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Off Topics > **Century Heli Quality Issue: Potential Hawk Buyers Read This

corn_tortilla
Heliman
Location: Round Rock

Nope,

Didn't touch the swashplate, except stick it on the main shaft, hook up the linkages and put on the anti-rotation bracket. They were tight and looked good, so I never unscrewed the ball links.

~corn

01-10-2004 03:08 PM

lt1pwr
Veteran
Location: Douglasville, GA

Corn, sorry to hear about your crash. There is a thought that comes to mind though. It is a good thing you didn't have your heli inside the scale fuselage. This would have been an even bigger headache. Last weekend I drove down to Alabama tp fly with a few friends of mine. One of them was test flying his Hawk Sport due to a Long Ranger fuselage waiting to be flown on his work bench. After the engine was dialed in, on the second tank, the forward cylic servo arm snapped and the heli nosed over and beat the earth. We couldn't believe it!! Brand spanking new helicopter went down just like that. The only good thought that everyone agreed is thank god it wasn't in the Long Ranger fuselage. Good luck on getting it in the air again. I am going down to the garage right now to look over my swashplate.

Take care,

Jay

01-10-2004 03:21 PM

50feet
Key Veteran
Location: Wilmington, Delaware

corn I understand your frustration. But you made a statement that "So before you buy a hawk based on the fact of it’s only $159...." As if the price of the kit has something to do with your crash becuse of the "faulty part." But then you go on to say that you going to repair the heli that you dont seem to trust from company that you have issuse with

We all know what we know but Sh** happens. It still all comes down to how well you check your heli. Cars and helis are like apples to oranges. I have owned it all land. air, and water nitro & electric. And 1000 years of RC experience dont mean squat when you go buy a heli @ 159 or what ever you payed for the crashed Caliber in your gallery. I have seen a video of a heli vet destroy in a new Turbine after about all of 60 sec. in the air.

If you did check ALL of your balls and link and screws after and before every flight you Should have caught it. But who really can say the go back to the bench every refuel to check every nut and bolt? I cant! If it was nasty vibration the heli was not set up correctly so it should not have been 80 feet up.

To trust no one is to trust everyone equally

01-10-2004 04:31 PM

50feet
Key Veteran
Location: Wilmington, Delaware

Money saving tip!

Never test fly a new heli with good blades. Use the woodies.

To trust no one is to trust everyone equally

01-10-2004 04:51 PM

rp56
Senior Heliman
Location: Woodland, WA

to contact century people is never a problem for me, i have called and talked to a few people and they all have been very helpfull. i have never waited on hold.

goto the century web site and look up the contacts, there is a list of people that work for century with phone numbers and where they are located. some of them even have their home number for when they are not at work.

i have had very good luck with century, its to bad that you feel that you where shutout. i hope that it improves for you.

Paul

01-10-2004 07:13 PM

corn_tortilla
Heliman
Location: Round Rock

50feet,

The reason I complained about it being a $159 helicopter was that
A) The repairs will cost more/about (Debate on couting the upgrade blades) than a full heli.
B) It's a $159 helicopter, but to give it the same features as my basic Caliber needs an anti-rotation bracket, auto-rotation clutchbell setup, head bell, muffler, ball-bearing upgrade kit, etc. ( I may have chosen a raptor, if I knew it required all of this stuff)
C) No, the fact the chopper is $159 has no impact on the crash. Others on the board have many great successes with the hawk, flying multiple gallons/cases of fuel. The fact that the ball-link came out of the $159 choppers' swashplate in less than 2 tanks of hovering has something to do with the crash.

RP56,

Yeah, the other flights w/ this bird had the woodies on them; but I did get her flying steady and was anxious to put the final flying blades on her. Yeah, I had asked some other scalers about whether or not to fly her in the fuselage, and they all recommended to buy the landing gear, and test fly her first (Glad I did that)

I'm gonna give Century a call on Monday per SteveH. Hopefully this is a one-in-a-million thing and noone else will have to experience it.

~Corn (At least I can go fly my Caliber today)

01-11-2004 07:18 PM

flipped2left
Key Veteran
Location: indianapolis,in.

The only problem i found on my hawksport was that the swash was stiff in all the cyclic control areas which shredded a perfectly new servo, i have since replaced it with another one i had in a kit i bought used and no problems so far,but the original swash i still have yet to get it loosened up enough to use it. ken

la la la la I can't hear you! la la la la la

01-11-2004 08:05 PM

choppengruven
Key Veteran
Location: Flagler County, FL USA

OK, FWIW.....

Any ARF that I have ever owned has always gone down all the way to basic parts. There are just way too many variables (is there CA on plastic to metal? is there locktite on metal to metal?) to take a chance. All it takes is one to mess up your day.

Metal to metal I have found to be quite good (except on a particular Kyosho 30 sized Caliber), but few, if any, manufacturers use CA for metal to plastic.

01-11-2004 08:51 PM

50feet
Key Veteran
Location: Wilmington, Delaware

You did not but the hawk for 3d or acro you bought it for scale. Most dont do 3D or acro with scale helis. And you dont put the same stress on the swash flying scale.

It is a trainer so anyone buying one should not want or expect to get Caliber quality because you are most likely going to crash it learning, and thats where the 150 price comes in. You dont spend more than the kit to repair it you buy a new one and have a lot of parts for the next crash.

As you learn more you upgrade it get more out of it. Most people that want to get in to 3D upgrade the swash and other control parts to metal. The raven and falcon have all metal swashs.

You were 80ft up with out the fuse and the front ball came out were you tring to pull an aggressive manuver? If you bought a heli and were using it in a way that it should not be used, Oh well. It had that brass boom so it was meant for use in a scale body.

To trust no one is to trust everyone equally

01-11-2004 09:26 PM

MikeC
Key Veteran
Location: Wausau, WI

Sorry to hear about your crash. I also have been flying a Hawk Sport since about June and haven't any problems whatsoever. This was my 7th heli, 2nd Hawk but my first ARF. I even went so far as to dis-assemble much of it just to check that everything was tight, that parts needing Lock-Tight had it and realized they did such a good job that I stopped dis-assembling it and just finished building it.

It's always possible to have a failure and unfortunately there aren't too many unimportant parts on a heli. I've had good luck with getting a hold of Century the few times I've needed too so I don't know what to say.

Regards,

Mike

01-13-2004 02:40 AM

AGRAV8
rrProfessor
Location: Mosquito Coast......Houston Texas

SO??

Corn, did you get to speak to someone at Century today??

01-13-2004 03:02 AM

fritz
Senior Heliman
Location: San Antonio, Texas 78232

Get over it

poop happens, doesn't sound like anything will change your mind about this incident.............Fritz

Hawk sport/SE upgraded.. OS.32 Predator 60 OS.61 Hitec electronics

01-13-2004 03:02 AM

corn_tortilla
Heliman
Location: Round Rock

Made Contact

Got in contact w/ Century yesterday and will be sending up the swashplate for them to look at it. Century seems to be on the right track in working on resolving my issues. I should know more sometime next week.

~Corn

01-15-2004 03:07 AM

Ray Fernandez
Elite Veteran
Location: Guam (U.S.A.)

Keep us posted.

Ray Fernandez - GUAM

01-15-2004 03:38 AM

jimmyhua
Veteran
Location: Guam

Hey corn_tortilla,

Sorry about the crash.

Looking at your original post, I agree with you 100%. You should get Century to at least replace parts that caused the failure. Namely the swash and balls, and A-arm elevator.

The anti-rotation bracket isn't needed, although it would probably have mitigated this accident. I doubt you would have "caught" this problem via a thorough pre-flight check.

I think there are 2 possibilities as to what happened.

1. Cracked/weakened elevator A-arm
2. Cracked/weakened ball-link at elevator swash

combined with

3. Binding at the swash, causing it to want to spin.

The failure occurred quickly, and violently. There would be no immediately visible signs of impending failure on a pre-flight. Luckily no one was near the heli. Since you were just hovering, all these look to me like manufacturer defects.

I am also glad to hear, that you know NOT to put thread-lock in metal-plastic interfaces.

Lift is a Century Rep, so he should be able to help you out.

A few things you should consider:

a) you mentioned that you already bought replacement parts to the tune of $180. I think this is a mistake. You should not be supporting a company that you do not like.

b) they do have a 1-800 number. use it to your satisfaction.

c) I have owned a Hawk-3 and Hawk SE and Falcons and Ravens. I have been very happy with them. I am hoping that you just had some bad luck and got the one in one-thousand that were bad.

As for point c, even if you drove off the lot a Toyota Echo (cheapest car in the world), and one wheel came off 2 miles down the road. I believe, Toyota should/would help in the repair bill. It blows my mind that Century will not. Now if you bought a Yugo, you're out of luck, but at the same time, no one buys Yugo's anymore

.

Jimmy

P.S. you just got your post in right before me. Glad Century is doing something to help you out.

“No, try not! Do or do not, there is no try.”

01-15-2004 05:48 PM

dunbare
Senior Heliman
Location: Oak Ridge, TN

I don't have anything to say about what might have happened to this heli, but I for one have seen a ball come loose for the swashplate. It wasn't on a Century heli put on a Freya.

The guy was doing some low 3-D and then all of a sudden you see one blade start to flutter and then crash.

As we looked over the damage to see what happend we noticed that one of the control arms still had the ball attached to it from the swasplate.

Note, this was a used heli that he had just purchased, and after thinking back it did remember that the screw holding the ball in went in a little easy.

So I guess if the whole was stripped or through manufacturing process was too big, it could happen.

Stinger 50, T-Rex SE, T-Rex 600N Pro

01-15-2004 06:32 PM

LUNITIC
Senior Heliman
Location: Chesapeake, VA

My two Cents for what it's worth

Hey guys, be very careful as this guy might be correct in what happened and how he was dealt with. That’s not to say that Century is at fault or if he is at fault. But! We must always respect someone’s claim to a problem as it occurs. I am not a true Century fan and have had problems with products that they produce and in some cases were left to just deal with what problems I had on my own. It is my opinion that you can love the products and not the company that produces it, i.e. Century, Microsoft and AOL. This is not to bash Century in anyway because I truly believe that Century could wipe “The Market” clean if only they change a few of their customer relation tactics. I strongly believe that you shouldn’t have to come here and bash Century or their products before a legitimate response is given; Century reps shouldn’t have to defend a company in this manner and/or correct a problem in this nature, as this should be done in-house at the company.

All too often on this forum people take things a little too personal and attack the person with the problem, “Get over it.” No! He shouldn’t have to just get over it, especially after spending so much money and believing in a product that didn’t hold up. I know we all want to be true fans and show our loyalties, however, being careful not to bash a potential newcomer or fan when a problem of this nature occurs.

In most cases Century products are strong, reliable and work just fine but in any manufacturing business there are a percentage of products that are defective that find themselves on the market. I have suffered this fate with other companies and Century. If you purchase something from Best Buy and it worked for all of an hour, you could easily return that product and get a replacement provided that you didn’t void the warrantee. This scenario shouldn’t be any different. I recently had a hard landing/crash because of a Hitec servo that let go while flying. Hitec did the right thing and inspected the servo, found it faulty and replacement my parts and the servo. I think that was very honorable and I’m grateful, but I know their response isn’t 100% of the time and that there are those who didn’t get the same treatment.

I think Century should look into the problem as this could be a potential problem in the whole production line. This is not meant to piss on Century. Thank you for reading.

Tim Richburg Chesapeake,VA

01-16-2004 03:36 PM

nap_tan
Senior Heliman
Location: Santa Clara CA, USA

Has anyone been to Century's office in San Jose to make a purchase?

01-18-2004 06:42 PM

flipped2left
Key Veteran
Location: indianapolis,in.

At least it wasn't a nexus! that was my first cp heli, the balls on it were molded plastic my first crash resulted in breaking one on the mixer arm. i simply drilled a hole where it used to be and installed a metal one,then i got rid of it! but i like my hawksport! ken

la la la la I can't hear you! la la la la la

01-19-2004 06:35 AM

Tron
Senior Heliman
Location: Morgan Hill, CA

been to heliworld

Hey Nap_Tan,

I've been to the retail store. What do you want to know?

Also, do you fly out of Bayside? I think I met you once flying your Vigor.

01-19-2004 07:10 PM

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