Hello everyone. I would like to welcome you to the next series that Rc-Help.com is putting together right now. If you have read the forum, and you should have already, you know that Marius started up a thread to accept donations to get Rc-Help.com it's very own helicopter. And with that, it all began!
In all honesty I never expected anything to come of this but WOW was I wrong! We are well over $500 in donations as of this article and there are already more promises of donations to help get this bird in the air. I am still in awe of what has happened over the last 3 weeks.
To catch everyone up, after the donations started rolling in the member superbad found a 600 nitro at his local hobby shop. We had coolgabsi go to the same store and take a look at it and give us his opinion on it as well as take some pics. Well it turned out it was a 600 Nitro Pro with the OS 55Hz engine, 3GX gyro, but no servos.
I want you all to add that up. The 600 kit is about $700, The engine is $300, the gyro is $250, the blades are $80, it all adds up really fast to "THIS IS A BITCHIN DEAL" lol. Okay so we had to get servos, tail blades, fuel pump, starter, igniter, battery, Rx's and fuel, but it's still a great deal.
Soon after we purchased the helicopter superbad decided that he did not want the 610/620 servos on his 550 so he purchased newer servos for his bird and gave us a great deal on his old ones. I say "Old" but they are brand new. I'm not even sure if they have had power to them. So I was happy to pay what we agreed on. Now all we are needing is the rudder servo, satellite Rx's, fuel and fuel pump.
Part donations have also been coming in. Again superbad to the rescue with a set of front TT tail gears (which I'm sure I will need). Gaba when he shipped the helicopter to me included two sets of tail blades, a LiFe Battery and an onboard glow igniter for easier starting. I'm loving the members we have around here.
So now that you are caught up on what has happened in the past, lets get to today.
Most of you know I work nights and I sleep during the day. So when the mail comes I'm still asleep. So I knew when I woke up there would be a nice big package waiting for me. Little did I know there were actually two packages. The helicopter and the TT gears. It's a good day lol.
I first open the box with the gears, and oh they are great. I'm totally going to decimate these things lmao. Next it was the big box, the helicopter. I grab my knife and start cutting the paper off the box. As I start to pull the paper off (brown shipping paper) I hear my wife start laughing her ass off. She thought it was hilarious that the helicopter was wrapped in an x-mas tree box lol.
So I get the paper off and open the box up. I was met with bubble wrap that was taped together with duct tape. Yeah... Out comes the knife again and I start cutting into it and pulling parts out. And there were a lot of bubble wrapped parts lmao.
Once I got them all out, I decided to throw the heli together to test the bearings and such. Once it was together, I started checking.
First Thoughts
My first impression of the helicopter was it's been used, a lot. There are obvious signs of wear as well as some sun bleaching on the anodized aluminum. As I start to turn things I'm hearing noises and feeling binding. Sure, this may all be fine for most, but I'm very picky how my helicopters work and everything has to be perfect. Because when they are perfect, they are safe.
At this time I had to head off to work and I just couldn't help it, the heli had to come with me and so did my tool box. As I got to work I pulled it out of the truck and the officer that I was relieving was quite impressed with it. He also couldn't believe that the little engine on this heli puts out over 2hp.
Shortly after he left I started looking for the binding that I felt when I spun the head. First off I noticed the clutch bell bearings are shot. But this is not that big of a deal because when you are flying, the clutch bell is locked to the crankshaft by the clutch. So the bearings are not spinning when flying. Only when it's on the ground or when you are doing an auto down.
Great, things are looking up. A clutch bell is only about $13 so it's not a big deal to replace. Next I moved onto the tail. As some of you know I have not had the greatest of luck with TT tails. One little touch and they are toast and you are replacing things. So I want this thing as free as I can get it so there is no unneeded stress on the gears. So I started taking the tail apart to check it out.
When I got the tail apart, I noticed the front TT gears were very tight causing the most binding. I took the block completely apart and did some inspecting. I found out that the gear was not pushed all the way into the bearings. This would have been very bad to fly because the gears would have heated up until they melted and ended up in a crash. So I pushed them back into their full seated position and put the tail together again. There was still binding, this time in the back. So I took the rear block apart and checked all of the bearings just as I had on the front. Bearings on this thing are perfect. Little wet, but good. After seating that gear as well, the tail is as free as I'm going to get it until I start cleaning bearings. Which I dont' have anything here to clean them with. So that will just have to wait.
Once the tail was back on I started looking it over and remembered those stickers that were on the blades. Now I'm all for flashy helicopters but covering up the best part of the blades was not going to happen, not on this heli. So I peeled them off and noticed the blades are a yellowish color. This can mean a lot of things, but most likely it comes from a smoking household. Not a big deal to me, but others might want to remember this if they have problems around smoke.
As I started looking I started to notice more and more issues with this helicopter. First off the previous owner decided that he did not want to run a full size servo like the 620 on his throttle and decided to run a mini servo. Well this helicopter is not made for mini servos like the 500's so what did he do? He glued in a block of wood to secure the servo to. I can not stress this enough, DO NOT DO THIS!!! if that block comes loose, the heli is either going to completely lose throttle, or it's going to go WOT. Either way, it's not good. Either you are going to crash your heli, or you are going to destroy a $350 engine.
So now I get to cut this piece of wood off the frame and try to get it cleaned up so you never even knew it was there. This could be interesting and I may end up just buying new frame pieces. I'm also going to need one more servo mounting hardware set. Not that big of a deal.
Once that was done, I started popping on some of the links, and wow are they loose. I will definitely be replacing these before this thing sees any air. I just don't feel safe flying it with links this loose. It's just not safe.
There is one servo mount that I have no idea what it's for. I'm guessing it may be for a multi-gov to hold a smaller servo that will adjust your high end needle but I'm not sure. I'm sure Gaba can fill us in on this.
If we want to dig further into the issues that are personal and not required for safety, it would have to be the choice of colors that is on this thing. White blades, yellow skids and fuel tubing, neon green decals on the tail fins, orange pincher to kill fuel flow and the list goes on. Such as mainly blue aluminum, then there is some bare aluminum and then there is some black. JUST PICK A COLOR!!! lol
But all in all, this was still a great buy. Until I test the 3GX that is. If the 3GX doesnt' work, then we got burned on this deal. But if it does work, then it was worth every penny. Same goes for the engine. And which I might add I have another part on order for it.
If you feel that you would like to donate and get your name put on this helicopter for everyone to see, please click the Donate button at the top of the forum, or send the money to tonydnewlin@aol.com via paypal. You will see that the email address is linked to the official Rc-Help PayPal account. ALL money donated will go directly back into either the helicopter, or the forum.
We will also accept parts donations for an Align 600 Nitro Pro as well. Any parts are welcome. I have to thank each and every member of this great forum for all that they have done to help this build. At this rate, we will have this bird in the air in no time!
I will have much more on this build, including videos as time goes on. I just thought I would post up my thoughts on the heli as I took it out of the box and looked it over. This is going to be such a great helicopter. I can't wait!
