RAK402
Veteran
Location: Alhambra, CA
| Hello Marc,
I think much of what you have there is from what I posted a while back.
The Falcon Mark I first appeared in the late 1970's at Hobby Shack (at least that is where I first saw it). There were some assembly problems surrounding the motor mounts, as I recall.
One guy had a Mark I at the field. I seem to recall helping him several times (I remember he was from Japan, and corrected my American pronunciation of the word "Hirobo" from "Here-RO-bo" to "HEE-ro-bo".
It was, as mentioned before, auto stable.
I set up a couple of 505's, there were refinements to the frames (things now fit properly) and the odd washout assembly was gone. The pitch on the paddles decreased as the pitch in the blades increased. Again, these were "autostable"-you could give a control input and let go, and the machine would oscillate a bit, then the oscillation would damp out, and it would just hang there.
This head design was carried over into, at least some, of the .60 sized scale machines (I had a Gazelle, complete with Fenestron tail unit and wet transmission, which had this head in "natural" finish.
The equalizing levers ("I" levers) were missing from between the swashplate and the servos (these were stock on the 707 and 808, and kept the swash trim from changing as the collective was raised and lowered). These were also deleted from the Competitor version of the 808 by GMP (as unnecessarily complicating things).
Fit and finish of the 505 was much better than the Mar I and Mark II. The side frames were now red anodized aluminum, and the head parts were finished in a "gun-metal" color (sometimes tinted slightly green).
All of the ball links in these kits, were made of a white plastic, which was somewhat brittle. The balls were steel, with a black coating, and very uneven in diameter. Brief experience with these links taught us to throw both the ball and the link away. We replaced everything with Kavan links at the time.
The clutches on all of these machines were some sort of plastic or resin, and the melted and broke fairly easily. The 808 was the first Hirobo I had seen which did not have the plastic clutch.
I flew a 707 for several years (people referred to these as "Toaster" at the field, due to their appearance). They flew quite well, despite their appearance. Starting was via belt (as it was for all of these) through a slot in one side of the canopy. The 707 had a vacu-formed seat assembly, so that one could put pilot figures in (I know of one example,still in existance, which has rubber "Space Aliens" for pilots. I flew that one many times also. These were somewhat underpowered, being intended by the manufacturer for a .50 sized engine, but being about the same size as the Schluter Heliboy and American R/C Commander, which were the standard aerobatic helicopters at the time.
I will try to remember more. I probably also have a picture from right before the 1984 Nationals (I took three 808's and one 707 to Reno that year).
I will post more, when I can remember more (unless it is too boring). |
