GroundPounder
Veteran
Location: South Africa, Cape Town
| Well, I'm new to this, but this was my experience of tie-ing the heli down.
Built my Raptor 50, threadlock on all metal parts.
Tie it down on a wooden table, start the motor.
All's well, until I increase the motor rpm, everything starts to vibrate like hell. ( Hey, I'm used to planks!)
Ok, so maybe something is out of whack, although I was under the impression that I had setup the blades and all properly.
I decide to wait until the weekend, take it out to the local club, have someone check it out.
I arrive early at the field early, setup table, tie heli down, run it, still vibrating.
A guy comes over to me, tells me this is the worst thing I can do, because this way unnatural resonances build up.
Turns out he's a boffin.
We take the Rappy off the table, he checks it out, starts it, lift it into a hover, what do you know, no more vibration.
Only problem is fixed by one turn on the blade link to get the tracking perfect.
I procede to attempt to hover, half a tank later, the engine dies, and on attempting to restart it, I find the hex collar is loose, one grubscrew gone, and the engine stopped due to a loose muffler.
My friendly boffin tells me this damage was done in just two tanks of having the heli unnaturally fixed to a rigid object.
I'm in the mechanical profession, so I know some about locktite and all.
I redo all the loose parts with the same locktite, also found the engine mounts loose and the tail rotor linkage( whow, that could have been fun)
Bottom line, after about ten tanks now, nothing has come loose, other than the muffler, I hear that is a fairly common problem.
I still get some vibration as the engine spools up, once it gets flying that goes away.
GroundPounder |
