Raj Patel Senior Heliman Location: Humble, TX
| FlutterI have been messin with raptors since they came out. I have experienced flutter with every one I have owned. After years of tinkering with different mods, etc. I have finally found the cause.
Remember, flutter may be caused by simple things like bad thrust bearings, aft chord c.g. blades (the model sports I had were very trailing edge heavy, causing them to lead (instability, big time).
But forget the grip flip, tightening the bushings, and all the other recommendations out there, yes they can help or even "delay " the onset of flutter, and there is nothing wrong with tightening up your control system, but none of those fixes will cure flutter for good.
I have found the cause to be inaccurately molded head blocks.
Every head block I have bought has been "crooked" in more than one axis.
An easy way to find out is just check the static tracking. Every crooked head block I have owned, did not track statically. (Just pull your radio antenna up and set it under one of the blade tips, rotate the head and check to see how high / low the opposite blade is.)
I had a machine shop build a jig which would accurately locate the head block so we could line bore and ream the hole. We then steel sleeved it and NO MORE FLUTTER!
Most people wont be able to do the above, as it is time consuming and expensive to do if you don't own a machine shop or have a good friend who owns one :+)
I just bought 2 metal cnc head blocks from Heli-hut for a test, and they were machined very well. The static tracking was dead on and even the flybar axis was accurate. (I found the flybar axis is off on the molded plastic TT headblocks as well, which was discovered at my buddies machine shop)
I would recommend that you try a heli-hut machined head block, I am confident it will fix your flutter problems. I would not recommend a Quick WW metal headblock , simply because everything CNC'd I bought made from them was "crooked"
I also don't recommend using aft chord c.g blades like I mentioned above,as they are very unstable and will have a tendency to flutter, especially when using with plastic (springy) control systems such as the raptors, they are also hard on the servos, but that is just my opinion, but I feel, even those will track properly if using a accurate head block..
Raj |