heliman41 Key Veteran Location: Valparaiso IN. USA
| Hi Gerry,
I built the (unpainted full kit version), and am flying it now. It flies beautiful. The biggest recammendation I can give you is try to build light yet strudy, be sure to add a hard attachment to the top of fuse to mechs to stop the fuse shell from resonating and shaking(glasswork is thin), and by ALL means run only semi lifting mains( this is a must) you wont believe how much better it hovers and handles with semi mains installed. You can get 550 semi mains in white gelcoat glass from ABmodels for just $28 and they are sweet, thats what Im running. The fuse is crowded so I got lazy and just locked down my retracts but they can be made to work and I may do it this yr if I get feelin spunky. The kit is easy to build tho I did modify a few things, it was completed in 1 month ready to fly and painting took up 2 weeks of the building time. I Installed SE mechs as I had just built 1 and had then decided to do a scaler. The regular hawk is ok tho for a scaler I just wanted the extra thrustBBs etc in mine is all that the SE has along with a few other upgrades over the reg hawk. The tail pinion is a plug in device I STRONGLY recammend you disassemble the mechs and squeeze the pinion until the drivewire has no play otherwise the tail will be swishy and the gyro wont be able to lock properly with all the slop. Ive experienced this on several Hawks, frankly a tube drive is the best setup hands down for any scaler as it will never need adjusting ever, a belt drive is ok too like the rappy has until the temps change and the belt gets loose or tight then headache city. The wire drive wont give you too much trouble IF you remove all slop tho so thats what I did and its working fine Im using 15%expo on all controls including tail, mine weighs 9lbs soaking wet, its a blast to see it crusing along!!!!!!!!!!Im running the OS32SXH with a century scaler muff and a JR8 WDT PCM for my radio issues. Im running Byron 20% fuel and it just barely smokes (I like that fact!) If you have any other Qs feel free to ask, I have pics of it as well. Happy hovering, Dave |