450 Align TRex 450 Pro v2 3 GX build
- Thread starter Chompwat
- Start date
Great news Tom, I'm so glad you are getting on well with your 450 Pro.
I enjoyed reading your review, it was very well written and completely engaging.
I have now bought all the parts I need to rebuild mine, and it will be a complete rebuild. So hopefully I will get her back in the air later in the week.
Hopefully the cyclic servos are ok. The pitch and elevator servos have a very slight click when the servo arm is moved through its arc without power.
I have stripped them and cannot see any damage to the gears and the shafts appear straight.
With power on they move freely and quietly through their full travel with no hint of a problem, I have even applied a light load to them.
Do you guys use any kind of lube within the metal gear servos, as they are all bone dry?
I enjoyed reading your review, it was very well written and completely engaging.
I have now bought all the parts I need to rebuild mine, and it will be a complete rebuild. So hopefully I will get her back in the air later in the week.
Hopefully the cyclic servos are ok. The pitch and elevator servos have a very slight click when the servo arm is moved through its arc without power.
I have stripped them and cannot see any damage to the gears and the shafts appear straight.
With power on they move freely and quietly through their full travel with no hint of a problem, I have even applied a light load to them.
Do you guys use any kind of lube within the metal gear servos, as they are all bone dry?
I did a stess test of the Align servos this afternoon. I was flying figure 8's, dpoing banked turns and generally getting way too brave when I went by myself pretty fast and got a balled up trying to stop it or turn it arojnd and put her in with the big "thump". Jerked the tail boom off altogether, all the linkage back there is junk, main blade broke, main shaft bent, probabyl feathering shaft but that looks like it! I got brave, grew dumb thumbs and now I get to fix her up. I am impressed with how little damage there is considering the "thump" it made.
Oh well, I am doing turns anyway.
Oh well, I am doing turns anyway.
Getting video of me is hard. I have to take the wife with me and let her try to keep up with whatever I am flying. we did a little video a week or so ago though for my review of the Trex 450 Pro. You can see that at the link below.
Align T-Rex 450 Pro - Fighting My Alzheimer's
Gotta finish my coffee, then out to the shop to tear it down and make a parts list. It will fly again soon! A little less brave this time though....
I am having a small issue with the ESC that came with my Trex 450 Pro. Sometimes the tones it emits when intializing are clearly audible but most times they are almost silent and you really have to get close to hear them. I am wondering if that varying loudness of the tones might be indicating some other issue that could cause problems with the Trex?
Tony
Staff member
The tones are actually made by the motor. The ESC sends a high frequency signal to the motor and the can sings. If it's muffled, then I would pull the motor out and check for dirt/grass inside the can and check the bearings. Also check for anything touching the can of the motor. If you hold the motor with your fingers while you initialize it, you can muffle it that way as well.
Wow. It would have never occured to me that the sounds were coming from the motor, but I couldn;t figure out how the ESC was doing it either. anyway, will look at the motor.
Am just about to run through the BeastX once after the post-crash rebuild just to check everything and then go out and fly it in the yard. I have also done the whole swashplate alignment and reset the blades to zero so this thing shojld be close to perfect again. Or so I hope.
What kind of blade angles up and down is a good general setting for the 450? I have it set at about 12 degrees positive and negative right now and after the first re-maiden it seems a little touchy to me for holding an altitude. I was thinking of taking it down to 10 degrees positive and negative maybe?
Tony
Staff member
You are thinking perfectly! If you are getting a lot of bobbing up and down due to the wind, then you can lower your collective. I can't remember off the top of my head with the BX, but I think you can do it in teh swash mix menu. Don't quote me on this, I have only set this gyro up once. Set it and forget it is what happened lol. But make sure you can adjust it in the Tx first before you actually do it.
Island Breeze
Senior Rc-Help Member
I believe you have to set it thru the BX...Somewhere int the K thru N menu. As for your pitch, 10 pos and neg is fine. Then again you set it to your liking. Try 10 and lower your HS.
I set blade angle to 10 degrees negative and positive ande left the head speed at 3200 rpm (my new tach is very cool) and that seemed to work fine. I got in a few flights at home and then went out to eh flying field last evening. On the second flight out there I found something I hadn;t looked at in the big crash. About 30 feet up the tail rotor started giving up and the helo started turning around and I could not stop it with rudder input. I hit throttle hold and did a lousy autorotaion but did save it from most damage. The forward gear set while it looked fine at the umbrella and meshing gears I never looked inside of the female part of the umbrella gear which had stripped out. I apparently had the torque tube jammed in there hard enough to make it work for a while but then it rounded out.
Got all that fixed this morning and have been flying in the yard again. I am going to pull the head down again and start with leveling the swash plate and go through the whole setup again as I think I might have something a tad out somewhere. when the head gets up to speed and I start applying collective I sometimes get a short flutter sound, consistent now with three sets of balanced blades so that isn't. It seems to fly fine so I will just go through the setup again int he morning when the eyes are fresh and make sure that everything is as spot on as I can get it.
Life is not dull when you have a helicopter!
Got all that fixed this morning and have been flying in the yard again. I am going to pull the head down again and start with leveling the swash plate and go through the whole setup again as I think I might have something a tad out somewhere. when the head gets up to speed and I start applying collective I sometimes get a short flutter sound, consistent now with three sets of balanced blades so that isn't. It seems to fly fine so I will just go through the setup again int he morning when the eyes are fresh and make sure that everything is as spot on as I can get it.
Life is not dull when you have a helicopter!
Tony
Staff member
Ah yes, the good ole TT gears. Any time the tail even hints of touching the ground, check those gears carefully. If you don't have them (and you may have already said yo udo have them, I have slept, kinda lol), get the black gears, they are much stronger.
The fact that you were able to lose a tail and still had mind enough to hit T-Hold and do a somewhat auto is amazing with as new as you are to the hobby, great job
The fact that you were able to lose a tail and still had mind enough to hit T-Hold and do a somewhat auto is amazing with as new as you are to the hobby, great job
Ah yes, the good ole TT gears. Any time the tail even hints of touching the ground, check those gears carefully. If you don't have them (and you may have already said yo udo have them, I have slept, kinda lol), get the black gears, they are much stronger.
The fact that you were able to lose a tail and still had mind enough to hit T-Hold and do a somewhat auto is amazing with as new as you are to the hobby, great job
Got the black gears throughout the tail section now, and a black main gear.
as for the autorotation (sort of) I am trying to focus on the important stuff first, like learning to use the throttle hold and collective to my benefit. I will work on flying around the field doing fancy stuff when that comes on its own. First things first. I need to get the hang of the controls and learn to tweak the helicopter and it's systems so I understand what is happening when I want to try getting fancy. I see the guys at our field who come out with a helicoptyer and say, this thing is supposed to fly upside down huh? so they flip it over and usually wind up making another divot in the runway. I'll take my time learning to be fancy in the air and maybe save a few bucks along the way.
I do have Phoenix and practice on there when I can. All too often when I have some free time and it is light out I may go out to the field. (Got a new Extra that is a rocket but tracks on rails....) I hover my planes for a while, hobver my helicopter for a while, hover my planes for a while, snap roll my helicopter....ooops.