EP.65: Main Rotorhead Deep Dive

Welcome to the Rotor Revolution RC Podcast. Wrian Birds. Alex Dean. Kenny Hutton. And Nick Wisdom. Alright, Alex, if you want to get a drink of water this quickly starts. What's up? Hello everybody, welcome to the rotor revolution. It's episode 65, all about the main rotor head. And I got through the whole open without Alex interrupting me. Hope that water was worth it. What's up everybody? How are you guys? Pretty good, pretty good. Oh pretty good man, yep. Everybody get their taxes done?

Taxes are done. I don't owe the government nothing. First or last year. Ten years, I swerve, man. I wish I could say that. My taxes are a trail of tears, but enough about that. Trailer, dear. Giving people way too much money. Amen. You know what's funny? Speaking of podcasting taxes, I got taxed on the income from the swag store. I was like, that's not fair. Yeah. What? What? Oh man.

I mean it's not significant or anything, but it was funny. I was like, Really? I get like a ten ninety nine from the swag sales? So I guess we went too legit. This is something cash under the table. Oh. Oh man, dude, I don't know about where you guys are in the country, but here in Atlanta, it is absolutely fantastic flying weather right now. It's like we skipped the spring this week. You know, it's just went straight summer. Yeah. It's hard to see like eighty.

Eighty five degrees, yeah, man. It's really weird. We'll see what it's gonna be like in July. Oh, I say bring on the heat, man. I can take it. I love the heat. What episode is this? Sixty five. Sixty five. Hey guys, I'm interrupting you now. No, you missed it. Yeah. You missed it. I thought you were just messing with me. Oh no, I like went as fast as I could while you were getting a drink of water. I heard I have headphones in and I could hear it the whole time. So thanks. You won't. Ha ha ha.

How's the weather in Texas? Do you have beautiful fine weather right now? Uh it n We're on our windy season and it also happens to be the Missing on enough rain season, and I'll talk about this more in my update, but I have flown basically in the past three days while it was raining. Bummer.

Who wants to go first with some updates this week? I I there's a lot I want to hear from. Brian, I want to hear about your Genesis testing and your lightweight stuff. I want to hear about this ESC testing that Alex has been mucking about with. There's a lot going on. Alex I wanna hear about it. Can I go? Absolutely. Okay, so I have flown a seven hundred a minimum of eight to ten flights a day for ten days in a row. What? I can't fly in my backyard. That means I went somewhere to do it.

Damn, dude. Nice. Yeah. Uh then I have no sympathy for the rain or wind for you. I mean I am choosing, right? Like This is so I've got Part of part of the reason for this is I d I have uh a chance to get the Aeon servos in and they're installed in a machine. You know the wind was just you speeding back and forth to the field. There was no wind. Exactly. It's actually kinda been nice. Like testing stuff in the wind is good. Like you can really extreme test something. So

Flying it in twenty five mile per hour wind has been okay to me. Like not disappointing, just I'm testing something so it's fine. But yeah, it's been twenty five mile an hour wind, misting or raining and kind of frustrating, especially when you're like really excited about something. So I'm in this

I I must thank Herman and Archie for their help with these the they also have these servos and they've been testing stuff and making changes. Not in the flybarless unit, but really inside the servos. So They have basically taken the rotor flight tune and said, Hey, we want these servos to fit anyone who gets them. And so rather than tuning the flybarless or your flight controller or whatever you want to call it to the servos, They have been tuning the servos to fit the tune that we have now.

Nice. So that anyone can get them and have success. So I know these things are are out. Like Kenny, did you get yours? Yet. Are they out for delivery or anything? Still have not got'em yeah. I know A Maine sold out of their initial order, so the second batch is supposed to be on the way. I actually asked that question before we recorded today so that I could at least say something about that for you guys. Um on that.

But I'm really impressed about it. If you wanna if you wanna really nerd out about it, we've been comparing black box logs and specifically like if you look at the pitch I'm going to talk about set point versus what your gyro is actually doing, which is what you commanded it to do versus what it actually is doing and how fast it's getting. And you can see that the set point on pitch, which is your elevator servo, is following along really, really close. Like the delay is kinda So

There's some promise there. I'm it's it's pretty cool actually what these things are doing. I'm super happy with the cyclic feel right now. And the collective feel. No. The tale I would not say is perfect, but we've only been playing with settings for a couple of days as of the day of this recording. So but the collective too, like the past today when I went out I I flew at lunch today. Which means I drove from work to the field thirty minutes both ways. It flew for like forty five minutes.

Much. I mean I we w we our office basically closes for an hour and a half for lunch every day. So Get time to do. But the past like two or three flights were really just me doing full collective pops just because the servos are so strong you can hear it like popping the blades. And I don't like to buy into a bunch of hype, but I'm excited about the technology behind these and I'm excited to see what will come as The work keeps getting put in on him.

That's good, man. That's actually pretty good. I mean, I know it's been a delay getting'em and all and you know, I I heard Archie's uh not Archie, but Augie's interview about them, talking about the technology. I mean you really gotta geek out to understand what this guy was talking about. So I understood what he you know, the software behind the servos and it's a lot. It's a lot. Um There's a lot going on.

I'm glad you got them It's been fun you know my concern is that I really don't wanna get on and like hype them up because I I don't think that every single person who gets them is gonna be blown away and be like, Oh my god, this is the greatest thing I've ever flown. And I say that because You kinda have to be pushing it hard to feel a servo's change in the way it flexes. Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. Like the higher RPM you go, the fat the the more you can really feel it because you're getting more of that directness out of it. Right. If you had to put just to put you in the hot seat, a percentage of improvement over just average, you know, experience with good servos in the past, is it five percent better? Is it a small improvement or a big improvement? I don't know. And I say I don't know, Nick. I'm not trying to dodge your question. No, but I'm not ready to answer that because Yeah.

We're still tuning, I'm still testing, and I don't have any flights without it raining while I was flying. I gotta tell you, you lost me at tuning. Like I the last thing I want to do is take a servo out of the box and have to tune the servo. Or they're The point. And that's why the servo's being tuned to fit the average tune that we're using today. So that you don't have to die.

So it's cool that they're doing that. You have a basically a product with a new technology in it that is being developed so that you don't have to retune everything, you know? That's so Alex, so h how would you test to compare to feel some differences? take take servo brand A against the um Aeon servos here. Very similar setup. Similar P I Ds, whatever the case may be. How can you test? What maneuver would you do to test differences between the two?

I mean the two major differences that I've noticed so far is the collective feel is enhanced. I don't think it has to do with servo speed. I think it has to do with the combination of speed and the torque of these things. The torque, yeah. Is crazy. So they center really well and when you give it an input it happens immediately. Same thing on Strength makes a big difference. Yeah. It really does. I y'all remember when Scott Graham was doing that test with all tail servos? Yep.

That didn't go as you wanted it to'cause they're super fast, but they don't have the same strength. And so you don't get the same centering and it doesn't I wonder I know you guys have spent some time playing with the tail, trying to get the performance where you want it.

Do you think that's because of a similar idea where it's really not a good idea to have four identical servos that serve two different purposes, like Cyclic and Tail? Is that part of the of what's going on? Just do we need different hardware for the tail, you think?

So if there's different hardware involved in a tail, typically what you're talking about is just regearing it. So you have less torque but more speed. Mm-hmm. We don't know because the tail does have a different tune on it. Like when you get the servos, they all have the same tune on it. You just have to say, This is gonna be a tail servo or this is gonna be a cyclic servo.

Uh and they have different basically dampening factors, different acceleration factors and different things like that inside of it. So I don't know yet. I can tell you it's very close. The tails feeling way better, but it's not It's not perfect yet, but it's Yeah. think with it being like it's still like a point zero five speed that it should have you know, have no issue being a tail servo, I would think.

I agree. And y'all remember what I said we're we're basically I say we, I've been involved in this group with Heck and and Archie and a few others that are in there with us, basically retuning the servo so that it works with your current tune. So that's just t kind of blindly having to test and try different things. Most of which has been done by Archie cause that man flies more than anyone I know.

Yeah, and can quickly look at a black box log and learn from it and improve at a exponentially rate faster than all of us. Yeah, him and Hack are both very good at it. Yeah. Yeah. Alex, what what what does it mean to tune the servo to work with your current FBL setup? What does that mean? Well if a cer let's say that you get different servos from different manufacturers.

you have more DK D gain than P gain, then you're gonna have to change your settings in your flight controller so that that works inside your flight controller, right? Okay, yeah. If you if you have a lower P and more D in a servo, then in your flight control you're gonna increase your P and use less D, right? Oh wow. Games. Okay. And so we've been adjusting those two parameters basically to converge and work with whatever your current setup is. The current average setup, I would say.

Yeah, I got it. Okay. And I I'm pretty sure that, you know, different FBLs will respond differently too, so Totally. So I'm just in the group that's with the rotor flight stuff. I know that Okay. I I think someone has it on a f a V bar. I don't know if anyone has it on Spirit in there yet, Nick. I don't know of anyone that does, but that doesn't mean that hasn't happened yet. Uh I'm curious. So out of the box performance. As good as current servos on the market?

So if all you want is a programmable center point and a removable servo lead, is it as good out of the box as everything else? Yeah, I mean you still have to get in okay, so no matter what, if you buy the survey, you need to have the freaking box because you have to tell it Well, sure. It's what because you can choose different cyclic settings also. Like, do you want it to be ultra fast or do you want it to be ultra stable? Like you can choose that parameter. Yeah.

But yeah, absolutely. Cyclic wise, it might be the best thing I've found. Cyclic wise. It's so good, dude. So I just don't want to come out and say that. and sell it to you and then you get it and say, Well, this feels the same to me. Okay. So No, no. I I'm being very careful to say that. Yeah, no, that's a good thing. And the more I'm hearing I'm like, Oh, that sounds like something I have to tune. I have zero interest in any more tuning in my life.

think so dude. Once once this gets done, it won't it shouldn't be. It should be a drop in and be happy. But it is done, it's released.

Yeah. I've noticed this with some of the servos I've been messing with. Like they have different programming software and they're all kind of similar and it does matter how you change the dampening and everything because some of them are just so direct and fast that you have to kinda Tune it to work with your like like Alex said, like the gains that you already have set or just average gains because it might be too twitchy or too sensitive, you know, and act different if it's too far off.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean I I'm glad it is making the folks who really enjoy this type of process very, very happy. And I know they're they're really enjoying the results, but I think there's still a place in the market for a simple live programmable center point servo with removable servers. That just works out of the box in the same way, say, uh you know, twenty two oh eight does.

I don't know what will come in the future. I don't know if they will start shipping and you can just say, Hey, I want it to be shipped as a cyclic servo this way or not. That's a good point though. I'm sure we can ask for that and Yeah. Maybe The base gain settings set sent out. Yeah, totally. That'd be very cool actually. I mean it's not surprising. If we have FBLs that offer simplicity or all the tuning you could ever want, it's no surprise that we're starting to have servo options that way.

I'm excited about'em. It is different technology than your typical servo, so it's cool. Thank you.

All right. I am recording this little kind of update midweek, uh, after we recorded by myself, primarily because I had the opportunity to go out and fly again uh after we recorded and I'd only been flying my my machine with the Aeon servos in it and nothing else for a while. And I wanted a comparison. So the for the record, the the tune is kinda complete for the cyclic and for the tail and it is

It is so good. Uh it's exciting enough that I was out kind of flying by myself, like jumping up and down like this is So excited. Um And I wanted to kinda take my other machine out and and say, Hey, this is a machine that I loved. Let am I really feeling something or is it kind of in my head and I can hear it and I'm just flying it harder and harder? Uh no. It was like totally shocking to go back out with my other machine. Uh in in the r in the recording the guys had asked me

What are you feeling? Uh and Nick had asked for a percentage. Uh What I am feeling is the instantness that these servos have with the connection to the flybrawl ass unit. And what I mean by that is. Yeah, I I know they we've talked about latency and that just sounds like a bunch of mobo junk maybe to some people if you haven't bought into it. But dude

the way that these react is freaking ridiculous. It is instantaneous to the sticks. And I didn't even to to the point that you didn't know maybe that your old servos were slow until you've flown these back to back. This is truly mind blowing. Um Anyway, it's just been mind blowing. Uh you sh you should give these a shot. Really impressive. Uh, and I know that they've been tested on V bar now at this point, uh, with a couple of different test pilots and things as well. So

Uh I'm excited to keep sharing more with you, but I won't go on and on and on. All right.

Kenny, I know you've been tuning servos like You've noticed that with yours all I guess are you gonna talk about that today in your in your update? Oh yeah, I could go ahead and go. But I mean I don't I didn't really I've been working so much, so I didn't really get to

do a ton, but I've been, yeah, plugging and unplugging servos and doing the settings too. And the same kind of thing. Like I noticed, you know, sometimes it's too much dampening is like almost a delay. So like cyclic you might get not as good a response and then you lower it too much. And you might get twitchy, you know, shakes out of the cyclic and depends I noticed also if I switch

Main blades, you know, like I was tuning it on Rotor Tech Ultimates and I had it all perfect, you know, and I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna try the Ventures and I put them on there and then I was like it was totally different. It was more twitchy and totally different, you know,'cause the servers are Point zero five speed also what I'm using. But yeah, it changes with everything. Your hardware, you know, blades and everything can matter. It's kinda crazy. Oh blades.

I also have I guess I need to like disclose. I've been flying Azure for a while and I decided to join the Azure team. Um congrats. Yep. I typically try not to be biased but I've Thank you. I've really enjoyed those over everything else for A year or two in a row, so I'm happy to represent that. And I got to try did I already have the extreme blue? Blade. In the last episode. No, they were on the way, I think. Yeah, I don't think so yet.

Okay, well these I will sell to you. These are freaking amazing. I freaking love these. Ha ha ha. Really? Yeah, they should be available to purchase on the twentieth, so about the time this is released. So can you say a little bit about differences between the extremes and the pros now that you've flown both?

Okay, I have been flying actually all three blades from Azure this week. I have the reds on a machine, I have the pros on a machine, and I only have one set of the extremes. I have two sets, but one's a seven hundred, one's a seven fifteen. I've been primarily flying seven hundred. They are definitely a nice mix between the Reds and the Pros. And what I mean by that is you get kind of the flight characteristics of the pros with the stiffness of the reds and it just

Dude, it feels so good. The CG's different. I talked about that before than either one of those. But I just love the way they transition and the way they hold. Super fast forward flight. They're very, very stable, but they're still quick to respond when you want'em to. I don't know. Do you have the Aeon servos set up on a machine to where you can go kind of back to back? Like do you have two Yeah. at the same time. Sevens.

So you can kinda go back and forth and feel the difference in cyclic and everything? Yeah, I have one with the thetas on it and I have one with the Aeons on it. Yeah. Unfortunately. I do. Yeah. Yeah. Are you liking those? I d absolutely do love those. I'm excited to be on the team. I did not get the chance to try the M two blades. They did not come than one ninety fives, so I can't I can't tell you if carbon fiber blades are worth it on your two hundred size helicopter or not.

All right. You guys know I've been playing with ESCs, right? Yeah. I do. I love it. It's nice that you have these three similar models you can muck about with. I do. So since I have three M sevens right now, they each have a different ESC on them and different motor. And I am kinda playing with which one gets the longer flight times. And since we last spoke oh I bought something. Uh oh. Another yes. How about another Scorpion E S E? Yeah. Yeah. Ha ha.

All right, dude. So I went up to fly the first time. And I'm not kidding you, I got forty seconds more flight time doing like the same flight as I would normally do. And I was like, holy crap. Like even while I was flying, I could feel it. I was like, it's time to land. It's time to land. And I kept looking down at my radio going, Oh, I still have time. I still have time. And I still have time. It's crazy how that that forty seconds is a long time.

Yeah. Was checking your percentage was was lasting long? Looking down at my radio. Like, is it on silent? Like what's what's wrong? Did my radio turn off and I didn't know it? Thank you. Very cool. I also got the 5024 Scorpio motor and have a handful of fights on it. It's a good combo. It's a really good combo. A lot of guys are really happy with it. Curious how the motor does.

I kind of always uh You know how when the team guys get on there and they post how great their st their combo is and like they I just don't believe them. No, you're there's good reason to be skeptical of any brand for that matter. Yeah. This is a cool combo, dude.

I'm looking forward to more testing and I obviously I want to do a full blown ESC episode. I have some more testing to do on the Squire also. I've been y running fixed timing on it the whole time and I just turned on auto timing today. So I need to go back out and test that again also. And then I plan on taking that Squire ESC off and installing my YGE in it to see if I can get the head speed thing figured out. So I want to play with that also before we get to that episode.

But Hey Alex, what what's kind of the max amperage drawing? From a few of your flights. It depends on the ESC. And you know what's funny is that I always thought Scorpion was just under reporting what their peaks are. I don't think that's the case when you're getting that much longer fly. You know, there's gotta be something going on there. But Hobby Wing or on the Squire

Easily two hundred and fifty, two hundred and sixty amps, probably during a hard maneuver. Dude, with that Scorpion ESC, I'm seeing like a hundred and seventy amps. Like I could be running a one fifty. Yeah, I was curious dude,'cause th here's the deal too. So I I have a a Contronic Cosmic one seventy H VI sitting on the shelf out there. And I was like, man, I oughta send that to Alex and let him test it. Okay.

Oh I'd I'd send it to you, bro, and just let you test it out and see, you know, w how it performs. I I don't do three D with this thing, right? I'm only just this this little smooth F three C flights. How is it under a a heavy load like what you got how you Dude, I'd be down to try it. I'll try to shut it down probably. I can't. Try to shut it down. Yeah. Alright, I'll try it out. Yeah, I'm gonna send it to you.

I'll probably try it with the Ego Drift motor. I think it'd be the easiest for to drive. I think that Scorpio motors Different and I think it needs to be paired with a Scorpion EOC. Do you know how many how many watts that fifty twenty four is rated, like the motor? I don't know, dude. Usually like around eleven thousand or so, is what I was wondering. Well now I'm Googling it.

I think it's Nobas in that range or like you know, eleven thousand or something, but the can size is different on that one and stuff or the armature. I added up how much I've spent on motors and ESCs this past couple of weeks and it's very disappointing. Uh did you ask me peak power? What? Yeah. Eleven thousand five hundred, that's two seconds. Continuous powers five thousand seven hundred. That's about yeah, I think exnovas are like eleven thousand, so it's right there with it.

But specifically with that motor and the Scorpion ESC, I pull lower amps than I do with any other motor that I've tested so far. I'm also gonna try this on the the Combo of the Scorpion ESC on the combo motor. Yeah, that Watts number is the one to look at. That's directly correlated to how much power you're gonna get out of it. Usually if it's lower, then it's gonna be a pretty weak motor. Do do you think that they're accurate, the listings on these things?

I don't know, but I mean I've bought some motors before, you'll see when we'll say it's like, you know sixty five hundred watts and it's looks like it's still like a seven hundred motor, but then you run it and you can tell it's, you know, half as powerful or you know, it's weak. You can just once you look up the specs like that, if you see those numbers, you're like, oh crap, that's why it's so weak. Just'cause you're not going to be able to

The Ego Drift forty seven thirty is also a phenomenal motor. Like phenomenal dude. Now I'm looking up what that motor says it'll do. Yeah, that's a very good indicator. Kenny, I've literally never looked at that spec before. Ever. Do you guys look at that when you're buying motors? No. That's pretty much all I look at. Yeah. Ten if it's uh under ten thousand something on a seven hundred, I wouldn't even look at it. Do you want to move on or do you want me to continue looking this up? Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Oh, can we go back to talking about tuning servos? That was fascinating. Ha ha ha. I was trying to think of something smart to say, but I couldn't, so You got me. This is my new role on the podcast to just make fun of anyone who tunes anything. Well I brought my drink just in case you said the word spirit. Uh Excellent. That's coming up later. Chip on the motor and you gotta tune your motor too. Not just timing. Yeah. What's bots. Oh, man. I can't find it.

Brushless uh armature, you know, tuning ab ability inside of the motor where you can You know, someone asked me the other day, how do you know what you're doing with the servo tuning? And I was like, Uh I don't know, you just do it and see what happens. Like same way you know about everything else. Turn it one way, is it better or That's exactly right. If it's worse, go the other way. Uh Did you guys see? I did not know that people were gonna be this interested in the ESC thing like

I had put up a post on Facebook just with the pictures of the ESCs and I wanted to hear what people thought. Like, why do you like an ESC brand or whatever? I cannot believe that many people responded to that. It is interesting. There's a lot of brand loyalty in this hobby. Once people have like good luck it's locked in, you know, like the brand.

And I don't know if it's because people have tried every brand and then pick one or they just it's the first one they tried and they're loyal to it. I don't know. Angelo Alm Almasari said the best one he said all. I saw that I saw that one, yeah. That post has 141 people talking about it. It's ridiculous. Wow. I did not expect that. People have their favorite brands of things, which is great.

I mean you could have any of those smoke on you and then you would hate it, but it doesn't always mean that it was the ESC's fault either. It could be some other reason, you know. And you can find someone who had one break from every brand for that matter, like failures happen. Yep. Yeah, it happened. Yeah, it was interesting. You didn't include the castle cremations in that picture. I don't have any castles left anymore, unfortunately. Yeah.

They got such a bad rap. It's too bad. They like pioneered a lot of that stuff for us. Yeah, they did. You know what though? They're still big in the scale helicopter scene. It amazes me how many people on the spec list right castle ESEs. There's still plenty of Castle ESCs in there and other hobbies too. Like yeah. Yeah. They don't they don't push'em to three D limits, man. That's the that's the deal. As long as you don't push it to a three D limit, it's okay.

I'm sure if there's a new castle ESC it's fine. It's they had a bad batch or two and that was the end of them, wasn't it? I don't know. The way my brain goes, the more I spend on a helicopter, if I'm flying a ten thousand dollar helicopter, it's gonna have the best damn ESC I can buy in it. Right.

I used to use some of the one sixties and stuff, but the problem is that back then they didn't have BECs either. So that was just kinda like the drop it and go for something with the B E C in it, you know? Yeah. Uh, they still have the Phoenix Edge. Uh I'm on the castle website, so Not a lot of updates on air ESCs. Interesting. And the Talon, y'all remember the Talon? Still out there. Yeah, I used to have a eighty, I think, or a Talon ninety, whatever they were. So anything else, Alex?

No, I'm done. Thank you for listening to me talk for twenty minutes. Oh it's interesting. That was a great update, man. Did you just hear him get a text in the background telling him to shut up? So that was Kenny. Kenny said it's time for you to stop. Yeah. Oh, no one you guys can go. My update was like point five seconds during his update. It was just I've been messing with servos and got a few flights. Yeah.

I've been working too much. Yeah, I've got two days to go out and fly and and tuning and playing with servos and settings on rotor flight and that's about it. Just Wait, you have an M seven R two, right, Kenny? What do you think of it? Have you gotten enough lights on it yet?

Probably have like twenty I would say, fifteen or twenty, yeah. And it's it's awesome. Yeah, I like the cyclic on it too. Like like it rolls really well well and like peroing and stuff is awesome on it, I would say. That's probably its best feature.

And it does feel light. I mean, like I I don't know if I told you guys it's like both of'em. I weighed that one and I weighed my R S seven Ultra and they both weighed eight point two pounds with no battery, just like the canopy sitting on them so there weren't wasn't really a weight difference, but it does have a light lighter feel to it a little bit, but It cyclics really well.

I'm with you Kenny. I love the machine and the tails just I don't know. There's something about it that I love. I can't Can't say that enough. Yeah, I do like the uh like the obvious response you get when the battery does lock in with both tabs so you know it's good to go. Very secure. Yeah. It's got dual battery trait tabs. Yeah. Oh my god. You would love that on your F three C machine you gotta unlock two sides instead of one. Mm-hmm

Uh, that's that's still just my number one gripe about this Genesis is that damn battery tray. Ugh. Ha ha ha. Let's hear about this lightweight genesis. Yeah.

Yeah. So so I I I spoke to you guys last and and, you know, bought the new equipment, got it installed and and I left with I need to go test it now at the field and so Just to kinda give you a little recap, I I I went with this lightweight mindset with the Genesis now. I took it from It's about twelve point eight pounds or or five point eight one kilograms down to eleven point nine pounds or five point four kilograms.

I took out the the bigger pyromotor, the cosmic, and even the fifty three hundred milliamp battery stick. and put a smaller motor, a smaller ESC. I went to the Calibri uh ESC and I put two six S forty five hundred milliamp packs together, made it really light. It felt great. I was like so happy and ecstatic about that. Like Yes. And then Bitminer says, Hey, how's the CG? And I was like, Oh, I didn't even think about the CG. Oh my gosh. The CG was way off. Holy cow. Able to duper.

I got it close. So I started Pl I was talking with Nick and some of the guys in our Atlanta chat and Nick was like, Don't add weight. You know, if anything, try to move things around and and see if you can pull things forward as i as possible and uh and but don't add lead weight.'Cause I was gonna put some lead weight in the nose of the canopy but

People are like, no, don't do that. So I tried that. I tried pulling the battery as far forward as it could go to the point where I could like barely clip on the canopy. So I was like, okay, the battery can't go any further forward. So I left it where it was. And then on the bottom canopy base where the canopy kind of locks on to I have my backup battery. So I slid that forward a little bit too.

Then I tested the CG and it was close still a little bit tail heavy, but I can see it when I hover. So I pick up and hover, let the sticks go, and it just starts to creep backwards a little bit. Yeah. You know, and reaching out to some of the guys in the F three C community that were like, Well, you know, sometimes the C G P in office okay, but only if it's nose heavy, not when it's tail heavy. So I say, Yeah, exactly. Uh I've I've dealt with nose heavy but

Tell heavy, I can't deal with. So I flew it and just played with it. I did not have my 5300 battery stick with me. It was here at the house. And just got through the day with it. Was just I don't know, was just so disappointed because I really wanted to believe in this, you know? Disappointing'cause you went through the work to do it.

Oh so much work. So much work. Yeah. And and the idea behind this lightweight mindset is that, okay, so you can lower the head speed some, okay, to get a longer flight out of your battery stick. And it helps keep the ESC cooler when you have these fully covered canopies that really don't have good airflow through them. Right. Did they get that hot in there? They get hot, bro. They get really hot. The bigger ones do.

So so, you know, and then there's this big deal with the Calibri too, like, Oh, don't let it overheat. It will shut off on you. So I'm like scared. Right. Right. So I I'm like testing the you know, watching the temperature of my t telemetry every flight. And never got above like fifty eight degrees Celsius, which is Does it have like a little fan on it?

It does have a fan, so that that's a a plus with it. Ben Minor was telling me, he said, if he said, set your alarm for ADC. He said, if it ever gets to eighty C bring it down. I said, God man, will it get to ADC? He says, I don't know. He said it depends on what you're doing. Yeah. But I peaked out at fifty-eight degrees Celsius. So that was a plus. And that was running through a couple of the uh, you know, pretty long routines there.

So I was happy about that. But just really disappointed that the CG was off. So, you know, chatting with the F three C guys again, Ben said, You know what? Just put the fifty three hundred milliamp pack back in there, take the forty five hundred out. And so that's what I I I have a question about the CSC thing. Okay.

Are you using a motor that allows you to be in the right governor range around eighty percent? Are you like way out of the range? Correct. So and remember before uh when I built this guy, I had really no idea that I'd needed a motor with such a low K V on it. So I had my big, you know, Pyro seven fifty, fifty KV motor a five hundred KV motor in that thing with this little bitty ratio of seven point six.

Right. So I was running that thing for my hover mode, like I said, like thirty five percent. And then No, no, no, no, no. Right at fifty Right. Yeah. Um so got this smaller motor, smaller K V motor put in there. It got me up to seventy eight percent upstairs and got me right at about fifty percent in hover mode. So that was great. So it performs very well. It's still low at hover, right? That's still like creating a bunch of heat.

Absolutely. And so here's the deal with a lot of F three C guys, especially the Futaba guys, because they can take their Uh their gains above a hundred percent. There's a hun there's a there's a you know, yeah y you you mar you kinda marry the transmitter and the and the C GY, the the FBL in Futaba world. And and each unit can contain their own percentages of gain.

So you would say put your CGY up to like a hundred and fifty, but then you control that that percentage from the transmitter. And most folks will use maybe seventy five percent of the gains there off of that one hundred and fifty. From the CGY. But when you run it really high in hover mode, the servos get really hot. The ESC gets really hot. You know? And so um because I'm using rotor flight,

it really doesn't allow us to go above a hundred percent. And so my gains are are really comfortable. If if I had to kind of equate it to a Futaba world, it's it may be seventy percent. uh of you know, what what Futaba can put out. And so I I test touching my servos too to see how warm they get during hover.'Cause I'll do like a full ten minute just hover practice. that really tests the sorvos and put it down and see how how warm the sorvos are. They're warm, but they're not really like

fire hot like the Futavo servos get with that that system. So yes, I mean it it It's okay. And then upstairs too, Ben wasn't really worried about and I'm I'm saying Ben Minor'cause I I he and I were one on one with this thing. He said upstairs you should be okay because there is some decent airflow that comes through. I mean, it may be it may not be directly on the motor and the ESC, but you do have some airflow. He said, I'm more worried about your hover mode than your aerobatic. And yeah.

But, you know, like I said, I I got the fifty three hundred milliamp pack reinstalled now, tested the CG and it's a tad bit nose heavy. I was able to slide the battery back a little bit and I got Do you still shed weight though? Yeah, here we go. Okay.

Yeah, I I did shed a little bit. I went back up a few points. So now I'm back to uh well, I was at twelve point eight to begin with. Now I'm at twelve point four. Okay, and and pounds or or like Or five point eight one kilograms in the beginning, but now five point six now. Well still a half pound less, just about. Yeah, yeah. But I I I s I would probably still Uh bring the RPMs up maybe two hundred points there to to kinda offset that.

I do not know what you're talking about over hundred percent. What do you mean? With the the the gains? Yeah. Yeah, so the gyro gains in in Futaba will allow you to go to a hundred and fifty percent. Uh Of of of the max amount of gain input you can give your system, right? The FBL. So for Can you can you relate this to rotor flight for me?'Cause I don't understand. Like Yeah. Yeah, we go to RPIDs. So and and in in the Futabo world, I mean, you know, you just you just play with w one rate for

uh uh the P I Ds, right? In in our world, we we have all three. Well, if you could combine all three. And kinda think about the max values you can put in there. You know, that's let's call two hundred the max for for P I Ds. That's a hundred percent of the gains that you can give each one of those Oh okay. Axi.

Same opening Futaba World. Futababa just allows you to go a little bit more. They'll allow you to do a hundred and fifty percent. So we two hundred over here, they'll be just three hundred. Are you telling me that you can turn it up to eleven? Oh my god. Yes. But But with that, dude, it com it it it gives so much intense power to this thing that it overheats the servos. The servos get hot.

They get really hot when when the gains are that high. Now of course when you go to aerobatic mode, they come way down. You don't you don't run a hundred. In aerobic. It's just higher head speed at this point and you you know, whatever. But yeah, I mean that's That's that's Futaba World and that's those guys thinking about overheating at hubber mode. Well, I don't get that in in the rotor flight world. So it it was really nice.

geared toward me. But anyway. But no, I I I got the like I said, I got my new battery pack installed. I got the CG right. So now I just need to go out and fly. I d I just did this yesterday and so I haven't had time to go out and fly. I wish I would have snuck out and Thank you.

Went to fly with Nick them today, but I was working. But uh I'm ready to go test. I'm ready to go test now with this new thing and um I'm excited for it. It it's it it made me feel good a big again because I like I said, dude, I mean I just kinda dropped my head like a kid, like Dang, you know. I wanted this to really work, but it just did it doesn't have the architecture to to be like the lighter

Like for instance the the the the the three D birds, uh the the Pyuma and and and those other ones that are really light, right? They're they're built for that. And so the C G is proper for those light architected birds. This one really wasn't built to be a lightweight bird. It was just, hey, you put this normal stuff in here. You can go and customize it if you want to make it light, but now you gotta go play with the C G. So Well,

Did you just go too far? Is five thousand milliamp twelve S the sweet spot? So forty five hundred was too light, fifty three hundred is too heavy, lighter electronics than a five thousand twelve S. But obviously it's really expensive to experiment with twelve S stickers. Yeah, yeah. I and and I just I I need to find a five thousand stick and I may have A couple of successes. And I'll send you a five thousand.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. You can send me your nine hundred and fifty dollar ESC, I'll give you a battery. Mm-hmm. Oh gosh. But anyway, but yeah, that's that was my testing with it. So I'm I'm I'm still in the game with it and uh I'll get back out there and do some more testing and let you guys know next time. But uh Yeah, but part of my last update here, I I I bought something. I don't really buy a lot of it. It's like Christmas. What are these things? Wow.

So, you know, I I'm online and I'm looking at, you know, all the Radio Master stuff and the new uh transmitters these guys are putting out and of course the new Nexus. The XR's been out for a minute, but I don't have any XR. So I bought an XR for my next bird and I also bought sixteen S. Matt. Oh nice. What is three baby? Yes. Yeah, so What are we using now? The two. MK two. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Cool.

So wanna give the uh MK three a try. And and here's the deal, what I'm gonna do with it though. So I'm I'm running the sexy configuration in my in my TX, my MK two right now. And so I wanna I wanna take this guy like I did in the very beginning with my MK two and and learn it from scratch. So I'm gonna do the same thing here and I'm gonna try to You know, write my own special functions. I wanna I even wanna try to do some Lua programming, dude. I wanna do some more cool stuff. Wow. Yeah, yeah.

You were I mean, for those that don't know, Brian was a software developer for Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I wanna play with it. You know, I'll still fly my my M K two primarily for a minute and uh get this guy, get my new one situated and yeah, and just have fun with it, man. I'm gonna start putting some stuff out people can download as well. So It'll only be a minute that things night and day, man. You're gonna like it. Uh. Oh, you like it, Kenny?

Yeah, it's much better. It's faster, bigger screen, everything's the sticks feel great even on the the regular model, so Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty cool. I was honestly waiting for you to say I found a new Hello radio. Mm-hmm.

You know, it is because you could run I mean, if that firmware would be accepted because of the you couldn't because of the way it's written in the base of the firmware, but it's the same thing. That firmware on the Hello Radio was the same thing as a microphone input. So they put a microphone in the new model so you can technically do the same thing with the voice commands. Oh you can? You can talk to it.

And there's an accelerometer and all that stuff in there. So you could do the it's the same kind of thing basically, but the processor's faster though in the new MK3. You could be like Bank Three, my homeboy. Yeah. Yeah, that functionality's coming under the microphone. It's funny you say that. I was I was flying with Sean today and I had the spirit wave out there and I was showing him how you can do custom text to speech. So you know, any warning could be anything and

He was like, anything? I was like, yeah, anything. I was like, what do you want the it's time to land warning to be? Because he was about to fly my helicopter on on my radio. And he's like, How about? Hey Horbitch, it's time to land. And I'm like, all right, here you go. Type it in and radio spits out, Hey Horbitch, it's time to land. Yeah, totally. Right. I don't think it has a filter for bad words. I think you can make it say whatever you No. No. Oh good stuff. Cool. Did he like it?

Yeah. He didn't. I think so. I he was thinking about picking one up and I had both the I brought both radios with me today, the Wave Pro and the Wave, so the metal cased one and the plastic case one, and he was debating which one to go with. But he's gonna get the metal one'cause that's what he does. Yeah. Until you get to wintertime and then you're like hmm. Uhhuh. True that dude. But I like both a lot. It's only in winter when I have a preference.

I just remember he had that heavy aluminum case on his V control is why I said that. But uh yeah, he flew my RS seven Ultra on Spirit today and had a lot of good things to say about it, the tune, the wave. It's always interesting watching one of your helicopters fly better in someone else's hands, but it was nice to see someone fly it way harder than I can and it performed really well. So that was cool. That is cool. Brian, anything else before I uh dig in?

No, let's go straight to your update, man. I'm a curious to hear about some of the things you've done here. I know from the background, but uh Yeah.

Yeah, there's been a lot going on. The the fun part was I finished building the OMP Hobby M seven R. Way to say the name correctly, by the way. Good job. Nice. In all caps, by the way. Yes. Yeah. Do not put any part of that in lowercase or you will get a phone call. Yeah. Uh-oh. O M P hobby, all one word, all capital letters. Uh-huh. Or the mafia will come for you. Pretty easy. Ha ha. Anyway.

Yeah, I built the M seven R, which was a very enjoyable build. It just kind of goes together really easily. It's always nice, you know, I really enjoy doing build videos, but I also really enjoy when I don't have to do any content and because HeliDirect does not sell OMP helicopters, I have no content responsibilities. Like I can build it at a hundred miles an hour, take zero pictures, and no one gets mad. So not that anyone ever gets mad at me, but you know what I mean. Yep.

No one's gonna say why didn't you? Yeah. So that was fun. I just kinda built it over Easter mostly and got that ready to maiden, which I maiden today. I'll talk more about that in a minute, but I also had a bunch of helicopters that I had moved over to Spirit kind of I'd had a lot of time in the evenings, but not a lot of time to fly lately. So had a lot of helicopters set up on Spirit that I hadn't had a chance to fly. So I had the logo seven hundred.

the RS7 Ultra and my red, white, and black Il Goblin Pro. So I went out and flew with my buddy Chris to get those made in really quickly and I was kind of on a mission. I didn't have a lot of time to spend at the field. It's like late afternoon. And

decide I'm gonna made the logo first. So get that in the air and it's going well and you're kind of, you know, flying, landing, tuning a couple of parameters, going up again. And I'm trying to figure out what RPM I'm getting at the throttle percentage, and I lift the radio up and I look at the screen and I look up and the model is falling out of the sky. Es el Logo 700. And before I know it, it skid bumps at force, like goes bam. And then like I grab the stick and and you know, like I

flip or give it a bunch of positive collective and it pops up into the air and as it pops up, something's wrong with the tail. I've lost the tail. So something about the giant skid bump into the ground has made me lose the tail. So now it's spinning, holding altitude, but spinning out of control. So I hit hold and kind of settle it in on what's left of the skids. When you hit hold, did the tail stop spinning immediately or did Yeah, it slowed down and then stopped.

Before I hit the ground it uh it stopped. Uh I'm not even gonna dignify that. Sid skid supports. Skid supports. Yeah. So it hits the ground, it's not rotating anymore and in the grass and kind of flops over, but go and look at it and the you know, I broke the skids, but that's it.

As far as I can tell, like the blades seem fine, everything else seems fine. And I'm like, all right, gotta put this away because I don't have skids with me, obviously. So I'm like, well, that was weird. And whenever something like that happens, you get spooked, right? You're like, did I set something up wrong in the model?

You know, what's is was it a was it a radio connection loss and you're looking at the logs and there's nothing in the logs. Anything bad? No. No, and don't say yet, because I know you know already, but I don't understand what's happening. And to me it's a fluke thing and I'm like, Is it a radio hit? Is it a like and the first time I tried Spirit ages ago, I had a problem where I had switched banks and I had accidentally set up different pitches in different banks stupidly.

And that was what caused, you know, a scary change in pitch when I changed banks. But and I started to wonder like, did I make that same mistake? Did I, you know, was I going too fast late at night? What did I do? I'm like, I don't know. I'm gonna put it away and I'll figure out later. I'm gonna go made in a different helicopter. So I grabbed my lovely custom canopy and boom Ilgoblin Pro in the red, white, and black. Oh man. And I put that up.

And that maiden's going really well'cause it's on the same copied tune from another Ill Goblin Pro already on Spirit, so it's flying great. And I'm changing banks and everything's fine. I'm not having any issues when I change banks. Pitch doesn't change is change and I'm like, I don't know, that other crash was weird and I basically do the same thing and I'm like, I wonder what RPM this is right now in this bank at this throttle percentage and

Lift the radio up and the model falls out of the sky. And skid bumps. Sorry, it's not funny. Into the crowd. Oh yeah. Bam. Blades go. Like the blades are already jacked. And I'm like, oh, this is a bad crash. I just crashed my custom helicopter. I'm like, What blades were they? Custom red painted seven twenty. Yeah, it's what I was had a feeling. I was like it's freaking custom blade.

So I'm I'm mad now and now I'm spooked. And then Chris says something to me like you took your fingers off the stick. And I'm like what? He's like when you lifted your radio to check the RPM, you took your fingers off the Uh-huh. Answer negative. If you've had AGO ones or twos, you know that they break in over time and they loosen up. Got some looseness. Come stiff. And then they're going to be able to do that

Loosen after a while and you have to tighten them back up, and then they hold that tightness for a long time. And I knew my sticks were floppy. I had been meaning to tighten them, I just hadn't done it. And that's what happened. In the logo seven hundred, I was looking at the RPM and apparently when I do that I had no I literally didn't even know I'd do this. I took my fingers off the collective stick and it fell. And then the helicopter, of course, goes full negative pitch into the ground.

And that's what happened to the old goblin pro. So let this be a lesson to you. If your sticks are floppy and you're like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll tighten it eventually, do it now because at some point you will take your finger off the stick and the stick will fall and uh

I did the same thing when I had the AGO1s on the V control. I would like lift it up to look at my battery or something like that and let go of the sticks for a split second so you could see. And it was scary. Cause on V control the sticks would stay wherever you set them. Yeah. And you just get used to that when you fly that for a long time.

Well, that's the thing. I think I formed that bad habit'cause I hadn't experienced the sticks falling before and now I have and now they're tightened again, so that won't happen. But Yeah, lesson be learned. Don't let go of your sticks when you're checking something on your screen.

Is letting go of the sticks related to if you had the deck strap on or not? Like I know when I've tried to look at my screen when I have it on the bottom like that, I would undo my neck strap first and then just look at the screen. Probably because I definitely had an extra bound, so you're like twisting the radio to get the next one. Around the next strap to try to do it and it's more work maybe.

Yeah. I mean the lesson learned is that it's really easy to set up a repeating telemetry call out on that radio or assign it to a switch. Like so I should just do that in the future instead of doing that dumb move. But anyway, I made a dumb crash, so learn from my dumb mistake and don't do that.

So today I went flying and I had fixed everything. for the most part. So I remade the logo seven hundred on Spirit and then I couldn't figure out why it was flying so soft. And then I was like, Oh you dummy, it's'cause you never got to tuning it because you crashed it in the first like minute Sorry dude. Not funny. It is funny. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ha ha ha. Hey, I didn't crash this week. Well, that's'cause I got you. You're welcome. He did it for you. Yeah.

I got two, so you're good next week too. Uhhuh. So tune the logo seven hundred today, that was flying really well. And remaidened the repaired Ilgoblin Pro, which it still needs a new canopy. The canopy's in pretty rough shape right now. So I've ordered a new replacement to that canopy. But the helicopter's flying great. Just as well as my other one. So Hey Nick, are you finding that with spirit that your tunes between machines are ending up being very similar also? Yes.

Yes. I'm definitely learning these are the things I like. This is the feed forward amount I like. This is the basic starting gains where I know I'm gonna start here and then go up or down a little. Yeah. Yeah. I I'm quickly learning my preferences, which is great'cause I have a lot of models to set up. So not having to, you know, have everyone be widely different is really helpful. And speaking of that,

I'd also that day I was flying with Chris Maiden, my RS seven Ultra on Spirit, and that's flying frickin' amazing. It flew amazing on V Bar, it's flying amazing on Spirit. I love that helicopter. So I fly that today. I put a couple of packs in on that. And it's just like, wow, this flies good. And then I let Sean fly it and he was loving it. And I was like, all right, it's time to maiden the OMP M seven R, excuse me, OMP hobby. Ha Capital letters. Yeah.

Um so I go in a maiden that and that one has a direct copy of my RS7 Ultra Tune on it because I'm thinking same blades, same servo, same motor, same ESC. Let's start with the exact same settings and I bet we're gonna be in a really good starting And I, the only thing I touched on the M7R is the head speeds. And the only reason I did that is because it's

And I just didn't need as much head speed as I had to start. So I turned all three banks down because I had tons of performance and speed and agility and I didn't need Nice. The model flies amazing. It flies amazing on the tune, the same tune as my Ultra. It's F a fantastic flying helicopter.

Honestly, if I was a smart man right now, I would sell everything I own and keep an M seven R and a Goose Guy RS seven Ultra. And I'm sorry to both of you who are fans of those brands because I know you all hate each other for some dumb reason, but I love both of those models. They both fly fantastic. They're both go where you point'em, super predictable, just absolutely locked in, dead solid, amazing.

Two best helicopters in my fleet by far. Love them. Super impressed with the M7R. Really was thrilled with the way it flew today. Other random things. I got my Spirit W three. Those are shipping now. So those should be in the US and shipping from Heli Direct soon. I got mine direct from Spirit. So excited to dig into that. Which is the new lower cost version. And speaking of, I'm gonna say it one more time. You only have to drink one more time, speaking of spirit. Hang on, hang on.

I was offered and I accepted a spot on the spirit team. So I've officially joined the the spirit team, which I'm excited about. So Congrats on that, Nick. Yep. Looking forward to working with them. It's nice to have the the knowledge of the team to consult and the team chat. I'm already learning things uh reading through that. So that's been great. So other than that, man.

I I'm curious, did you guys notice anything in the edit of the episode last week? Did you hear any difference in it? Or did it sound the same as all of the sun? I heard. It was clipping to me. Yeah, there's a little bit of a so the platform we record the podcast on has very similar AI based audio editing tools to what we have used in the past. And I wanted to try using those tools because they're free versus what we pay for.

And I didn't think it was quite as good. It was close to good, but some of the the the way it edits out like words like um, because it it'll the AI will actually do that for you, is not as good as what we've been doing. So I might have to go back to the premium version. But was curious if you'd noticed. But you did. So that's that that's that answer. And then other than that, man, I'm just working too much. I need to work less and fly more. So that's it for me. I also got updates! Yeah, man.

It's good stuff. Excellent weather today. Oh my lord was it perfect. I got there, it was T shirt weather as soon as I got out of the car, seventy degrees. That's nice. And then there were a bunch of plankers there and then within an hour the wind picked up to like five to seven miles an hour and they all left and Sean and I had a place to ourselves. My field someone has coined this phrase as a planker spray. Ha ha ha. Yeah, yeah. Spray nice. Robert Abels. The c the term plankers. Thank you. Oh.

And I also got, courtesy of Midland helicopters, well, I mean I've paid the money, but an M one V three Pro is now in my fleet. And I've been putting some flights in on that. And boy is it tiny. That's a little bit. Yeah, it's a good one. It was a little bitty and I flew it in the wind today once it picked up and it it's not a big fan of the wind, but it flies really well. It's fun. Yeah, I want one. I haven't bought one yet'cause I've been too busy spending all my money on ESCs.

I don't I don't know if I'm gonna hold on to this one long term, but it's definitely the best flying model in that size. But it's still a helicopter that size and comes with some of those trade offs. But it flies really well. Well you you hit me up if you don't want it and all right. I'm gonna fly it for a while. It's a hotel flying machine right there.

It is a miracle I haven't crashed it. I keep trying to like fly at full out three D in my tiny yard and I've almost hit everything. My car, the fence, the trees, the screen porch, the house. I almost hit the gutter. I mean you name it, I've come within inches of it at this point. That helicopter has ninety nine lives right now. Ha ha All right, now I swear I'm really done. For real. Like over.

Guys, so a quick question on micros. Like if I took a micro, like a one hundred size or or two hundred size, and you flew it over to like tall grass and you just I said, you know what, I'm gonna go just I don't know how to three D, but I'm gonna three D my ass off and you just make it hit the ground. You think, would it break it? Or just bounce off the grass and you pick it up and go again? You can mostly get away with it.

I think the only thing you're gonna break is the spindle or the main and you're gonna have to replace that every once in a while. Yeah. Okay. I mean flat over tall grass dean as long as you can't get it. Thank you. Alright, how much news do we have this week? Not much. And now. With all the news from inside the RC helicopter hobby, Yeah. We bring Thank you. The Rota Report. Yeah.

Alright, I'll kick us off this week, guys. So Radio Master is now offering an extendable, adjustable hook attachment point for your lanyards. So if you want your radio to hang a certain way too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you want your radio to hang a certain way, you know, uh you know, you can add this to any one of your existing radios, radio master radios that provide more attachment points so you can get the balance just right for your lanyard. Yeah, pretty cool.

Now if I can just remember my mic was turned off. Radio Master has also apparently Radio Master has also apparently had enough knockoffs floating around that it's adding QR codes you can scan to confirm authenticity of their product. This will take some time before that stock hits the shelf, but is meant to combat cloning issues. Yeah, I saw they had like they're putting like a sticker on the box now. Yeah. That's pretty cool.

And one more quick update on Radio Master. So this memory configuration adjustments that they're having to do. So due to the ongoing global flash memory supply issues, a hardware adjustment is required to maintain consistent Production and availability of the TX fifteen's and TX sixteen MK three. Of course Radio Master is talking about the stock.

Four gigabyte flash chips will now need to be replaced with a five twelve memory byte internal flash chip until who knows when, but Um, they did mention that the 512 chips are a bit more expensive from a manufacturing standpoint, but is willing to eat the cost and give it back to the consumer to keep their new systems moving through the warehouse.

The updated five twelve memory byte internal flash memory remains sufficient for normal operations, right? Including model storage and firmware updates and all the core functions. There's no impact on flight performance. Both radios also support external SD chips, SD cards, right? For application when there's requiring additional storage.

This update was mentioned to us on April eighth on their Facebook page. So any radios produced I'm assuming produced after this date will have the updated memory chips installed. But whatever they have in the warehouse currently with the four gigabyte will sell first before they start selling the five twenty. So basically you get one eighth of the memory on the next ones coming out. So now the ones you hold now are worth more. So grab'em up while you can.

Yeah. Yeah. If you're a planker with two hundred and twelve foamies, you better get the one. Oh goodness. I got Lewis scripts that run Lewis scripts. I need memory. Oh man. Ben Storic's added again, a recent Instagram feel reel he posted of when he uh basically chopped his R S seven canopy, went through the blades and he continued flying w viral. It has over three million views, so that's cool.

Love to see lots of people seeing our hobby out there. And you know, w when you've crashed you should video it so we can use your crash video to bring awareness of the hobby. Thank you, Ben and Jeremy Strickland and all you people alike. for your donation. Part of me is like, do we need to start making videos that start with fake out crashes and then turn into legit like

Here's an introduction to our hobby videos. Like we lure people in with the crash that seems to go viral and then get'em while they're there. I don't know. But it's sad that the helicopter videos that go viral every time are the crashes. People are They just want to see destruction. Destruction. Who doesn't like to watch a train wreck?

All right. The OMP Hobby M one V three pros have hit shelves. They're now in It's even typed in all caps in our notes. Uh-huh. Yeah. Let's see. Because they know. They know. Believe me, the team will come for you. Anyway, so the M one V three pros are in stock just about everywhere now, and that means a whole bunch of folks who weren't paying attention suddenly realized because they weren't paying attention to the news, the that OMP went with a different battery connector. Five fifteen.

Ha. Sorry. I can't stop. I know, it's hilarious. So a few folks were quick to po a few pokes. How they made adapters so they could use their previous batteries from previous OMP Hobby M1 well then it was OMP, so OMP M1s or Goose Guy S ones and use those in the new OMP Hobby M1 V three pros.

So that in turn has caused OMP Hobby to release a statement warning against doing this. So the original M ones and S ones from another manufacturer used like a two S balance connector as the primary battery connection and part of one of the upgrades in the M one V three Pro was to replace it with a more robust battery connector with a higher current rating because they were seeing corrosion issues in the balance connectors, some connectivity issues.

And it just isn't quite suitable for the current loads in the new V three pro. So they replaced the connector. And then a bunch of folks released a bunch of posts saying, Hey, here's how you solder a really quick adapter so you can use your previous batteries and then OMP basically came out and said, Yeah.

If you do that, you're gonna avoid your warranty. So please don't do that, because we did it for a reason and here's why and we don't think you should do it. So will it work? Yes, if you make the adapter, is it a good idea? Probably not. And honestly, those packs are so cheap, like spend thirty bucks, get three new packs and call it a day. So

Yeah, I was thinking initially I was like, Why are they making you buy new packs? But I think I think they did it for a reason, not just to make you buy new packs. And I think... Helli's like this are meant for you to beat on the batteries and show them no mercy. So just get some new ones every now and then. But to each their own. It's your heli. If you want to avoid the warranty, no big deal. The worst that happens is.

You get a corroded battery connector and loose connection and put a hundred size model in, no big deal. So make your own choice, do what feels right for you, but OMP officially says please don't do that. Hompihopi. Oh that's amazing. Not sure if this is news, but I just got an email that said that A main does have the Aeon servos now, so I might be getting those really soon. Oh cool. So maybe this is What's the stock costs are like? Eight weeks now?

Yeah, they actually physically are apparently now. Wow. Get'em while you can. Any road of replays? Road of Rage? We're all too happy. We're all out flying. I'm pretty happy. Minus the weather. Minus my dumb mistakes, I'm pretty happy.

Alright. Event news. So we've had Carl Rickards, who is one of the organizers of the Boom Strike Heli Funfly in Australia and sometimes three D competition. And we got sent a little bit of a little audio clip from Carl Rickards, who sat down with Ben Storic. And Sean Hall, who are all going to be at the Boom Strike Festival in Australia. So let's hear a little bit more about the event now and what folks in Australia are in for. Welcome Carl, welcome Ben. How you guys doing?

Yeah. What's up, Sean? Well, Carl, can you tell us about some of the of this fun fly, when is the actual lockdown date? Uh what can we expect? What can we look forward to for this fun fly? The event of Boomstrike itself, so as uh the name suggests, Boomstrike three, this is the third one that we'll be having. So it's an annual event. It's uh Australia's let let's call it its heli jamboree then.

And it's located in the state of Queensland, which is the um one of the eastern states of Australia. There is a place called Brisbane, the capital city. The event will be taking place at a field called LARCS, which stands for Logan Home Era Model is Radio Controlled Society. It's a beautiful big grounds. We've got um hardstand surfaces in the pit areas and power at every table and

And yeah, we do we just have a great old time. So fortunately the international airport, so for those of our listeners who are considering of coming to Boomstrike, which is held the seventeenth to nineteenth of July this year. The international airport is only a forty minute drive from where the event will be held. So it's literally fly in, collect your bags.

Um, of course we will help you out. The the Boomstrike team will help you out wherever we can in the terms of transfers to helping you out with finding accommodation, all that sort of stuff. Boomstrike RC Heli Festival, which is on Facebook. Make sure you subscribe to that for updates and things will be coming out in due course. Then um so what what what are you gonna bring to this fun fly? Besides your skills and your charming smile. Well, I don't to be a goose guy.

And then one other. So I'm not sure what that other is gonna be. Could be an ill goblin, could be something else, could be anything. You know? Carl, I have a question for you. What's the weather like in Australia at that time of year? I'm sure a lot of people wonder. Smackbang in the middle of our winter, but our winter is probably something considered very mild for where you guys are from. That's not too bad. It's li it's really, really nice. Beautiful clear skies. Um It's, you know,

will make sure you bring a jacket with you. I mean a hoodie will will suffice quite well. Boomstrike serves two purposes. So one is to promote the the hobby Not uh only in Australia, but anyone who manages to find our content all over the world because hey, let's face it, if you're not flying an RC Heli, you're just not experiencing all life has to offer.

Boomstrike is the glue that just brings us all together just to enjoy the the amazing hobby that it is. So Sean, I really wanted you to be out here because I I think you and I together we can promote this hobby just so well. to see how the guys down under are doing things because let's face it, we've got a a massive ocean that's between us, but the internet has made the world a very small place.

So we can just share notes and and just feel like that we're we're all buddies just together and and and doing this hobby that we love so much. Let's bring Ben out, let's bring Sean out, these two personalities in the hobby that um I I can tell you all the Aussies um love and admire. So Carl, are there gonna be any contests at the Fun Fly? Speed demon event. We're also looking at, we've now introduced a micro event. It's called the micro madness, where we basically

Rock and a couple other cool things. So Ben, we're really uh anticipating uh we're gonna see some cool stuff from you in that event. Of course. I'll bring my I'll bring all my S1, S2, everything I got. Let's go. If you're planning on getting here early for Boom Strike or staying later, there's plenty for you to see and do. I love it. Thanks so much for your time, guys. Really appreciate it. All right. Thank you guys. Okay,

All right. So other than that, I we got through a lot of events last week, but I know that at least Alex and maybe a few others want to shout out a few real quick. So let's hear that. Uh April twenty fourth and twenty fifth weekend coming up in Grand Prairie, Texas at the Golden Triangle Club. I will be there. Would love to see you there. Please come. And it's Alex's birthday, so bring a gift. Субтитры сделал DimaTorzok ¿Quieres saber algo? Wait a minute. What?

Nick it's your birthday today as we record this podcast. You joker, you you tried to pull a fast one on. Thank you. I didn't know. Happy birthday. Dang. Happy birthday. You know you know what I mean? Everyone put it in their calendar. I want every team chat on the planet to just swear that they're not gonna say happy birthday to everyone every single damn day. All I want Don't you feel No. Come on, you feel special. Uh.

Yes. That is why I I said you know what, I'm gonna be behind at work, but that's future next problem. I'm going flying today. It's my birthday Nice dude. Well congrats. Made it another year. All right. Anybody else got any events they want to shout out before we move on to the main topic? No, nothing here between like April and May. I think Alex is gonna be the only one having fun. I don't know, Kenny you're going to the uh The spring flame.

You gone to Springplink or That's the same weekend as the uh Golden Triangle thing. So You you might be listening to this podcast as we release it on your way to the Spring Fling on April twenty sixth through the Or the golden triangle.

And don't be one of those guys who doesn't go to Springfling'cause it's gonna rain for one hour on one of the days. I feel like there's a bunch of weather wissies at that event every year. Just go. It's done a few times we Usually at least half or more of the time it's decent or better. And if it rains, hang out under a shelter and talk to helicopter people and have a blast. Or bring an RC car and jump it off a ramp ramp. Alright, well then that's it. Everybody Maxwell.

and you are listening to Rotor Revolution. Alright.

Alright, main topic. This is gonna be you know we're I mean build ahead. What? Oh you know, I knew that was gonna happen. I knew we couldn't do an episode about Rotorland. Some terrible jokes. Lord, here we go. We would call this episode how to lube your shaft. Um

No, we thought we would do an in depth coverage of different parts of the helicopter. You know, you've already heard that Alex is working on comparing ESCs, some servos, some all kinds of stuff. So got a bunch of ideas in the pipe, but we thought we would start. Covering sort of different phases of working on the rotorhead, starting with the build. So I want to hear from you guys about your rotorhead tips and tricks and why don't we Yeah. Let Alex kick us off here. No God.

Do I need to say O M P does it to distract you? How are we gonna do that? Um How are we gonna do this? Well, I mean I think we need to just start with the build. Let's talk about Different parts of the build we think are worth noting. Anything that we each have a unique approach to doing, starting by just assembling the rotor head.

What are some tips, some bill tips you guys have for example, I know a lot of people have some different methods for not getting grease in the feathering spindle and loctitigying the spindle. This before. Uh. And this is one of the things that I asked Kyle Stacy about. I told him we were doing this episode and I said, Hey, do you have anything you want to throw in here? And this was the first thing he said was

When you put Loctite on the spindle, don't thread the Loctite on the bolt, put the Loctite in the hole of the spindle first. And I know, Nick, in the past you talked about your awl, which is basically a pointy tool that you can use like a toothpick. Uh to put Loctite on and stick it down in there.

So you don't want that spindle with loctite on it passing through several bearings and spacers and getting them all messed up. So you don't want them to get contaminated, put the loctite in the spindle, pass through the colour. Pass it through all the Bearings and all the greased parts and spacers, you don't want them getting all

Yeah, if you put it on the actual bolt, usually when you tighten it it squishes out and goes around the bearing and everything else on the outside too. Yes, it does. I put it in I use like a one point five or a two millimeter wrench, you know, and I put it on the wrench, like a dot on the wrench.

Or a drop and then stick it into the threads and swirl it around in the actual uh spindle. And then if I put any on the bolt, it'll be just a small amount and kind of use your finger and spin it and let it kind of take half of it off, you know, like so it's just a small amount. Inside the threads, not on the whole thing.

That's my favorite thing to do in terms of like when you don't want a lot of Loctite splunging out everywhere, is to like soak the bolt in it and then run it on your finger and just sort of move it down your finger as you rotate and it takes almost all the loctate off of the bolt except for what's inside the thread, like on the inner part of the bolt. It minimalizes the amount that's like gonna be squished out.

If you're like me and you don't like to clean all your bolts, this is a bolt worth cleaning. It is. Even if the only bolts you clean on a whole heli are the four spindle bolts, you know, between the head and tail. You know, the ones... The only bolts I clean.

on your swash followers, those can be so tight. You know, you have to pass that long bolt through the the bearing retainer on your swash followers. So you can't really it's not good to put the octet on aheadtime. You almost need to pass it through the bearing block, put the little washer on the backside that goes against the head block.

And then smear it like your finger on the threads of the bolt. Yeah. And then and also put it inside the headblock because the same thing, you're gonna it's gonna be sometimes those tight tight threads will just shred it right off there and it doesn't actually get into the actual threads and then you'll find out that came loose and you'd said, Oh, I put Loctite on there, but it didn't go in the hole. It just got shaved off on the outside.

Sometimes I'll let those bolts get just a little bit threaded in, and then I'll like use an all again to sort of get Loctite in the receiving threads. And I'll put a bunch in there, some of which will just be pushed out as you tighten the bolt and then you just wipe the excess off. Right.

Which on that note, so radial bearings in the head. Do you guys use bearing retainer, green Loctite on those? I don't. Mm. The inner and outer bearings? Um I lock tight the inner because that one needs to stay put, but the outer kinda needs to move as the thrust bearings are moving, you know, in and out too. So that one you can leave loose if needed.

Yeah, I'm the same way. I'll do the inner one, so the one that's against the head block. I'll put some green Loctite on. Unless it's really stiff. If it's a if it's head grip that I've had to heat up to get the bearings in.

Then I won't worry about it. But if there's, you know, if they kind of fall right in, then I'll definitely put some green Loctite on the inner radial bearing, not on the outer that goes against the, you know, the spindle bolt. What about, as much as I hate to bring this age-old debate up, thrust bearings, cage in, cage out. Well. Yeah, I don't know. I just do what's on the manual usually but

I've been doing cage out lately. I don't notice any difference in how much grease I'm losing actually when I go back and check them later. Let's be honest. Do you really go back and check that there's grease on your thrust bearing? When you crash as often as I do and you get to take your head apart. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Right.

You know the Tron washer with the O ring? If it's blocking all the grease from coming out, all the grease is still leaving your bearings. It's just all caked against the back of that plate, right? And all the G Force? Yeah. Well, I mean as long as you do an equal number of left and right rolls, then the grease stays evenly distributed. Slosh it around in there kinda.

No, I'm the same way. Honestly, I've tried cage in and cage out and I can't tell a noticeable difference in performance, in grease retention. I just don't care. I tend to Cajun is the best on like grilled chicken. Or shrimp. 약 약 약 I thought it was interesting That was... So good.

The M7R manual specifies specifically that they go in a certain direction and says something about the bearing will wear prematurely if you don't follow their advice. In that situation I'm gonna follow the manufacturer's advice, because why not? You guys do any tips or tricks for getting the thrust bearings in the right order? Oh, the thrust bearings, yep.

I measure the inner and outer the bearing, you know, race piece that's like one's smaller and the one's larger and lay'em all out, stack'em and then I stick'em on an Allen wrench so you can't mess it up. Yeah, me too. I tend to lay them all out in order and I'll check them on the feathering spindle to find the you know and this was something Kyle mentioned to us too as one is his tips.

And it happened to me recently on the RS seven Ultra. I actually got three large inner diameter and one Oh really. I was off by one. I had t one too many of one size. And and I caught it because I check all four of them. I don't just check because if you would just put it on the spindle and be like, oh, this is obviously the loose one and assume the other one is the tight one, you can end up where the person throwing them in a package that day grabbed the wrong one.

So check all of them, check all, you know, pieces and parts of them to make sure that you do in fact have too large and too small. Yeah, sometimes you can look at'em and it's obvious which one it is. And then some of the smaller ones it's not as obvious. Like the tail ones, they're very hard to tell. You gotta measure'em. What about tensioning your follower arms? Especially ones where the bolt that the follower arm is on also is clamping down on the head block.

How much do you tighten them? Do you ever worry about reducing m range of motion? Uh I usually tighten them up and leave'em loose and let it dry overnight to make sure no loctite got in there and then move them and make sure they're free before I connect them to the ball. Yeah, I've noticed some models it pinches the bearings more and makes it like have some friction there. Depends on the brass spacer that's put in between the bearings and the tolerance there. I just screw it till it stops.

Yeah, I don't I don't over tighten it or anything like that. And as long as there's no wiggle room in it or anything like that. Yeah, in the situation where they're also sort of pinching the head block against the main shaft, I'll go a little bit tighter, but I'm always checking. If it won't fall under its own weight, it's too tight in my mind. Yeah, I got you. It should move really freely.

I agree. I wanna say like I end up going like you said, Brian, till it stops and then like almost a quarter turn more. Like Yeah, right. Right, maybe, yeah. else in the head in terms of building to We're not talking about setup at this point, just building. Right. Just straight up building. What about grease? What do you guys use? Super loom. Super loop. Is that a real thing? What is super? Food grade and lasts forever. It's kinda like a clear white grease. I love it.

Non toxic and works really good. Mm-hmm. I used that Triflow clear synthetic grease forever. Uh I actually have a tube of it right here in my hands. But if you travel a lot, which my helicopters ended up traveling a lot. I noticed I was getting some sort of rust in my thrust bearings still, so I've recently switched grease but I really haven't had the chance to check if that grease is working better. The rust bearings? Rust? Yes, they were rust bearings. Yeah. Somebody mute games. Sorry.

No. Oh, can I use the super lube on my uh on the thrust bearings as well? You know, and even for the O ring. Because it's it's really good grease. Yeah, it's good for everything for the damper. It doesn't have it's not a you know, no kind of water base or anything else. It's just like pure Greeks.

I use the Triflow stuff and I've never had any rust anywhere. That's interesting. Never had any issue with it. I also use Nick Maxwell is the one who told me that pretty much any food safe synthetic grease is fine in thrust bearings, so

I also have some just basic I don't even remember what brand it is, like off brand synthetic food safe grease, like stuff you could put in a industrial kitchen mixer on the gears. It actually works great in thrust bearings as well. So Nick's flying, it smells like chicken again. Ha ha ha. It's like burning the grease off. Take a route of a fryer. Well Alex is is is is rusting up because he's flying in the rain.

I was about to say that. I was like, I am flying in the rain, like what am I gonna say? Yeah. Do you guys have any tips for putting dampeners on the spindle and getting them all in the head? Do you put grease on them? If you do, how do you do that without getting grease all over the feathering spindle? No, I just get the grease all over everything. Yeah, I put grease on it. Everything.

I only put a tiny amount on my dampers, just enough to get it on there without getting it in the threaded hole, you know, in the spindle. Try not to get in there. If you don't, you can't get those into the head hardly. Sometimes they're so tight, you know, the wash the o rings. Uh They went into the headblock if you don't release. Greasing. You're talking about greasing up the O rings. Getting the O rays of the dampers in, yeah. Yeah.

So you can get'em in. Like I always put a little on my fingertip, my pinky tip, and then rub it inside the head just to h help the dampeners go in a little easier. But I'm like Alex like a grease everything. Are any of you though that type of person that like tries not to get any grease on their fingers when they build the rotor head and somehow gets away with it? I just make a giant mess. Me too. I guess we're all messy. That's funny.

Usually that's when you're gonna answer the phone. Like right when you get the grease on your fingers or somebody somebody calls or Almost. That's funny. That does happen. You know when Every once in a while you'll get a machine that the bearings and the grips are just so tight you really need to hit the grid heat the grip the grips up to get the bearings in. Yeah. Is that I guess that's not because I'm looking at this food grade thing and it's good to four hundred and fifty degrees.

It's not hurting it. I always wondered and I used to think that if I had a grip that I had to heat up to get bearings in or out that that was bad. And I've changed my my thinking on that. 'Cause the RS seven Ultra I've had to heat the grip to get everything in and out and it obviously flies fantastic. It's a non issue. So I think that's just like some of these tolerances are so perfect that it's hard to get stuff in or out. It just fits perfectly. No, no, no.

That guy created. That one tool that guy created where you you kind of you know take the grip off, the grip arm off, and you kind of slide it. little spindle like thing screwed on the other end. And the bearing just slides right out with this thing. Yeah, it's good too. It's like four or five years old, dude. It's Yeah, wasn't that just for SAB grips? Didn't he make it just for SA B blade grips. I forget. It was like a bearing puller kind of thing.

Yeah, yeah. I don't I don't remember if it was just brand specific, but but it helped. Work. What I started to say about the bearings too is the like you said they're too tight, Nick. Like I've had the opposite back in the day, like the original Spectre V one, a few of the the grips that I got were like super loose.

So even the inner and the outer both had almost some play in it. Like, I mean it's minute, like very minute, but it was enough to like when you put it all together, you could grab your blade and make it actually move up and down a slight amount, which was, you know, shouldn't be doing that. So I actually was recommended by them to

take it back out and use a little green loctite, you know, just to tighten it back up and that helps too, if it's just too sloppy, you just fill it in with lo uh green loctite and let it harden and holds the bearing, you know. Basically its main purpose for retaining 嗯哼 But yeah, I like to see how they're tighter now. I mean, that like you said, it's not a bad thing because as long as you can get it in there, then you know it's not gonna spin on you or wobble or anything like that.

But all right, let's talk about you got your rotor head assembled now. You put your spinner bolts in, you've tightened them against each other. Well, that's a question too. How much force do you put on the two drivers when you're tightening the two spindle bolts against each other? You hulk? You hulk smash it? Do you Like drive. Tynem? I use the L shaped wrenches and I usually pop a vein in my neck. Me too. Really go that time? Dude, I don't go that time. I wouldn't trust the driver. Oh my god.

Those are hardened str strong bolts, you can put some good torque on'em to be safe. I feel like I'm not sure. And then my hands have so much grease on them they just slip em and then I have to take alcohol and then I have to clean the drivers, clean my hands, and then I can finally get some force on'em, but I definitely don't go with the L once'cause I feel like that's too much torque. I just go with regular And I use the L's and it is a lot of torque in the I think I...

Overdo it. Because again, Nick, if if the heads if the yeah, if the grips don't fall easily, then something's wrong. Something's off. One side is off. Right. Bolts usually so you can torque'em hard. He shouldn't break or even stress. They don't break, but it just feels like it's so tight.

I don't get the free play in in the arms like I should. Right. So now what I do, I just kind of screw them in, you know, just get them kinda sorta tight. And then, you know, when I hit the tightness, I stop right there. Then I just kinda go just a little bit and and let it go. And and then everything falls free. your dampening, you just keep backing the screw out until you got less dampening and fly it that way. How many millimeters out here?

I had a buddy. I had a buddy that I was flying as trying to lead. And I kept tuning on it and tuning on it and tuning on it and finally we landed and there was no vibration. And we landed and I picked this machine up and the he and the head like slipped, you know, where there was play. Wow. Yeah. The bolts had backed out, but on the Elite, there's those little pins that hold the ends in. And so those pins were holding the head on, basically. Wow. Yeah.

I feel like that's part of my preflight or like post maiden check. I try and pull the grips apart and just make sure that there's no play, like nothing's backed out. Which speaking of that, I feel like there's always these things in the hobby where that are so based on feel. So you got the rotor head fully assembled, you've tightened the two spindle bolts. How do you know that the head is smooth? How do you want it to feel? What do you guys do to check that everything's okay?

So you assemble the head, right? You put both blade grips over the spindle, you tighten the two spindle bolts. And obviously we all take it and then we see how it rotates, right? So And then from here we can start talking about shimming and whatnot. But what do you look for? What are you what are you checking? What kind of feel do you want? So to me it depends on the damping style of the helicopter. If it's an O ring machine like Is the new Elite still O rings or is there a palm damper in there?

I'm not sure I think it does have the palm dampener. Okay. Well if it's O rings, which is like what SAB still uses I make sure that it's shimmed up tight enough that we're not going to be able to And c I asked Kyle Stacy this question also. And he said the same thing I was doing, which was tightening it up enough to where not that it feels notchy, but there's no play. And when you pull on it, it's smooth feeling. And then if it's a

If it's a palm machine, you don't need to really preload the head. You just need everything to not have any play, is my experience. Yeah, that's how I feel for the most part. So by play what we mean is if you take the two blade grips and pull away from each other and push back in, so like an i I almost said in and out motion, but Alex can't handle that clearly. Um Yes! Yes.

Grab the blade grips. You shouldn't if you're trying to push them in and out, in and out, you shouldn't feel any clicking or anything that shows that there's a tiny bit of room for them to move. It should just not move at all. So it should feel really solid. And then if you rotate the blade grip,

For me, I'm okay if it falls under its own weight. If it falls in this sort of very slow, I'm greased way. If it just flops, then there's not enough tension and I'm gonna I'm gonna look at shimming things. I don't want it to be so loose that it just Uh it needs to fall really slowly. Uh Yes. I don't want it to be limp. Droopy. Wanna make sure I wanna make sure I get my preload right. Oh my god. Yeah. Thank you for that. Thank you so much. So much.

We need a disc game with the beginning of the segment and then we're gonna do it with the rated R version of the podcast. Yes. We are all fourth graders. Explicit. Yeah. It's a section called Gothead. Uh Kyle brings up a Kyle brings up a good point there though, to get his back on the rail.

If it's so tight that when you rotate the blade grips, you feel like a clicking, which we call notchiness, then you're too tight. Something's wrong. And any at any point when you're building the head, if you feel notchiness, take it apart. Take it apart, check your bearings, make sure everything's in the right order, make sure you got the bearings, washers, spacers, all that stuff in the right order and rebuild it'cause something's wrong. I've had that up for crash.

Well last thing, last thing. Kenny, you're gonna be going to Springfling Springfling soon and you can ask Rita what she thinks about her. It's Ja. Yeah. How does she like her head dampened? Ha ha ha. You kind of are horrible. Uh Somewhere to go. Ryan, I feel like you're developing from the old RCHN days, I feel like Jesse was was always referred to as the moral compass. I think you might be our show's moral compass. Oh man. Mm. Oh my god.

It's funny. What about you built the head, you tighten the down, and one blade grip feels tighter than the other? What does that mean? Oh I I've had that happen before so it I feel like you just have to fly it and let everything kind of break in a little bit before you make any adjustments. Do you break it in a little bit? Hundred percent. For me, I think that it's just a matter of you gotta spin the thing up at high RPM and then check it again.

And you can do that on the bench. Like while you're doing your ESC setup, spin it up with no blades on it and it'll equalize. And then, you know, check it again and you'll find that that tension is typically equalized between the blade grip. Sometimes it might take the weight of the blades being in there to fix it, but

As long as there's no play, it's okay if one one blade grip feels a little stiffer than the other. It's just because it hasn't rotated at high RPM and and sort of equalized the spacing on both sides of the head block.

Sometimes it's that way with your whole helicopter drivetrain, you know, you'll put it together and you spin it in your hands and you think, Man, this thing has a lot of drag on it but once you do a few flights it's completely different, you know, depends on the model. It'll break down and spin a lot more free.

Have you guys ever shimmed the spindle bolt in the way that Nick Maxwell talks about in his behind the build video? I've never had to do that. I've done it once on one model and what Nick Maxwell talks about as a technique is you build the rotor head and you get to this point of checking it and you have not over-tightened the spindle bolts, but the head feels too tight. So usually it would feel too loose and you would add shims on either side of the headblock to create more tension.

And what Nick does is he basically finds a spacer or a washer that is the same diameter as the spindle. So you're basically lengthening the feathering shaft by, you know, m less than a millimeter. Just to give it so that when you tighten it down, you're basically lengthening the spindle that way. Um and the washer is

the same diameter as the spindle, which means that the bearings can still move freely back and forth. So you're not adding any play, you're not stopping the bearing from going further back by using a you know a fender wash or a kind of bigger.

sort of thing. So uh if things are too tight and you haven't over tightened it, you may need to essentially lengthen the spindle. So, you know, there's a manufacturing tolerance that's off a little and it's a hair, you know, just a a hair's breadth too short and you just Shim the length of the spindle that way.

Last thing in the build, when it's time to install the rotor head onto the helicopter, so to put it on the main shaft, any particular techniques in the order, the way you tighten pinch bolts and the Jesus bolt? I always tighten the Jesus bolt and then tighten like not fully tighten one side of the pinch bolts, put the other one in and then kinda go back and forth. Yeah, it's better than C. I do. Huh, interesting.

I don't think either way it really matters too much, just as long as you go back and forth on the swashfollower ones and get equal tension as you snug them down. Yeah, don't you have to snug them down. I don't know that it's wrong. I I always like I just loosely fingertight the Jesus bolt.

And then I will do everything I can to make sure that the pinch bolts are tightened equally. So I will just snug them till I feel them first start to feel pressure. And then I just do little quarter turns alternating each side until they're both equally tight. And then I do the Jesus bolt lap. 'Cause I feel like the pinch bolts do more to square the rotor head to the shaft than the Jesus bolt does. Yeah. It's true. Egg shapes it. Pull it up.

And like spin it up with basically just the Jesus bolt loose and trying to get it to a line and then tightening everything up. I don't know. Yeah, that was another thing Nick does in his behind the build video, which is to spool it up with no blades on it and make sure that the head's tracking by making sure the blade grips are in alignment and then Would actually use that to help tighten the pinch bolts and make sure they were perfect. But I don't typically do that.

And the other thing is I think manufacturing's just gotten to the point where you can almost just slap the head on and bolt it on and it doesn't really matter. But These are the things. Totally agree. A lot of these techniques come from the days of when helicopters weren't manufactured to the same high tolerance as they are now. So we're kind of spoiled. Yeah, that's for sure. They've changed a lot. Specs are a lot better. Mm-hmm.

All right. Wow. That took a while just to get through the build. We'll see if we get through all this or we Surprise. Get to a setup and then maybe save some of the rest for another episode. We'll see.

Alright, so we got the rotorhead built. It's on. Do we want to say anything about links? I feel like links are pretty self-explanatory. It sucks. But it I hate making links. Yeah. I you know Is it okay to put like a driver through the link and screw it onto the the all thread or whatever you want to call that? Sounds like it'll work quite a piece of the. Plastic. Yeah. Yeah, I mean if you use any sort of motorized anything, you just have to be really cautious to not heat up the plastic.

I start'em off with my fingers and I still use the old SAB tool, the little link. Also use that still. Yeah, I use that for all my helius. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um All the time. It's just a little 3D printed part that has a slot in the end of it. It's kind of like a screwdriver handle with no screwdriver in it. It's just got a slot and you

Start the link on the turnbuckle and then you just use this piece to give your fingers a better purchase. So you get like a screwdriver handle that slips over the ball link and then turns it Like a T handle, I guess you'd say. Yeah, yeah And I use two.

Yeah, and they come in all the SAV kits and so I have a bunch and they work really well. And it it's not so fast that it heats up the plastic and gets a melty grip, which is what happens is you just kinda it more melts the plastic. You really want those threads to dig into that so that they can't be pulled off. I mean, even threading'em by hand you can feel'em getting hot. Yeah, so you can imagine if you were to put it in a driver or something.

I think that's the worst part of building a machine is making the link. Yeah. That and the tail rod. I know. There's an opportunity for a manufacturer to create'em for us and be like somebody will buy it just. Yeah, that's right. I forgot that. Yeah, that was the best thing about that. The links were already assembled.

Oh, speaking of that, so I just got those Nipex flat pliers that you can sort of squeeze links with. I haven't tried'em yet, but my question is, how much pressure do you put on'em? So I take I take the link, I squeeze it onto the ball, and then I the the link should be able to like freely flop basically when you move the ball around.

And so I'll I'll take it and squeeze it. And if it's not free, I just squeeze a little more, squeeze a more little You have to end up squeezing those OMP ones pretty tight. Like you're squeezing pretty hard. But I have over squeezed them and you can definitely feel they develop play if you do that. So don't overdo it. I feel like we deserve some credit for getting through squeezing balls without laughing. You also said that you use a m tool with a slot on it. So

Oh, I love it. Yeah, I have to try this. The I just they just came in today, those pliers, so I'll have to to give it a try. Because the RP links are pretty tight. Yeah, they're way too tight. And for those of you that don't know, although I think talked about these, but it's pliers that have no serrated teeth on them. They're basically like two flats. So they don't tear up your links. They're worth having. Maybe we should put those in the show notes if we think about it at some point.

Wish I'd met. Although you know the guy that types those is terrible at remembering things we say we'll put in them. You know we could make that the rotor replay. I think Jawan made a video on this. So I will find the video and I'll put it in the uh in the video right now.

Cool. All right, let's start talking about setup now. So we got the rotor head built. Now we gotta set it up. So I wanna hear what your processes are. Brian, I feel like I don't know w if it's actually true, but I feel like I in my mind, F3C guys are the most precise and perfect of these things. So what's your process starting at the servo or however you do it, working up to getting your rotor heads set up?

Yeah, just so mechanically you make sure you get the the s the the links as close as possible. I like to you know, set up I got this little these two balls on the end of uh this little bass thing I made out on my on my tape. And so I take my calipers and I measure that guy out, if it's seventy millimeters or whatever the case may be, and then I, you know, set my pitch lengths up and I snap it on there. And so I try to get everything the same length first before I actually mount it onto the head.

Mm-hmm. But once I do that, my my first thing is to kinda go through my kind of the pitch setup. the collective range setup and I and I use one blade. Right. And just use one side rather of of the of the head to do that. Make sure that it's nice and zeroed out. I of course I use the software of my FBL setup to you know, help me center those things right properly and and once I do that, you know, I just I kinda mark this one as like the master s you know, side or whatever.

And then any adjustments I need to make at the field, might just do it on the slave side because I know the mass is gonna be perfect for me. So yeah, it just it starts with the mechanics first. You have to make sure everything is is as close as possible as far as the the length of the the pitch length. are concerned, getting a nice center setup in your FBL software and then just adjusting that other side to make it match.

So let me ask you this. So you ninety your servos with nothing connected to them. Through the weather. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Servo programmer or through center point adjustment in the radio. So your servos are 90, you click the links on and you go to level your swash. What do you adjust? So if one of your positions on the swash is a hair high, are you changing the length of the link? Are you changing the sub trim of the center point of the servo? Where are you making that adjustment?

Changing the link itself physically, right? You change you make a mechanical adjustment. I don't like to touch my sub trims at all. I like them to stay at zero, just my O C D. So I I do it that way, mechanically, to make sure everything is proper. once everything is centered properly. And, you know, you put your leveling tool on there for your s your swatch plate, uh make sure everything is is, you know, leveled out properly as you kinda take each arm around. But adjust the arm length.

And if and if that one half turn, you know, gave you a hair bit sh it was a hair bit short or long. Well Then uh then yeah, you may have to make that adjustment electronically in the system. But get it as super close as possible with the mechanics first before you touch anything electronically to a sub trim.

Do you use anything to ninety your servos, Prime? Say that one more time, Nick. How do you ninety your servo? Oh I use Yeah, I make it fun of me now,'cause I use a protractor to do it. No, I didn't even know, but now I will. I have a I have a little small mini little mini protractor that I use and and I j and I kinda eyeball it. I mean I I do have a hole I drill into it if I want to get out.

Uh particularist with it, but I just kinda eyeball and use the protractor to make sure everything is ninety degrees. Protector. It stays on my desk. It's right there on my desk, on the top corner of my desk. No, that's not that. We should have seen before this he used a bubble level. That was even worse. Oh my god Ha ha ha. All right.

Actually use something. I have man, I can't find the guy's name who made'em off hand. And maybe I'll go back and record this and put his name in there. But They're I don't know that the three D printed are cut plexiglass or something, but they're clear squares that are cut like perfectly at ninety degrees and I actually mount them on there and line them up with the servo arm and you can clearly see like everything has been नगने रप Cool. Cool. Mm. Yeah. That fits on the sorbo.

I wanna jump into and give you my quick and dirty head setup basically. So like Brian, I'll sit there and get the links, you know, pretty much perfect. I'll measure them all out with calipers, you know, get them correct. And the the same with the grip arm to swash links, you know, you get them perfect.

But anymore I built so many models I just basically like with Rotor Flight you can S mu servo mixer override, you know, and just lock out the gyro, which you could do on any system if you just turn your gyro gains to zero or whatever you need to do. To get it into setup mode. If not, set it on a flat table. But the quick way that I do it is once you get everything 90, you got your servo arms 90.

and you're just wanting to get the the head all the way around basically level without sitting there eyeballing it like from the side and doing that kind of stuff or using a tool. The CNC notches that they put on the head are pretty accurate. you know, they're almost dead perfect. So what you do is you pass the linkage that's on whichever grip you wanna mess with first, like if you're going elevator or if you're doing, you know, left to right.

roll basically you put the like you grab one blade grip and spin the ball ink for that grip arm around. Till you're on the servo position, you know, with your on your 120-degree swash. So you set the linkage in line with that ball, basically down the swash. And then you look at the grip and then if it's not lined up zero, you can trim that servo up or down and then spin it another, you know, third of the way around, go to the next ball on the swash and line up that grip the same way.

And then do the same thing, raise or lower. And once you do that a few times around in a circle, a couple of different positions on the ball, when you're lining up the particular blade with that position on the ball on the swash, you'll get zero all the way around, like just in a minute or two. That is interesting. Yeah, you can spin the head, you just line up the linkage, you know, that's on your grip.

to the ball that's on your swash'cause you're putting it at that exact position where it's gonna be at when it's rotating. And then you go up or down, get it at zero on the notch on your head, and you can do that two or three times around a circle just real fast and have perfect zero without touching a tool. That's crazy. That's pretty cool.

Yeah, try that once. It works really good. Yeah. Okay. And if they're out of track you'd be able to tell because if one's perfect all the way on all three positions, the other one's gonna be different. So you need to do tracking. When you get it right, all three you know, you're about to spin it and everything zero in all positions around the whole circle.

So Alex, similar approach for you. Do you ever do you adjust the length of the three links or are you hidden to the radio for those adjustments to level the swash? No. I typically level the swash by once I've centered my servo arms, I try to change the links only and not

mess with the the trim of the servos. You know, I didn't know this for a long time and I used to always just trim the servo, but that will lead to basically you get uneven throws and so at the limits, at positive and negative limits, your servos are not moving the same amount and so your swash will tilt a little bit.

Some flybrelless units allow you to edit that anyway and you can kind of fix it, but why would you do that when you can make if you can make if you can make it as mechanically sound as possible, it's the best. Although I will admit I don't often change the length of my links. I work really hard to make sure they're eight three exactly the same length. Like exactly. Uh like I get kind of obnoxious about it.

And so in my mind any error I find when leveling the swash is typically because I didn't ninety my servos in any particularly precise way. You know, I'll use like a a block or something to ninety them, something similar to a protractor, but

I figure if there's any small amount of adjustment, it's probably an error in ninety or if it's an SAB model where the servos are the two front servos are angled, but I feel like the error is almost always there. So um You know on those angled servos, I've seen uh I can't remember who it was, a a a team pilot posted up what they would do was they were basically using the same blocks that I have and mounting two of them to the servos.

Centering them so that they look lined up and then you could ba basically place like a level or something on top of those. And they should be flat and if it's up or down on one side then you know you need to move the servo to center it. Am I making sense on how to see that? Yeah on the S C B model? Pretty cool. Ja, det är cool. Smart. So he would do that, you know, out of the machine before you install the servos and that whole device on the SAB machine.

Uh what do you guys use to level your swash? The SAP tool for SAPs. You know what's cool about it is that it it not only levels the swash, but it sets up zero degree pitch on the collective as well. So the OMP machine does the same. I've been using the OMP one for the OMP stuff, which is swash level that goes underneath the swash instead of on top.

But if that's not available for the machine, then I use old fashioned like before you put the head on, you slide a swash leveling tool on top and make sure it's, you know, everything is flat at ninety. Or Nick or anyone? I don't really use tools much anymore. I just kinda eyeball level, go out and I'll hover it and if it's drifting back or forward or something, I'll just readjust. Yeah. So I get it perfect. I always agree.

Uh yeah, I do too. I I like to use the tool if the manufacturer offers one'cause it's just fast. But A main has a tool you can buy from I R Lore. It's R L O H R, I believe. Uh It's the guy who makes the uh the clear things I'm talking about. I can't find his site. It's Rick, isn't it? Isn't his name Rick? I don't know, but it's just like a three D printed kit that comes in a variety of sizes and it's basically just something you snap onto the m main shaft.

So like a a ring that'll just sort of pressure clamp around it with an extension. And then you just tighten a small screw into the end of it and then it basically just gives you something you can spin around, like you just rotate the rotor head. And it gives you a set point that stays level over the each of the three main, you know, swash points. This is basically a high-end zip tie method. So the zip tie method is you tie a zip tie to it. Yeah.

lower it down, lower the zip tie down around the main shaft to where it touches one of the balls on the swash. And then you just spin the head around and the zip tie should stay the same distance from each ball. And this is basically a nice tool so that you don't have to use a zip tie. I keep it in my in my field bag at all times so that if someone I can see someone's swash is not flat, we just throw that thing on there. It's super easy.

Yeah, it's fast. They come in a bunch of sizes if you buy the kit in all the sizes and it fits every helicopter, so Pretty nice. Yeah. Yeah. But it is nice b I like Brian's point about the swash levelers that you put underneath the swash because it also centers the swash. So you make sure that when everything's ninety, you know, your swash is in the middle of travel. Uh speaking of which, do you guys pay any attention as you're doing all this mechanical setup to your follower arms?

They should be ninety degrees as well. Yep, make sure it's level. Yeah. Yeah. Do you get like fussy about that or do you just look at it and go that looks horrible? Yeah. Yeah. I just look at it and I'm not sure. Yeah, me too. Guilty. Sometimes it means that you may have to lengthen your your your pitch lengths because the servo Horns. Distance may be too short.

Yes. And that's a good point, Brian, that and Kenny and I run into this, sure everybody has, that servos put the spindle of the servo at different heights across brands. Yeah. So the length of the links from a manufacturer are based on an average or more common position, but it's gonna vary by servo. So

If at the length the manufacturer gives you for the link, your follower arms are not at ninety and your swashblade is not in the center of travel, then you should lengthen or shorten your links accordingly. Yeah. Right. Yeah, the horn itself, like the output spline could be a couple of millimeters up or down or in or out, everything.

Yeah,'cause you want your you want your servos at ninety degrees, you want your swash level, and you want your follower arms at ninety degrees and your swash in the center of travel all at the same time.

Cool. So you get that far, you center your what's the word I'm looking for? You set zero pitch. Which is just a simple matter of throwing a pitch gauge on it and setting the main drive length length. You get it to the field, you spool it up, and your tracking's off. How do you guys fix that?

Well again, so I like I said I I mark one blade, the one that I use during the the bench setup as kind of like my master out and I would use like a sharpie to mark the grip arm and the blade itself so I know which one it goes on. And and then just go fly and and if the tracking's off I just adjust the kind of the the slave side of it. Until I get it straightened out. Or or nice and uh level there.

Yeah, sometimes that's just because it's not mechanical, it could be like the blades, you know, making it be a little out of track also. So you kind of have to compensate. Yeah, I didn't I did have some blade issues one time too, so absolutely. You fold your blades. Not So that's Rabbit ears. Okay. You don't fold them to to where they're perpendicular to each other, they're facing each other. You fold them away from each other. So one, if your if your head block is now perpendicular to the

Boom. You fold the blade so that one is going toward the boom and one is going away. And then you go into your flight controller and you put it in the trim mode and you move the collective. Up or down or whatever until you get one of the blades to basically touch the boom. Then you rotate the head so that the other blade comes around and if it's hitting the boom or it's higher or lower or whatever, then you can just adjust that one link to where it matches and it's almost touching the

Interesting. That is weird. I gotta try that. Yeah. I like that. I love simple tricks like that. That's great. Sounds cool, yeah. Yeah. It works so good. Nice. Almost always ends up perfect after that.'Cause then you're you're getting, you know, that weight down on the links and everything. Yeah. I like that. Yeah, for tracking if I'm off and what we're talking about, if you don't know.

Tracking refers to while the rotor head is spinning, the space where the tip of the first blade went through, you want the second blade as it goes around to go through the exact same plane. I'm probably using the wrong words, science people. The exact same point where the tip of the first blade went through you want the second blade to throw.

And if they don't go through the same point, we say the tracking is off because uh you basically will get a wobble. Like the blades as you you know, if you look at a rotor disc from the side as it's hovering, you can sort of see where the tips are. And if they're in one clean, thin line, you know your tracking's dead on. And if you get sort of a blurry where you can see two different impressions of blade tips, then something's wrong. And

The way to fix that at the field is to just pick one link. Typically you would mark one so you know you're gonna leave that one alone. You're only gonna adjust the other one with a Sharpie or something. And then you just adjust the main drive link of the one you're gonna adjust and you move it a little. Bring it back in a hover, did it get better or worse? And if it gets worse, obviously you go the other direction until you get the blades in one uh clean spot.

And if you have this wrong, it might not sound like that big of a deal, but it actually kind of is. It can cause vibrations and mess with your tune and stuff too in the flight controller. Yeah. Yep. And you can often tell your tracking's off because you bring it into a hover and you can see your skid shaking. The tail fin might be shaking a little bit as part of this too, or the boom is a little blurred when you look at it from the side. It'll even sound different. Yes, it will.

All right, from there. We got tracking good. It's hovering okay.

Let's just spend a brief period. How do you guys tune? How do you how do you guys rough in your head game? I do a couple of things. I turn the gain up. And I look at the skids of the helicopter and if you can do I say if because it is scary to fly your helicopter close to yourself to where you can see the skids well enough to do flips and rolls in place.

You can see if they're shaking at all in flips and rolls. That's one way to do it. You obviously if it's too high, it's gonna be shaking. Also doing TikToks and stuff like that, you can see if you're getting any head bubbles pretty easily.

Elevator bobble too. Yeah, that's a good one to check, is like tap the stick on your transmitter. I basically let go of my stick. I snap it forward or backward and let it go and if it's bouncing, rocking, you know, forward, backward, or left and right, then it's the first sign I need to adjust. I feel like you're getting into some com complex stuff here for tuning. But that's like the basic. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I do the stabbing method.

If you're in rotor flight and you're doing a flip or a roll and you let go and it drifts continues drifting after you're done, it means you need more feed forward. And if you get done and it drifts back like that. where it should have stopped, then you've got too much feed forward. In V bar, you kind of have the optimizer you can do to the auto optimizer to fix that kind of stuff too. Do they still do the auto optimizer in V8? Not for the head, they brought it back for the tail.

Okay, so I don't know MV Bar anymore then. Sorry. It changed. Yeah. I tend to do this sort of stabbing motion. I think Jesse talked about this uh when he came on the show, which is to just take your aileron, for example, and jab it. So jab the stick out.

But it's really important you not let go of the stick,'cause if you let go of the stick, the stick will wobble back and forth at center as it centers itself. And you're gonna think your gain's too high,'cause that's what you'll see is the tips of the blades wobble. So you wanna like give a quick jabbing stab motion in one direction.

And then watch what the helicopter does. And if your head gains too high, you're gonna get some sort of weird vibrations and wobbles as you do that. So you wanna be able to have the tip of the blade follow the stick movement. So quick jab gives you a quick response, but there's not a lot of bouncing or wobbling. is how I set mine. And I also look at fast forward and fast backwards flight and look at the tail boom. Look for oscillations there. For me it's it's

It it's a little bit more advanced. It's just all data driven. I don't do it by the the look and feel. I guess cause I start with with gains of fairly low and I want to increase them till I get to just the point of oscillations, you know, and back off of it. So I just do it with the data. I fly with rotor flight. So I'll take that black box log data and look at it and

you know, adjust PIDs as I need to until I get it perfect for me. So it's never really an an eyeball for me, it's just more data driven. Guys, do you think we have time to knock out maintenance and crashes real quick?

I have something I guess in that kind of category as far as Okay. Well then let's do it. Maybe it's an elephant in the room kind of thing. So like I've had a few different models like the Trons. I d I don't know if they still are like that now, maybe. And some of the RS sevens.

I had to where you would and this is a blade grip thing, like, you know, not talking about plastic grips, but you're flying and you've got a metal grip and you snug it down, you know, and the blades are real tight and you fly it. And sometimes a new model will do that, you know, after a few flights it kinda the blades loosen up. Bye.

with a few models I've had the blades loosen up constantly. Like every four or five flights you're like, Well, these blades are loose again And I found that sometimes they just need a better nylon lock nut. Like they just weren't holding up like the threads or something. They were coming loose to where

You could snug'em, but they would just always back out. You know, so I just replaced some of the nuts with hardware ones and never had the blades come loose again. So that's something to keep an eye on on your blade grips. If you're having the blades constantly come loose, just try switching out that four millimeter Not to maybe a better quality one or just a different one in general and try it. Yeah.

Here's my biggest maintenance question. And I don't do a lot of maintenance'cause I rotate helicopters so fast I often don't have to. How do you know it's time to change the dampeners or the radial bearings or the thrust bearings? When what are the signs that, hey, it's time to do some maintenance on your head? Thrust bearings you can tell when the blades are coming out of track while you're flying. It's like obvious, super easy to tell. Or it could be loose servo gear train also.

Yeah, that's true too. But if it's not... Don't move, you don't have a sloppy servo, then it's definitely the head. Yeah. What about dampeners? When is it time to change those out? So typically with today's helicopter for the palms, you really don't have to worry about this. But the O ring machines like the SAB, and that's the only one I know that uses O rings right now.

And I don't know if a lion still uses O-rings, but if you can take the head when it's new and just see what it feels like when you push on one of the blades, like how much does it teeter? And after probably around a hundred flights, you'll notice it gets soft and it's just time to

Um probably you're not gonna run into like an issue where you're gonna boom strike it with today's models unless you've got like hundreds and hundreds of flights and it's just getting loose and you never shimmed it. But It'll definitely make it fly better when the dampers are fresh. Yeah. Replace'em once per year. Um so once per year is what you guys do. Do you guys break all yours down in the off season and replace them all? No, I fly in the rain.

I feel like I generally wait for crashes because I've either sold the helicopter or crashed it and it's time to replace it. I've had one machine that I like wore out from flying so much that I never crashed it, which was my first M7. Still not crashed.

And I have like links I've had to replace and stuff like that. But it's a palm damper and I didn't take it out to see if any of the O rings wore out around it. It still feels good in the air and I've had to replace thrust bearings in it because they more out or rusted or whatever. But yeah, that's all. Yeah. My logo seven hundred I think is the only heli I've kept long enough that I've actually done maintenance on the head.

I've never taken a machine apart and replaced all the bearings in it before. And I know people that do that every winter, but I never have. Yeah, the bearings, uh, another thing I was gonna say is the one that I have had to replace more than anything on the head is just the swash bearing, like the main, you know, big swash bearing. I'll go to grab like a linkage and and you'll start noticing if you grab a grip.

And try to wiggle the blade up and down. Sometimes it's not your plastic links. You look close and that bearing between the upper and lower swash actually has slop in it and that drives me crazy too. So I'll usually replace those if they get worn. Yeah.

I think the only way to truly know it though is either by touch. Say you you know, y during the bill process everything was rock solid and now you get to say sixty the sixtieth flight and you go to touch it and now you feel some wiggle. Something's wrong.

the flight characteristic of it will definitely be different. You may notice that the tracking could be off now. You're like, Hey, I never changed anything, the tracking's off. Well, something might be worn out in that thing, you gotta go check it out. So You're gonna know one way or the other whether it's gonna be the flight characteristics or by touch that something needs to be replaced and worn out. Or

For rotify folks, the data will tell you. Thank you. And visually keep tr keep a uh like especially if it's a new model, keep a a good eye on all of the ball links or the plastic or the metal ball basically where it goes into your swash, all those, the um The guy anti rotation guide pin, all that stuff will come loose on you after a while.

It's the same problem you have with the feathering shaft. Like if you don't actually put the Loctite into the threads on the swash or something, you're gonna have that back out sometimes too, just from shearing, from tightening'em down, so Yeah. Yeah. Put the Loctite in the holes and wipe off the excess on those. Your pre flight checks takes like a minute top.

All right. I feel like crashing we could do a whole episode on, so maybe we won't b say anything about crashing and what to check on the rotor head'cause we'll let Alex lead that episode. Thanks. Things like how much wire is wrapped around your head after a crash. How many turns does it take to get to the center of your swatch? Safety wire. Nice. All right. Anybody else have anything else they want to add about Rotorhead?

I I mean I will say this about a crash. So if you do crash, you're taking the whole head apart. That's just the bottom line. Take it all apart, look at it. That's about it. I did I didn't. Yeah. It wasn't such a bad crash though. I mean I tend to spool it up with no blades on the bench and then I stare at the and we can talk about this in the crash episode, but I don't always take it apart. I do some quick and dirty checks first. Except. Blades.

If the blades hit something or they stop abruptly, then you definitely gotta check. If someone asks why you got a bent blade grip arm, just tell'em you have dynamic tracking. It's dynamic tracking now. Yeah. Nice. New feature. Nice.

All right, well that I think uh it's time to wrap it up. I gotta go eat some birthday cake. Um He said wrap it up. Nice. That sounds good. Yeah. You know the drill. Check out the website www.rotorevolution dot live. All the contact info, swag store, link.

How to find us, all that good stuff's there. Check us out on Facebook, follow us there for rota replays and other links and fun and shenanigans. And as always, thank you very much for listening. Thanks for your messages and your episode ideas and all that good stuff. See ya next time. And let us know if you like episodes like this. Because we plan on doing series like this about servos, ESCs, the tail, and more. So let us know if these things interest you.

This concludes this episode of the Rotor Revolution RC Podcast. To learn more, stay in touch with the team, and to join the Revolution, check out our Facebook page at facebook.com slash Rotar Revolution RC Podcast or find us on the web at Rodarevolution. Help us spread the word and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. For listener questions, advertising inquiries, or to reach out to the entire team, email us at questions at rotorrevolution. Thanks for listening. Cool.

Do you guys I guess we should cover that in maintenance. We'll cover that in maintenance. Never mind. I won't ask you that. You have to do maintenance? I don't know. I hear some people do. You can just crash and you don't have to do mates. Yeah, you just main maintenance all the parts at once.