RunRyder - HDX300, continuing saga

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e-HeliDirect HDX 300-600 > HDX300, continuing saga

gmcullan
Veteran
Location: Southbridge, MA

Dumb-thumbed big time.

Well, you can bend (severely!) the new hardened main shaft. While in inverted forward flight, I got a little low. No problem, right? Just add in some collective and climb. Well, I don't normally fly in idle up let alone inverted, so I raised the stick rather than dropping it. I knew right away that I'd make the wrong move, but it was too late. Lost the blades, flybar, spindle, and main shaft. So yes, you can bend the new main shaft. Looks like another order heading to HeliDirect.

Gerry Cullan,
HB CP2, T-Rex 450 SE & SA, HDX300, MicroHeli Monster, Mini-Titan, Blade 400

06-12-2007 Over year old.

rky5
Veteran
Location: Oak Hills california

The only problem I keep having with the HDX converison is the tail shaft, It keeps bending. I think maybe the motor is to strong for the little guy. I am using a Brushless 400 out of a Shogun and the plastic head from the Blade cp with the plastic tail housing from Helidirect.

This little puppy is a blast to fly but the tail is becoming a problem.
At first if I hit the throttle a little to hard or went to Idle up it would twist from the torque. So I put a little screw in the tail housing that just sticks in the metal boom.... cured that. Then I noticed if I got on the throttle to fast it would bend the tail shaft.......so I changed the throttle curve and peaked it out at 70% that helped but not a cure.

Do the metal tail housings come with a heaver shaft? and if so Im already running a little tail heavy I dont know if I want the weight from the metal housing?

06-12-2007 Over year old.

gmcullan
Veteran
Location: Southbridge, MA

I'm running the new, narrower tail box with the hardened shaft. Very smooth and stable. I'm using the HDX300 outrunner motor. I suspect it is smaller in both size and output as compared with the one you're using.

Gerry Cullan,
HB CP2, T-Rex 450 SE & SA, HDX300, MicroHeli Monster, Mini-Titan, Blade 400

06-12-2007 Over year old.

rccarguy
Senior Heliman
Location: Boston MA

My turn for an OOPS...

Well, it's my own fault, I should know better than to fly a Heli this small in gusty 25 mph winds! Gotta love those ejector pin mainshafts, the rotor blade did this to the tail boom and the mainshaft is still perfectly true. Blade hit the boom hard enough to shear the through bolt holding the head to the shaft.

Also have to say I love these 255mm Heli-Direct CF blades, not a mark to be seen after slamming the tailboom, the through bolt shearing saved the blades, pretty good failsafe even if it wasn't an intentional part of the design

Unfortunately I don't have another Compy 300 tailboom on hand, so I guess I'll have to shorten one of the Trex spares to fit until I can order one from Hong Kong.

I learned to fly on a Trex, I learned to crash on a Blade CP...

06-13-2007 Over year old.

rky5
Veteran
Location: Oak Hills california

I cured my tail problem. I got a Shogun Tail slider and blade grips with a tail shaft. It is working really good now.

They look almost the same as what came with the kit except the shaft is heavy duty next to the Kit tail assembly.
I took it up this morning twice and got on it no problems , very nice flying little heli.
Ready to try a little inverted hover with it, not sure what to expect, it is fairly heavy for a little heli!

06-14-2007 Over year old.

gmcullan
Veteran
Location: Southbridge, MA

Hi Mark,

Should this thread now be over in the HeliDirect HDX forum? It's great to see the board expand and grow!

Best regards,

Gerry Cullan

Gerry Cullan,
HB CP2, T-Rex 450 SE & SA, HDX300, MicroHeli Monster, Mini-Titan, Blade 400

06-23-2007 Over year old.

gmcullan
Veteran
Location: Southbridge, MA

I've been promising photos of the battery try I built and installed on my HDX300. The tray is cut and bent from 0.050" Lexan (tm). The spacer is a piece of 2.5 mm thick carbon fiber that was cut from an old R/C pan car chassis. These were super-glued to the HDX300 frame. As noted in the photos, a combination of Velco strips and straps are used to secure the battery.

Gerry Cullan,
HB CP2, T-Rex 450 SE & SA, HDX300, MicroHeli Monster, Mini-Titan, Blade 400

07-14-2007 Over year old.

gmcullan
Veteran
Location: Southbridge, MA

Continuing on with the HDX300, I use this little Lexan (tm) canopy that I got from HeliDirect. Sure wish they had more of them! You can see in the photos how I snap the canopy over two sets of canopy mounting posts. I then use four of the Blade head damping "O" rings snapped on over the ends of the posts. This insures that the canopy is securely attached.

Gerry Cullan,
HB CP2, T-Rex 450 SE & SA, HDX300, MicroHeli Monster, Mini-Titan, Blade 400

07-14-2007 Over year old.

gmcullan
Veteran
Location: Southbridge, MA

Here's the narrow tail box. This is fitted with the latest hard shaft and Delrin (tm) pulley. Very good performance and durability from this setup.

Gerry Cullan,
HB CP2, T-Rex 450 SE & SA, HDX300, MicroHeli Monster, Mini-Titan, Blade 400

07-14-2007 Over year old.

gmcullan
Veteran
Location: Southbridge, MA

Funky Chicken on Spool-up!

I don't know exactly what happened, but this evening during spool-up my HDX300 went nuts. I don't know if I had a link failure. Of that I might never know, for I can't find the links that the heli threw. The V3 mainshaft that I was trying bend like this before the heli even flipped over. I wish I had video, for it all happened sooooo quickly. I immediately throttled down and hit throttle hold. So there hopefully will be no damage to the ESC and motor. You'll notice from the photos that the anti-rotation bracket is missing. This was torn off and is one of the missing parts. Anyway, here are the photos. I'll be spending the remainder of the evening tearing apart the heli.

Gerry Cullan,
HB CP2, T-Rex 450 SE & SA, HDX300, MicroHeli Monster, Mini-Titan, Blade 400

07-31-2007 Over year old.

gmcullan
Veteran
Location: Southbridge, MA

Damage assessment

This was my worst crash to date with my HDX300, and I never even left the ground!

Spindle, mainshaft (bent at almost a 45 degree angle!!), mixing arms, flybar cage, flybar, all linkage other than the tail rotor, all three CCPM servo gear sets, one servo case.

As responsive as the V3 head is, the tall 3.00 mm mainshaft is problematic. For giggles and grins, I'm going to try one of the tall MicroHeli mainshafts (AR) and a MicroHeli head.

The HDX300 experiments will continue!

Gerry Cullan,
HB CP2, T-Rex 450 SE & SA, HDX300, MicroHeli Monster, Mini-Titan, Blade 400

07-31-2007 Over year old.

mastic
Senior Heliman
Location: Tallahassee,Fla

Ive been flying helis for a few years and what made me buy this 300 Ill never know. I have had this heli built for a week and barely got it to hover.its odvious the HS needed to fly nicely will bend these mainshafts. How can helidirect sell something they know wont work.Im going to order some of the Plastix injector pins or whatever they are today and im sending a bill to HELIDIRECT!!!!HAHAHAHAAHAHAHA..yeah right

07-31-2007 Over year old.

rccarguy
Senior Heliman
Location: Boston MA

Quote
I don't know exactly what happened, but this evening during spool-up my HDX300 went nuts. I don't know if I had a link failure. Of that I might never know, for I can't find the links that the heli threw.

Non hardened mainshaft, period. Same exact thing happened to me the first time I tried to spool up one of those heads on my J-Team/Compy 300, parts flying everywhere and the heli doing the funky chicken in the middle of the living room

Once I found out about the ejector pin mainshaft fix and made one for myself, never had another problem with the shaft bending like that. It had many successful flights until I stuffed it into the dirt one too many times and wound up with a bit of runout making the head spin eccentric on spool up. I haven't had an opportunity to cut a new shaft for it yet, but it doesn't really matter right now since I "borrowed" some of the Compy's electronics for the HoneyBee King 2 I just bought.

I learned to fly on a Trex, I learned to crash on a Blade CP...

07-31-2007 Over year old.

gmcullan
Veteran
Location: Southbridge, MA

More damage found while doing the repairs. While all three cyclic servos had stripped gears and one with a broken case, two of the three also have fried electronics. Additionally, the main gear is stripped.

I started reassembly this evening. I have no idea as to what servos this was designed for. S75 servoes are slightly too tall. I put on three small Tower-Pro servos and they are slightly too short. I ended up using my Sherline lathe and turning off approximately 0.045" from the shoulder that locates the upper servo mounting frame. This allowed the top frame to properly match up to the servo mounting tabs.

I'm going to experiment with a shorter main shaft. 95 mm seems like it should work nicely.

The other thing I'm going to work on is the height of the landing skids. The narrow Shogun skids that came with my HDX300 are way too narrow. The "super-skid" type of retrofit are too low. I purchased the "tall" landing skids from HeliDirect. That was a joke, as they are no higher than the "normal" skids. I'm going to make some Delrin stand-offs so as to get the heli up to a reasonable and correct stance.

Yes, I know. It's pathetic and I shouldn't have to do all this just to end up with a reliable and good flying heli. But I'm stubborn and determined to make this thing work.

And this is not evening mentioning the mainshaft and rotor head work that will be required. I spent several hours this evening making shafts of different lengths and material combinations.

Stay tuned for more experiment and hopefully successful results.

Gerry Cullan,
HB CP2, T-Rex 450 SE & SA, HDX300, MicroHeli Monster, Mini-Titan, Blade 400

08-08-2007 Over year old.

gmcullan
Veteran
Location: Southbridge, MA

I finally got around today to making the landing gear standoffs. I raised the heli 12 mm. This gives some nice clearance to the tail rotor. The standoffs are made from nylon rod, through-drilled. A 2.5 mm bolt is run through the "tall" gear (that's a laugh!), the spacer, and then the frame tab. The bolts are just long enough to take a locking-insert nut. This will insure that the gear does not rip free. That's what happened with my killer funky-chicken on the kitchen floor.

The more I work at repairing this, the more pissed I get. I can't believe the amount of damage that resulted in this spoolup. I haven't even crashed in flight yet. It had been flying so good!

From reviewing the damaged/missing components, I believe I had a failure of one of the head links that allowed a rotor blade to flip over. This happened just prior to lift off.

The amount of damage was amazing. The main shaft was bent at a 45 degree angle, all the linkages were damaged or missing, the main gear was stripped, head trashed, all three cyclic servos fatally damaged, three out of four landing skid bolt ripped out. Oh, and the main shaft bearings are damaged. About the only parts that avoided the carnage were the main frame, tail boom, and tail box and blades.

Oh well, I'll get it back together and flying eventually.

Gerry Cullan,
HB CP2, T-Rex 450 SE & SA, HDX300, MicroHeli Monster, Mini-Titan, Blade 400

08-14-2007 Over year old.

lryansl
Senior Heliman
Location: Yuma, Arizona

You should have gone with the e rod shaft much stronger.

08-14-2007 Over year old.

gmcullan
Veteran
Location: Southbridge, MA

I've made a couple of them in different lengths. I'm working toward how short can it be and still have it work as it should. I've also had good results with my stainless steel/carbon-fiber cored shafts. Unfortunately, I had a V3 shaft in when the incident happened. I was getting ready to do some testing and was going to use the V3 as the baseline. The second planned test was an E-rod shaft 95 mm in length. The third test was to be one of my composit shafts also in 95 mm length.

I've made a couple of other interesting changes and will post photos in a couple of days.

Gerry Cullan,
HB CP2, T-Rex 450 SE & SA, HDX300, MicroHeli Monster, Mini-Titan, Blade 400

08-14-2007 Over year old.

gmcullan
Veteran
Location: Southbridge, MA

I promised photos, so here they are. I'm not sure of the order, but I'm sure you'll figure them out.

The landing gear stand-offs are made from R/C car body post material. This nylon based material should hold up well to the demands of a landing skid system. By the way, you can see on one of the photos how nicely the tail of the heli is elevated.

I also tried to get some close-up photos of the upper servo mounting bracket as it sits upon the central pedistal. I have no idea as to what servo the HDX300 was developed around. But if assembled with S75 or similar sized servos, the upper servo bracket could not be installed set upon the pedistal servo. The small servos currently installed required that the pedistal shoulder be lowered approximately 0.032". This was accomplished by chucking the pedistal into my Sherline lathe and turning down the shoulder height.

The shaft shown in the photo is based on ejector rod and is 95 mm in length. I think this shorter length is going to be fairly significant as it will: reduce bending moments in the shaft; move the rotor head closer to the center of roll; increase the responsiveness of the heli in both inverted and upright flight.

So this is how the heli sits now. The next step wil be the rebuilding of the main rotor head.

OH, I almost forgot!!!!!! As I was reassembling the drive train, I could not get a mainshaft to run true. This was with factory shafts, my stainless steel/carbon fiber cored shafts, and injector rod shafts. The last two shaft I KNEW were straight! It turned out that the mainshaft ball bearings were trashed! Even though the felt smooth in operation, they were no longer concentric. A new set of bearings took care of that.

So as a suggestion, if you've stuffed your heli in a couple of times and are having runout problems even with new shafts, check out your mainshaft bearings.

Gerry Cullan,
HB CP2, T-Rex 450 SE & SA, HDX300, MicroHeli Monster, Mini-Titan, Blade 400

08-16-2007 Over year old.

rccarguy
Senior Heliman
Location: Boston MA

Quote
So as a suggestion, if you've stuffed your heli in a couple of times and are having runout problems even with new shafts, check out your mainshaft bearings

Good point Gerry. I haven't looked at mine since the alleged bent ejector rod mainshaft incident, maybe the shaft isn't actually bent, could be a case of trashed bearings! I do find it hard to believe that one of the e-rod shafts actually could bend, I would think it would break first, or maybe it trashed the bearings as you found out. After the crash the top of the rotor head was spinning a bit eccentric so I assumed the shaft had bent, I'll have to dig it out of the box it's hiding in and have another look.

Not that it matters very much at the moment, I "borrowed" a large portion of the electronics out of it to setup a Honey Bee King 2, a 300 class heli that can stand a bit of abuse. Mainshaft on the HBK 2 is the same diameter as a Trex, no worries about bending one spooling up

I learned to fly on a Trex, I learned to crash on a Blade CP...

08-16-2007 Over year old.

lryansl
Senior Heliman
Location: Yuma, Arizona

I just did a 3mm tail mod a couple days ago using this http://www.helidirect.com/product_i...&products_id=75 All I had to do was pop out the 2mm bearings insert some 3mm bearings i had laying around and then used a 3mm slider arm that i had from a blackhawk 3d pro, drill out the hub for the blades grips and it looks great now ill get some pics up in a little. You might want to give it a try gmcullan.

heres the picture http://users.adelphia.net/~mstatig/3mmtailmod.jpg

08-17-2007 Over year old.

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e-HeliDirect HDX 300-600 > HDX300, continuing saga

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