AH-6Z Littlebird Night-Ops build project

[wgt40w]

Fair play fella, bit of a shame they messed up, don't want to rush you, I'm cool with waiting.

I'd rather you were happy with your design before you send any out.

Might go for one of those TX antenna covers too. ;)

+ 1

[Zeeflyboy]

Oky doky, as soon as I get refunded I'll be re-ordering so I'll be sure to update the thread here when I can.

Here's a quick fun pic, my lovely little 130X has found a new friend. I still think the FLIR pod is looking a bit big - the re-designed one is much smaller so I'll try both and see which I prefer and how the performance differs.

Oh and the door is the green I have decided to go with for the heli... I just wanted to try it out lol. That'll all be sanded off again as part of the smoothing/finishing/priming process... at least I know the airbrushes work and the colour looks good to me!





Oh and check out this video. This is from a guy flying on a 320x240 Quark Thermal camera which would easily fit in a pod smaller than the one there.... only problem is I need about $5000 and to fill out a load of ITAR paperwork since it's classified as military technology  :o

Dehogaflier Hunt Gone Wrong Part 1

[Flyn]

Cool mate, look forward to it - any ideal on costs?

Nice pic btw - should a great thing to fly & a thermal cam would be just the ticket!

[Zeeflyboy]

around about 45 quid....

not cheap I know but that's about as low as I could get the cost without taking out too much material....  :shrug:

[Zeeflyboy]

So, the GF has been a lovely girl and taken plenty of pics of the new parts this morning. You may be asking why the colours, and there are two reasons. Firstly, shapeways were offering a discount on the colours since they had just added a new printer with higher resolution and improved dying quality so it saved me a few pennies. Secondly, for the dash it will have led lights inside and I figured that having a dark dye would help stop any light leakage without having to do too many layers of paint.... unfortunately they don't do a polished black yet so I had to go with blue.

The imrc fan coolers are red because anything imrc had to be red ;)

Anyway, butt load of pics here... looks pretty good to me!


the gaggle of bits




Dash console:






Collective stick and housing:





Rudder pedal assembly:





IMRC vTX coolers:

[Zeeflyboy]

Ah and just to let you know I've agreed to take the EzUHF cradle with a 15% refund... So should be able to sort that out sooner than anticipated

[Zeeflyboy]

I think the smaller one will look nicer, but we'll see. I'll have both to choose from anyway at least!

Just got back to UK and this was waiting for me, my new toy! Courtesy of g.collins on here...

The spindle should be arriving next week and I'm going to just buy a cheap shuttle pc off ebay and bung a parallel port PCI card in it (it runs off parallel, not serial). Then I just need to figure out how to use the damn thing lol, it's all a bit complicated looking to be honest but hopefully I'll get the hang of it.

The first project will be a nice simple one to get me started - some frame braces for the motor area made out of 2.5mm CF plate. I had to cut away a lot of material to get the oversized motor to fit and I don't want it flexing, or worse breaking, under the heavy torque loads.

I'll then move on to some braces for the mounting points to spread the load from the standoffs to the plywood floor and provide some more equipment mounting points, and then some battery trays... then we'll see what else I can manage to do!

[Zeeflyboy]

Anyhoo, here's a pic of my dash with front panel installed. The glare shield will be black and the body will be the same grey as the fascia panel






And I'm really chuffed with how this little thing came out...

[Zeeflyboy]

So I'm back in the UK and can't do too much for the next week or two but I brought my laptop so I can keep up some work in solidworks!

I've decided I will have two "auxiliary" landing lights to complement the main one, and I have designed a small housing for them. This is designed to fit the 20mm Light units from flytron, and I have 2 x 60 degree ones on the way. They will be fitted to the underside of the heli and can be angled as required to get the best light coverage.

LED wise they will be running a 1w led like the main one, for a total of 3w in the forward lights (not much compared to Hugo's 300W beast, but should be pretty good still!)

So here are the units:







http://www.shapeways.com/model/780294/0883a5aa57230f3e4c46460fc5e40d9f?li=


And this is the LED unit from flytron that will slot inside.





On the subject of Lighting, I found this unit which will be the core of my lighting system... it's called the DElight and it's made by Dimension Engineering (they also have a number of useful looking radio controlled relay switches etc). It's pretty unique in how configurable it is, plus it includes 2 programmable high power channels which are good for 2 amps each.

http://www.dimensionengineering.com/products/delight-starter-kit


I will be running it from a 6 pole switch, which gives me 6 lighting options...

Position 1: All lights off
Position 2: Beacon on
Position 3: Beacon + Nav lights on
Position 4: Beacon + Nav lights + Cockpit roof lights on
Position 4: Beacon + Nav lights + Cockpit roof lights + Main landing light on
Position 5: Beacon + Nav lights + Cockpit roof lights + Main landing light + Aux landing lights on


In addition to that, I've done some work on my weapons arms...

These are designed for two 8mm spars (either fibreglass, carbon fibre, or aluminium) to run through the main section which will mount them to the fuselage. These spars will run all the way through the heli so the arms will be uber tough and strong and should have no flex at all.

The outer section is attached via a hinge which allows the arm to fold up for space saving storage (the real ones can do this too, and I thought it was a good idea).

When down it's locked in place by 2 pairs of 6x2mm magnets... and gravity.

The panels will be made from 0.75mm fibreglass that will be precisely cut out using my new CNC machine :)

You can see the outer mount for the missile tube/hellfires and the inner mount for mini guns







http://www.shapeways.com/model/774346/mounting_arm.html?key=cc712e9bea758e1c54d4981006c03df7

[FPVSteve]

No words really

[CurryKitten]

Amazing as always - have you thought about investing in a 3d printer as well, shapeways appears to charge quite a bit in comparison to printing your own..... so it'll be like you are saving money, not spending it :D

[Zeeflyboy]

Hah, I would love to...

Unfortunately the only printer that would make things to the level I want is the Formlabs machine which is about $3000 (plus not quite yet available).

I haven't spent more than a couple hundred euros on shapeways so far, so it's hard to justify financially.

Maybe one day though...

[g.collins]

If you got one, this is possible.
First flight of 3D printed plane
:) G

[Zeeflyboy]

very cool... that's a much bigger printer though lol

So I've been thinking about it, and someone on another forum suggested the servo city chain for the FLIR pan rather than normal servo linkages.

(here) http://www.servocity.com/html/plastic_chain__0_1227__.html

However, the small 0.1227" stuff is out of stock for at least a few weeks apparently - sad times. In the mean time I've designed these which *should* fit the chain.

I've made the one on the pod 14T and the one on the servo 28T... this way if I use a standard 90 degree servo the pod will have 180 degrees, or if I use a 180 degree servo I can get a full 360, but still have the thing return to centre when I centre the control.

Combined with a 90 degree servo in the tilt that will go from horizontal to straight down (not much point in looking up) the pod will be able to look pretty much anywhere.

http://www.shapeways.com/model/784590/ed135ecc49045f1adbc9657ddfbd8599?li=

[Zeeflyboy]

And shapeways just have an incredible skill at delivering stuff when I'm not there....

So once again courtesy of the GF, here are some of the latest parts:

My new smaller FLIR unit:












My new improved pan/tilt (just some improved clearances, added middle bearing option, added cable tidy/back support, improved the camera fit, reduced the footprint of the camera mount a little, smooth some edges and added my name ;))









and a shoulder for the pilot (collective arm). This part has a 3x6x2.5mm bearing inserted in either side and will slot onto the 3mm carbon shaft I installed in the pilot's shoulder.