I wanted something that I could leave together and not have to assemble and disassemble at the field like I have to with my larger airplanes. But I also want a high level of performance, easy to repair foam construction, strong enough to handle 3D and hard maneuvers, and electric. There are some contenders out there, but none that really fit exactly what I wanted.

On a recent trip to the hobby shop to buy some parts for my helicopter, I stumbled across the Carbon-Z Yak. It looked like exactly what I wanted, but I really didn’t have any background on it. While there, I did a quick look up on the internet via my iPhone, checked the specs, and watched the video of Quique Somenizi flying it. Granted, he is one of the top pilots in the world and could make a rock fly well, but I’ve also met him at various events and believe he would work hard within his limitations to deliver great flying plane. I felt it was worth the risk and took one home with me.

After a quick assembly, I brought it to the field to test fly. It flew GREAT right out of the box. Unlimited vertical, straight and true flying characteristics, lots of power, very little coupling, and great slow flight. It excelled in all areas for a small foam aerobatic airplane, and ‘felt’ larger then its actual size. If things held together, I made the right decision. If it didn’t, it flew so well it was worth the time to make it hold together.

While I can’t fly at the same level as Quique, I can say the video is an honest representation of the performance of that airplane. I can fly many of the same maneuvers, and have done so with the production version as delivered to the local hobby store. Unlimited vertical, knife edge spins, harriers, hovers, knife edge, walls, blenders, etc, all done very well by mine. With an 11×7 prop, it was screaming fast and would handle very hard maneuvers and stay together. With the stock 12×5.25 prop, it was a great all around sport/3D flyer, and with a 13×4 should perform graceful 3D maneuvers.

After a few flights, I started to notice a bad vibration. The power plant is turning much higher rpm’s than normal in order to deliver all that performance. Unfortunately, it appears they either tried to save a few cents in manufacturing their motor mount, was delivered sub-standard parts by their vendor, or just under designed it. My motor mount broke in two places, and there were two other cracks developing in other areas. It was just a flight or two away from the motor separating from the airplane while in flight. E-flite has offered new motor mounts to all buyers for the asking, and I have one on the way to me now.

There are also some reports of elevator servos failing, and some control horns that were not properly secured during manufacturing. I haven’t had either of those issues, but did check my all my control horns and reglued any that I felt were suspect. I’m also going to swap out the elevator servo with a metal geared and ball bearing supported servos. In fact, I may just do all the servos just to also add more power, full ball bearing support, increased speed.

Once those modifications are done, its an airplane that I’m sure will fulfill my original goals and deliver exceptional performance for the type of airplane it is. On those day I really don’t want to drag out the big airplanes to fly, this will be a perfect compromise without limiting my flight performance.

I love that it flies so perfectly for what I was after. I hate that I have to modify it right out of the box before its really flight worthy. But, I’ve order 4 more batteries for it, and a second PnP version as backup   Its that good once modified to resolve the flaws!

I’ve tried the various solutions that have shown up when researching the problem, but none seem to resolve it. Grease, no grease, silicone grease, light oil, no oil, automatic transmission fluid, cross bolt tightness, new main shafts, etc. I still get lockups on the OWB very frequently. I just replaced the OWB in two of my helis last week. One has already locked up and failed (new OWB, new shaft and used Tri-flow for lubrication = failure). The other seems to be fine for the moment.

I’m going to try replacement bearings from other vendors and see if I can’t get a working OWB that will last at least half a season.

Over the winter and early spring I went through both nitro 600′s and did a lot of maintenance and upgrades. On N01 (names as it was my first nitro heli), I replaced the main bearing blocks with new metal ones, and a new set of bearings, upgraded to a carbon fiber tail boom, new clutch/engine bearings, new clutch liner, and replaced the ball links to remove any slop. On N02 (my second nitro), new main bearings (already had metal bearing blocks), replaced the washout base as it was worn and developed some slop, new canopy as the last one was starting to crack in places, new ball links, changed to a set of white landing gear to replace the black, new set of blades, and new tail rotor bearings. I also upgraded the OS50 to an OS55 in N02, now they are both running OS55s are more consistent in performance than before.

On the flight progress front, I’ve progressed quite a bit by tightening up death spirals, falling knife edge, working with linking maneuvers together for more interesting turnaround maneuvers, and starting to work on sustained inverted hovering and more backwards flight. I’ve been working on tic-tocs, but haven’t got the timing right. Every now and then I nail it and ‘toss back and forth’ once or twice which is the right timing, but I can’t sustain that and the heli starts to bog and descent. I hope this season will resolve that with some practice.

I purchased a new MD500E fuselage as a backup for my primary MD500E. I am asked to do demo flights at some events during the season, and always felt exposed that I’d might show up empty handed if a mishap should happen in the days before the event. With two of them, I can feel confident that if something happens to one, I’ve got the other. I’ll add some posts with pictures as I start building it.

Before building the new MD500E, I’m adding the navigation lights to the existing one. I’ve got most of the wiring and electronics soldered and testing, and am now fitting it all to the fuselage. I’ve also got some other scale goodies that are going in and will be updated in future posts.

I burned up the gas motor in my XtraFun by not checking the fuel prior to filling. Evidently, someone filled one of the 2 stroke gas/oil mix can with regular gas and no oil when they filled the other gas cans in the garage. I never checked when filling the XtraFun on the first flight of this season since I always add oil first to the cans, then add gas after. That helps me avoid this problem. I can say an engine will run pretty good without lubrication. But only for about 7 minutes   Then it starts making noise I have a spare engine, so it will be back in the air shortly, but its a $600 expense I didn’t want to incur.

I recently received the cockpit kit for the MD500E. What a gorgeous addition to the helicopter. The controls are all replicated, seats, control sticks, and the gauges and panels are backlight! This is going to really help set the scale look for the heli even though its only a fun scale project.

Here are a few more shots. I’ll add more later once I have it installed in the heli and the panel lights working.

Here are a couple pictures they sent me showing what their field looked like just as other clubs were mowing their lawns, doing field cleanups, and flying!

They have an older trailer that they leave on site for club use, up on blocks, and the water rose high enough to ether the trailer, and their ‘porta potty’ was floating.

Hopefully the water will recede and things will be back on track. This is a gorgeous field by the way, when it isn’t underwater. Very plush grass, nice runway, and a gorgeous backdrop with the river and trees flowing around the field. And the group of people that fly here are some of the most friendly people I’ve met in a quite a while. My first visit there I felt like I was a long time member. I love coming back and flying here the few times a year I am in Vermont. Which reminds me, its time to send in the membership fees

On area to touch on is maintenance on the helicopters. During a routine inspection in preparation for the upcoming season, I noticed a slight wear mark on the mixing arm and a matching one on the linkage. This was caused by using too much servo travel in the extreme cyclic/collective positions. I reduced the throw at the extremes and reduced the possibility of those parts making future contact. Ther was no need to replace the parts since they were not damaged to the point of being unusable.

Since I flew all last season on the same main bearings, I felt it was time to replace them on both the N01 (my first heli) and N02 (you guessed it, my second one) helis. I also added metal bearing blocks for all thee main shaft bearings. On N02, I also upgraded from a belt drive to a carbon fiber torque tube tail, which had all new tail bearings in the kit. I also replaced the tail rotor bearings on N01. So both helicopters are running new main shaft and tail rotor bearings and I shouldn’t have to worry about them till next winter,

When flying the 600 nitro (N01) a couple weeks ago, it had a terrible sound much like that of an engine bearing failure. It was flying with a well worn OS50 in it, so a bearing issue was probably due. When deciding to replace the bearings in the OS50, I had a better idea. Replace the OS50 with an OS55! since the Other nitro 600 had a OS55 already, making them match performance wise was a good reason to upgrade. Having consistent feel across both helicopters allows one to progress faster with learning new maneuvers when swapping back and forth between the two. So I bite the bullet and ordered one.

On my first flight with the new OS55, it became apparent that it wasn’t the engine bearings after all. The bearing on the starter shaft and clutch hub was the culprit. The bearing was actually fine, but the inner bearing housing was spinning on the engine/clutch gear shaft causing the noise. I replaced the gear, bearing, and bearing holder and all is good. I’m still enjoying the new OS55 though . Good move either way.

Most of the rest was routine maintenance. I disassembled many of the major parts without having to break open the frames, and inspected and or replaced as necessary. Nothing important found. The thrust bearings were good, dampeners, all small linkage bearings were fine, screws tight and present, blades in great condition.

Somewhat out of the norm for me, this project allowed me to mix my personal hobby with business. Normally I would be behind the video camera on similar shoots, but for this project I was in front of the camera. Well, sort of. I was contacted by Red Tree Productions, who were working with Arnold Worldwide for a television commercial for New Balance. Part of the commercial called for a radio controlled helicopter for various stunts. They ended up finding me through my RC club affiliation, and not through the typical channels I advertise in or use for networking.

Here is one part of the finished commercial.

After performing independent testing a few days ahead of time, just to be sure we could accomplish the stated goals, the helicopter needed to be prepared on the day of the shoot. This involved masking over the painted graphics, logos, etc, that were already present on the heli. Graphic artists tape was used in matching colors to hide the New York City Police decal, N number registration, and RC helicopter manufacturer logos.

A small High Def camera was then mounted under the fuselage such that it could capture video at multiple angles during the several flights we would make. After seeing the footage from the camera, we ended up purchasing one for our own projects. The camera, GoPro HD, shown below, is very small, enclosed in a waterproof case, can be virtually mounted anywhere, and delivered high quality HD footage. Once everything was checked out, angles selected, test footage was recorded, it was time to head out for actual shooting.

The shoot location was in a parking lot adjacent to the New Balance headquarters in downtown Lawrence, MA. As a shooting location goes, it was just another outdoor shoot location. Not the best, not the worst. As an RC flying area, thats another story. It was very challenging to say the least. If the location wasn’t challenging enough all by itself, a few other challenges were thrown in to keep me on my toes.

High winds. Down drafts and turbulence coming off the top of the building 6 or 7 stories up, and around the clock tower they wanted me to hover in front of. An electrical sub-station next door with possible electrical interference, which didn’t show up in the initial location scouting. Cold temps to keep my thumbs shaking and add further instability, and also challenge the batteries capacity. Ok, I thought, I can still handle this. I’ve done worse, just not in a small parking lot, in the city, surrounded by buildings, with a crew of people collectively being paid in the thousands of dollars an hour range. I’ll need to really focus, but I can still handle it.

Oh yea, and one more challenge! I need to take off and land on a 2.5′ x 4′ table. Ouch. Ok, now that made it really hard.

In the shot above, you can see the size of the take off and landing area! It also shows the flying area we had available, including the flag pole right dab in the middle, building in the background, cars and tractor trailers in close proximity, a terrible approach and take off angle based on the angle required for the shot and the suns direction.

While the crew in the background attend to the ‘cargo’, we are preparing the helicopter for a few more flights. All in all, we flew about 6 or 7 flights in order to get the shots we needed. For each shot, we needed to close the parking and building entrances from vehicle and foot traffic, and have all the crew behind a nearby chain link fence for safety.

From a piloting standpoint, it was challenging with the high winds, turbulence off the building and clock tower, and the small take off and landing area, if you want to call it that. I’m really glad I took the challenge, worked through the issues, and had successful and safe flights and overall shoot. Sometimes its really easy to look at a situation, and talk yourself out of it, even before you take the time to see if it can’t be done successfully. I’m glad I didn’t, as this was a very fun and rewarding experience.

Once the commercial is released, I can reveal more details about the shoot, but for now I can only provide some behind the scenes images.

This year, since I didn’t want to get rusty over the winter, I did set a goal to get out at least once a week for a minimum of 2 or 3 flights. In trying to meet this goal, I found that even 25 degrees with overcast skies 25mph winds and flurries wasn’t all that bad. Keep the gloves on till the last minute, dress in layers appropriate for the weather, and duck into the car every now and then for the warm flow out of the heater ducts, and one can get in quite a few flights and still be comfortable.

And with that, I meet that gold and burned up quite a few gallons of fuel this winter. Rather than get rusty while being contained within 4 warm walls, I enjoyed getting out and flying. I had anticipated problems starting the nitro helis, but after the first start they started up fine. Not as quick as during the summer, but not painful either. And due to the cold air, they all performed much better.

Last week I performed a new manuever, a ‘full blade off autorotation’. All those hot 3D pilots think they are so good with their blade stop autos. Well, until they have done a full blade ‘off’ auto they have nothing on me! And for those that want to show off at your field, here is how to do a full blade off autorotation.

First, get up to about 20 feet or so and come across the field in fast forward flight straight and level across the field. At about mid point, have a main blade bolt disengage from the feathering shaft. Once the blade are thrown clear of the heli, hit the throttle cut switch, and use the cyclic to control the flybar paddles to bring the heli gently to the ground. If performed perfectly, you should be able to go pick up the heli and the blades, reassemble, and continue on flying.

My full blade off auto wasn’t that successful, but real close. I landed harder than planned, but only ended up with about $12 in damage. I broke the landing gear, split a servo wheel, broke a ball link, and bend the flybar shaft. Not bad considering.

What I think happened, was that during assembling the kit (over 100 or so flights ago) I never cleaned the oil off the bolts before applying locktite. I do remember at some point during the assembly that it was recommended to do so, and I started from that point on. But the first things built is the head, main blade holders, feathering shaft, etc. Hence my diagnosis. Checking the gap on the head is now a part of my inspection procedures.

On my other nitro, I updated from the OS50, to the new OS55HZ. I was on a mission yesterday to break it in and went to the field with the plans of burning a full gallon of fuel and tweaking the needles to get them just right. After 4 hours, I reached my goal. The engine is purring quite nicely and feels pretty much dialed in. I am seeing temps in the 180 degree range just after landing and I can feel the increased power over the OS50. I’ll be trying to burn another gallon in the next few days and then consider it fully broken in.

Another good thing that happened this week is that I found a problem that was plaguing me all last summer. On one of my T-Rex600′s, I was constantly having problems with the tail setup. Trying different setups, I was either having problems with excessive wagging or lack of tail holding authority. Since this heli was crashed at one point, I started looking at the gyro or servo as the likely culprit. I swapped out components one at a time trying to eliminate the issue. After running out of options there, I looked closer at the setup and geometry. When I couldn’t find the solution, I had set it aside to revisit it later.

While testing another possible fix, and not seeing the results I wanted, I started to think deeper. I was out of options. Swapped gyros, servos, tried all sorts of sensitivity and gain setups, geometry changes, etc, and nothing resolved it. Each test changed it to one degree or another, but it was never right. While scratching my head wondering was else was left, I decided for grins to measure the tail blades. I knew off the top of my head that standard was in the 92 or 95mm range. I was shocked when I measured significantly less than that. When I started getting more aggressive with it, right around the time of a crash, the problems started to surface. This made me think it was related to the crash.

I think the original owner must have accidentally replaced the blades with smaller ones for the 500 electric, and never noticed since he was just into forward flight. I didn’t have any problems either until i started to fly it more aggressively, right about the same time as the crash. I never thought to check the blades size since it seemed fine before the crash, so I never gave it a thought. The lesson learned is to check the obvious, even when its obvious that’s not the problem It could have saved me a lot of troubleshooting time if I just checked everything that’s even remotely connected at the onset.

I hope to flight check the Hughes 500E tomorrow so its ready for the season. That will leave me with both Nitros ready to go, the scale 500E, and my T-Rex450. Then I’ll start preparing the 40% Carden Extra 330S, the Xtra-Fun, and the 1/3rd scale Cub, and focus on getting the trailer ready for the events.

All in all though, a very good two weeks of flying even thought the season hasn’t really started!

Add a thirteen year old next to it and it has a sense of scale.

Canisters for the DA-150, one for each cylinder. Both are isolated for vibration with a semi-floating mounting solution.

Another image showing the canister installation from the engine back. The exhaust tubes have not yet been welded.

A shot of the canisters looking from the tail forward. Each canister has a threaded socket at the end to allow installing a tab between them for holding purposes. Its not installed in this image.

The fuel and smoke systems installed, and the throttle and choke servos. I setup the fuel lines such that when filling, yellow is for fuel, and blue is for the smoke system to avoid confusion. Both also have a filters on the fill lines, and another on the fuel line to the carb.

This shows the dual receivers, dual C-Volt meters, two heavy duty rudder servos (later swapped out for 3 JR 8611's), smoke pump (lower right), dual batteries on former behind fuel/smoke tanks, fiber optic isolator (top center), two matchboxes, rudder bellcrank, etc.

I made sure there was plenty of control surface throws. The elevators and alierons were capable of more than 60 degrees of throw.

Assembled in the shop for control setup and testing. With everything moved out of the way, there is still just barely enough room to walk around it. This is what the color scheme actually looks like. The other images don't always reflect accurate colors for some reason (lighting? camera?)

The finished and ready fuselage.

The two C-Volt meters showing each batteries voltage under actual load. The LED next to them is for the ignition system. Red is hot, Green is off, blinking Amber signals PCM dropouts. I've since switched to 2.4Ghz SS radio system.

The person entrusted with my airplane One of the three charge jacks just below the canopy.

Another image to show the scale. The colors are all off in this image for some reason, probably the sun and the cheap point and shoot camera used.

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