jbeech
rrAdvertiser
Location: Sanford, FL (Orlando area)
| Chris,
One of my hobbies is as an amateur aquarist. With breeding, the order of the day is "cull ruthlessly" as you endeavor to enhance a strain, or feature. Survival of the fittest is how it's most often phrased.
Similarly, with model helicopters, some ideas look great on paper. And they may even be incredibly beautiful when translated into aluminum, but then they just don't work so good in practice. It sucks, it's expensive, but ultimately if I release it, customers (rightly so) complain bitterly. Look what happened with Align and their fan issues! Anyway, the first iteration of the tail pitch control on the Wildcat is a perfect example.
Frankly, it looked simply wonderful on paper, I mean really great! But as testing progressed we were distressed to learn it just wasn't working out. What was wrong? Well, for starters, flight testing quickly, and I mean real quickly, revealed an incredible amount of slop built up - this was "not" acceptable. Naturally we fiddlled with it in an attempt to resolve the issue. By the way, there's no manual for how to run a model helicopter company, there's a fair bit of being in a maze, i.e. following what occasionally turn out to be blind alleys that bring you up short and force course reversals. I'm learning on the job, so to speak.
Anyway, first, we learned that we had an itty bitty bind at mid-travel of the tail pitch control assembly. So slight that we actually wondered if we had a batch of bent tail output shafts, which wasn't the case. And pretty much regardless of what we did, it just wouldn't go away. In fact, everything we did just made it worse, i.e. manifested itself as more slop. And if we ignored it and just flew the machine, it instead wore slop into the system all by itself! Did I mention it happened quickly? I mean in a matter of a few dozen flights - would you find this acceptable after paying a fair price for the machine? In short, it was junk, beautiful but nonetheless . . . junk.
Basically, it's an issue of tolerances. Remember, we're pretty new at working with aluminum because our previous experience is with plastic. What happens is that at the greatly reduced scale these mini-class machines are constructed on, fit and finish that's acceptable with a 50 or 90-class heli just won't cut it. It's because the slight imperfections, which are always present, i.e. tolerance, are magnified all out of proportion. Please have patience because we're learning - quickly too.
In short, the design was imperfect, but worse, what with all the tiny bits of aluminum, was how we were shocked to discover how what began as an almost insignificant amount of bind became a significant amount of slop. Frankly, I have a pretty good reputation, add to this it didn't come easily, and I aim to keep it so we would never legitimately consider putting it on the market as things stood (I'm proud of my reputation)!
So there we were, we had a tail pitch control design that "looked" great, but like a gorgeous gal with a herpes sore on her lip, we couldn't deal with it. The design defects meant we had to go back to square one. Sure I kept it to myself. After all, I knew we would resolve the issues, but what would you have me do, blab my head off about it on RunRyder before I even had a solution? In short, it wasn't something I could proudly offer to my customers so I made an executive decision, the one I get paid the big bucks to make . . . we trashed the design and started over, i.e. we s#it canned it!
Look, it takes a lot of work to get these things done because it's not just imagine it and bingo it exists. Our latest iteration of the tail pitch control (below) is a vast improvement - in fact, it's patent pending, which is why I've been keeping a low profile and not responding within this thread (until now). For what it's worth, this piece of tail doesn't have any herpes sores (pun intended) and best of all, it actually feels like a bigger machine versus having that "twitchy" feel so common to the mini class - it's really solid.
Folks, we're not perfect, but I'm quite proud of how our machines tend to work straight out of the box, i.e. without using paying customers as guinea pigs (overly much). So Chris, yes, you are sort of on the right track because there are some significant changes coming down the pike vis-à-vis the Wildcat, but I'm just not quite ready to tip my hand all in just yet. Patience please.
Regards,
John Beech - GM (and janitor)
Audacity Models |
