The Helilog - Crash #2

Whoops I did it again!

Yesterday evening, after taking care of some errands I went to the field where we usually fly. A phonecall later I discovered that I’ll be alone but that was OK, it meant I will be able to concentrate on my flying. There were some gusts of wind when I arrived there but when I started flying it got calm. Perfect conditions!

With the dawn behind me I raised the heli in the air and did some right to left passes in front of me. All was good and I was actually admiring the turns I did to my right because I was doing them nicely banked while strongly fearing the turns to my left and usually bailing out of them turning the heli tail in and flying to safety. I flew one battery without ever landing and I was extremely proud of myself. I set it down, installed the second battery and off it went again. Did some right to left passes again and then I said to myself “hey, I must try to do that turn on the left”. And I tried it. I rotated the heli’s nose towards me but I did it with the heli having next to no airspeed so it lost a lot of altitude. Unfortunately I haven’t raised it back in time and the next thing I know the heli was on the ground and I shouted out loud “not again!” (in Romanian of course).

Fortunately I actually crashed it from only about 20 cm or so and pulled the throttle stick all the way down so the damage was minimal: the blades flew a few meters again, the flybar was an S and the main shaft bent. One stabilizer rod popped off the tail but the tail boom remained straight and I managed not to strip the main gear. This was all I could visually find. I was sort of happy because I had all the necessary parts at home and was thinking about being back in the air by the weekend.

I went home, cut off the bent parts of the flybar with my Dremel, pulled the rest out of the head block and then connected my stand-alone receiver battery to do some tests without the risk of the main motor spinning up and doing damage. And that’s when the bad news came. Something was clicking / clanking. It was the right cyclic servo (usually called the pitch servo). I was assuming it stripped and after I tried applying some force on it my suspicion was confirmed.

So now I’m in the market for a servo. Luckily a friend is ordering himself a T-Rex 450 Pro just today and I’m quickly jumping in and getting not one but three Hitec HS5065MG servos. These are the digital successors of the wildly popular Hitec HS65MG’s so they can only be good. Also the plan for the near future is to get metal gears for all three of my JR DS285’s. This way I’ll have two sets of metal geared digital servos - one set doing their job on the heli and one set waiting in the drawer for their turn.

Well, that’s the crash report… Hopefully back in the air by next weekend.

Update: I found a local guy with three spare Hitec HS65MG’s. I’ll be picking them up this afternoon. Might be back in the air by the weekend? :)

Posted in: rc, rc helicopter.

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