Around 6 weeks back (yes 6 freakin weeks), I crashed my eRaptor (flybarless) due to lost orientation while trying some inverted flight. Basically, the heli plunged into the concrete drain tail-in. Hence, the boom was shoved into the heli’s main frame and as a result, I basically bad to rebuild the heli.
Although I already purchased the parts and spares prior to the 6 weeks delay, but exam was around the corner and hence I didn’t manage to find the time to rebuilt. On the side, I was also thinking of changing the flybarless head’s design include some levers instead of having a direct link from the swash plate to the grips.
One of my favorite designs was the one by Caotri @ Helifreak. Here is a picture of this design, and the build-log can be found here.
However, after struggling with the washout levels from thundertiger’s Raptor 30/50, I decided that it was not a good implementation for the Raptor series heli. This is mainly due to the following reason:
- Too much slop introduced when using indirect linkage
- There was an issue with the phase, with resulted in some cyclics interaction. Although this can be solved using the software mixing provided by SK360, however i rather not mingle with it.
- It looks pretty ugly.
- I had to reduce the swash mix to around 20%, which is really too little, in order to attain a -/+10 degrees of pitch. This is not acceptable as the swash movement will be too small, which may result to insensitivity of the pitch.
Hence, after much consideration, I decided to go back to direct linkage for the time being. On the other hand, i realized that thunder tiger has a upgrade part: PV0040 which is a very good fit to extend the grip’s post to minimize the delta angle.
PV0400:
Completed flybarless rotor head. As you may have realized, I milled off the top part of the main rotor hub which was previously used to attach the flybar. It looks much neater nice 
On the side note, I decided to try Align’s Trex 600 series’ tail rotor grip. I’ve read from forums and heard from local flyers that the results were pretty good when they used it as a replacement for raptor 30/50’s tail rotor grip. One thing to note is that the Trex 600’s tail rotor grips includes TRUST BEARINGS! Which is one of the main reasons why Kasama and QuickUK’s tail rotor grip upgrades are so popular.
Picture of the trex 600’s tail rotor grip on my eRaptor. Its a perfect drop in.
Ready to fly again… and yea.. i know the canopy is pretty battered, but I’m going to change to a fibreglass one very soon. Check back soon
Oh btw … wordpress 2.7’s image insertion into posts still sucks like all previous versions. Wake up developers…
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