guillaume83 Senior Heliman Location: Toulouse (France), home of the A380
| Hi all,
I have finally put my Eolo back in the air last week after 8 months taking the dust or so....
I originally purchased this heli 2nd hand and it was flying great til I had a small mishap and had to rebuild the heli...ever since I have had tail vibes.
Let me explain: I have some vibes in the tail during spool up,i can clearly see the carbon fin shaking....when i then fly,i get vibes only when i use the tail rotor...say i apply lef or right rudder and the tail then vibrates when i stop applying it.
I thought it was coming from the bearings in the tail when i last flew the heli in August,and i never tried to get round the issue...when i decided to put the heli back in the air last week,I ordered an extra set of HeliUp BB upgrade for the tail boom,meaning i could put 6 BB in the boom if I wished....but i decided to "only" use 5,thinking that was my problem gone...
Problem is,when i flew last WE,i still had the same tail vibe problem.After 4 flights,I even had a tail rotor failure in flight and the heli started spinning on it self at a fair height.Luckily,I was only hovering and had no speed,I attempted a landing straight away and the heli suffered minor damage (tail rotor bridge broken,flybar and vertical stab)...my cheapest crash ever in fact,but the most impressive for sure!
After investigation,it appears that the tail drive short (S5114) failed (the one in the heli,not in the tail).....it just sheared
I am now wondering if the vibes and this failure were linked in any way.
I first thought the vibes were due to a less than smooth movement of the tail rotor assembly on its shaft,so i oiled it..also,i made the mistake not to assemble the tail gearbox and the tail drive bearing block assembly on their own...I screwed the lot with the boom on...so i corrected this and thought i would get rid of the vibes.
What i am now thinking is that the shaft is not spinning true by the tail drive short,and by putting the HeliUp BB to close to it,this is produving vibes because the shaft is trying to spin untrue but the BB is stopping this happening...what do you guys think? this would explain why the tail drive short failed,i cannot see any other explanation.so if i put the BB a bit further to allow more flexibility of the shaft,i should be fine?????
Tonight,i spooled up the heli in the living room,and i still have vibes on spool up..i have to fly it yet and see how it behaves airborne,but i sure would not like the tail drive short failure to happen again.
My set up is:
Twist 37 with TP 3s3p 6000mAh or 10xCP1700
All QUick UK
Nearly all HeliUp
GY401/9253
One of y other problems is that i am not familiar with the GY401 and its initial setting even though i have been reading a lot about it,but it doesn't feel like tail wag.
Any help/comment would be appreciated.My Eolo is more detailed in my gallery if you want to have a good idea of my set up.
many thanks,
Guillaume |