jimmyhua
Veteran
Location: Guam
| Turning the Hawk Sport Trainer Heli into a 3D Monster.It seems like you want to 3D the hell out of the Hawk Sport. I dunno if you know this or not. But a) it's a 30-sized heli. b) It was designed for folks first heli (super stable). Given this, it will have to be tweaked to get it to fly the way you want to fly it. But don't worry. You should be able to get this thing to be very twichy  .
First things first, servo setup.
If I could get 5.5 I'd be happier, but I'm at 4.5-5 right now, and using 150% atv (which I don't like).
Right there is a sign that the servo wheels you are using are too small.
You will find, that for the aileron servo wheel, you end up having to use the Futaba Big round wheel and drilling your own holes at custom locations.
But before you go off doing that, get the 6 arm servo wheel, and cut off 5 of the 6 arms. Then slowly dremel some of plastic off. Now it should fit the elevator servo perfectly w/out binding. Use the most outter hole or the second hole (don't remember which will work).
Make sure it works w/out binding against the aileron servo. With the new servo tray on the Hawk Sport, you should be able to use all the balls provided and put them upright (the normal way). On the older Hawk SE, some servos horns had to have their balls on upsidedown.
NOW, measure how far from center that ball-link is at. Should be between 11-12 mm. Use this length and drill your holes in the big servo wheel for the aileron. Use a business card, and try your best to make it so that the holes are set such that the aileron control rods are 90degrees from the servo horn and centered. Checkout the manual to see what I'm talking about.
This setup should give you anywhere between 5-6 degrees of cyclic authority with the default bell-hiller mixing. You will also notice some binding in the corners. There's a post by Coleopter on the main forum that shows a mod he did to his Tx to get rid of this binding (it's a generic fix for any heli).
Next you should go out, and BUY yourself 1 set of stainless steel long balls & another 1 set of stainless steel medium balls.
I dunno if the long balls will fit, but you wanna replace the short balls in the inner swash (which has a pair of medium and a pair short balls) , with all medium or a set of medium and a set of long balls.
The A-arms should go to the original set of medium balls (the longer set). Don't mess with these.
NOW, you should get 7-9 degrees of cyclic authority. And with Coleopter's mod to the Tx, no corners to bind on.
Now, the heli should be very twichy.
Next, you prolly want to mess with the Bell-hiller mixing ratio, to adjust how the heli feels in forward flight (and how much the blades slow down on hard cyclic inputs). There's a bell mixer right at the main blade grip. There's a long ball and a short ball. The long ball is attached to the washout assembly. Don't mess with this. Now, there's a short ball that should be attached to the swash. You should replace this with a medium or long ball. This will determine how much the flybar & flybar paddles will affect how the heli will fly.
With the default bell-hiller mix (long ball to washout assembly & short ball to swash). You will get a total collective pitch range of about +/-12 degrees. When you start mixing and matching, your pitch range will change. 2 long balls will get you down to about +/-9 degrees. Swap 'em, (short to washout & long to swash) & you won't have enough collective pitch range to fly!!
You will also find that changing the bell-hiller mix will also reduce the cyclic pitch range. But I have found, that even though the pitch is reduced, the heli still flips like there is no tommorrow.
My setup on the Hawk SE is all medium balls on the inner swash. And for bell-hiller mix, I have long ball to washout and medium ball to swash. This works almost perfect with Funkey FRPs ($30 dollar fiberglass blades). The heli is quite neutral in flight.
I haven't flown this thing yet, but it certainly is no X-cell- I don't like the flybar control arms, only one ball on the swash for elevator, or the cheap feeling tail pitch assembly-
Nope, no X-cell here. But, the flybar control arms are just like the older X-cells. The one ball on the swash for elevator is the same setup as the Shuttle. And if you are talking about the pitch-plate setup, there have definitely been a few complaints about it. But it works.
FYI, on the Hawk SEs and Falcon SEs, the flybar control arms are upgraded. But the one ball on the swash for elevator is still the same. The tail pitch plate is the same too. The biggest difference between the sport and the SE, is the SE's are fully BB'd out and have thrust BBs on mainblades and tailblades, and have metal sideframes and metal clutchbell & torque tube drive on the Falcon.
Back when it was between a Hawk IV and Hawk SE. There was no question about it. for $80 more, get the SE. The difference was like night and day, in the way the heli's felt in flying. But now that I think of it, I'm not sure if it's the metal sideframes or the thrustBBs or the metal clutchbell that's making the difference... What do you think? Right now, I only fly one brand of heli, but mainly it's because, it's cheaper this way (interchangeable parts and whatnot).
Jimmy |
If all else fails you can also just mount the ele arm facing the other dir but then you will have to bend the ele rod and grind on the frames done that before too in the same quest, to be totally honesy the Hawk is a beginners heli it wasnt setup to give absolute 3D throws in the first place, your manouvers will be just larger and not as tight is all, fast servos will make a hawk seem like it has more throw because response time is quickened you can always go that rout as well like .15-.18 speeds etc......if thats what your after. Good luck. Fly it first before becoming discouraged you may be happy with its throws anyway.
