of flight time. Please dont do this, its not good for the batteries, but usually people get tired after 5-7 min of flight time, so 10 minutes is easily obtained. This is a good point to start thinking about landing.

The mechanics are based off of the goblin 700 transmission. The rest is designed for compact integration with the fuselage to fit within the upper portion of the doghouse just as the real helicopters are.

This allows the builder/pilot to easily access the mechanics for service. The compact design also allows for RC Aerodyne to now build complete scale interiors from front to back. Yes thats right, now a full rear cabin is now built into our super scale kits, when applicable. RCA's main focus to to provide a full all around scale helicopter that does not require glue, sanding, painting, and extensive building skills.

Although these are probably the easiest to assemble in regards to scale helicopters, there still needs to be basic knowledge of helicopter setup. You must know how to program a 3 axis gyro, a speed controller such as a castle HV esc, and most important, how to program your radio to work with all this. It is advised to have prior rc heli experience to properly assemble and set up these helicopters properly.

We can only help you with the actual kit itself. If it is in regards to esc, gyro, radio setup, you will need to contact that specific mfg for info on proper set up.

In many ways it does not differ much. Your going to set up your radio just like you would a basic 3d heli set up as far as swash config and servos. The difference is basically in your pitch range. Typically on a scale heli, there is not much neg. Your going to be in the range of -3 and +10. You will have a little neg in case you need to auto yourself down, and the positive 10 degrees you will probably never use but thats about the max you want. The other difference would be your gyro sensitivity and expo settings. This is all dependent on how you set up your gyro and how you as the pilot want your helicopter to feel.

The design of our scale rotorheads make it very simple for set up. There is no adjustment/phasing on our rotorheads since they are all set to 0 deg./ or advanced all ready in the special "J" arms. All you need to do is balance the blades and track each blade properly.

Keep in mind that since our multiblade rotorheads are all ready phased, your going to treat this just like a flybarless rotorhead. The gyro itself does not care how many blades you have. All it does is stabilize the swash plate.

This may require a longer answer than most. Ok, so you think you have got all of it assembled and programmed. Great, so now the next step is to remove rotor blades and also tail blades. While your machine is on the bench, you can test for things like, is your esc set up properly? Is soft start programmed properly? Motor spinning the correct way? Gyro properly moving the correct way when you pick it up and move the heli around? There are many things to check but just a basic run thru a few battery packs will tell you quite a bit.

Yes, but not necessary. Its quite easy to build a test platform by simply using a sheet of wood and mounting the mechanics to this. An old pair of landing skids from a 3d machine work great for the landing gear. Typically you will want to mount batteries on from of the board to keep cg in proper form.

It is an absolute must to enable and properly program this feature to your radio/heli. Please check with your radio system on how to enable this feature properly. Throttle hold is a feature used for a few purposes.

  1. It is almost impossible to set up your servos/swash/pitch without this. The purpose is to basically disable the motor but still have full cyclic control. Its very important, we have seen too many accidental motor starts because someone did not enable throttle hold and accidentally bumped the throttle. This can be very dangerous to you and others around. On top of using throttle hold, it is still advisable when first programming your heli to jus unplug two wires on your motor.
  2. Lets say your flying around and you have a tail malfunction and it starts spinning. The reason its spinning because you still have a motor sending torque to your tail. Initiating throttle hold on your radio, typically via toggle switch will shut the motor off, thus eliminating any torque to your tail, and in most cases stoping the heli from spinning. You then still have full control of your cyclic / pitch controls, allowing you to auto the helicopter.

Yes, but you should probably practice this on a simulator or a basic 3d helicopter. We typically dont practice auto's on our scale helicopters, but know what to do when something does go wrong.