AH-6Z Littlebird Night-Ops build project

[wgt40w]

I'm beginning to suspect you are starting to quietly enjoy when things go 'wrong' and you have to start designing something for Shapeways to make !!!

[Zeeflyboy]

Hah yeah, a problem to solve is a good excuse to create something!

Did they ship your EzUHF holder yet?

[FPVSteve]

I think it's amazing how when faced with a build issue you can instantly begin manufacturing a new part and know exactly what it is you need.

Big. Fat. Showoff. lol

Great build again - hows the Eurofighter going these days too?

[wgt40w]

Hah yeah, a problem to solve is a good excuse to create something!

Did they ship your EzUHF holder yet?

And the aerial bung - they were ' being created in our factory of the future' as of Dec 18th. Awaiting UPS shipping email - no panic.

[Zeeflyboy]

Hmm... Perhaps a bit slow over the holiday season.

Hope you get it soon!

Steve - I've been bodging things since I could crawl lol. If something needs bodging together, and bodging fast then I'm your man!

The euro is sat under my work table at the moment. I've got some more plans for it, and eagletree have some new stuff for me to try out too so I'll need to fit/install that at some point. It's more of a fair weather flier for me at the moment as I can't fly it locally, so it probably won't get an outing until the spring.

[Zeeflyboy]

so I've decided I will have a go at making my own frames out of G10... I think the possibility to reduce potential blocking of the radio signal is worth it alone, and the new shape I can do is also useful.

So this took frikking ages carefully measuring everything to make sure the important holes are all where they should be in relation to each other, but I finally ended up with something that I believe is correct!





So the nose has been shortened, more material put in around the motor mount in a way to suit my larger motor, I've placed the cross brace supports a bit more strategically, added holes for the battery mounts, I've added an upper mounting option just behind the elevator servo for the Naza-H and made a little more space up the top by the front cyclic servos to prevent interference with the removable canopy.

I also then re-designed my bottom bracket to suit the new frame:





And here's a quick shot of the frame sides, bottom bracket, motor brace and front cyclic servo spacer together.



I will try cutting these frames out next week when I'm back, and hopefully the guy machining my custom bracket for me should be able to get it done within the next month or so (he's very kindly doing it in his own time for pocket change, so I just need to wait for work to die down!). In the mean time I'll continue the build with my current frame and hopefully get some test flights in with the mechanics before the end of the month.

[Zeeflyboy]

They are indeed... I'd love to have a play with one though!

So, back to the cockpit - just hooked up my rudder pedal mechanism, seems to work quite well! The pedals themselves are free to rotate on their shafts which should make the action smoother when they have a foot mounted to them. They look quite comedy large here but with the pilot in place they actually look pretty spot on size wise.






I also found this great looking floor covering for my cockpit - it's a very thin foil on some plasti-card backing and has proper 3D patterning to the checker plate style floor. Bit bright and shiny of course, but a wash with some dirtying paints and it'll look right at home methinks!

[Zeeflyboy]

it loves you too sim

So, problems problems everywhere.....

just ran into something I don't like... no sireee bob not one bit lol.

Look at the clearance between the swash arm here and the anti-rotation bracket. If a link gets even slightly loose, these arms could swing out slightly with the centrifugal force... to help stop that happening I'm switching all the nuts to nyloc locknuts and will be locking the blade grip end connection with strong loctite (which then holds the arm in position as the link is connected to the grip through a set of bearings) but it's still something I think could conceivably happen.





It would destroy the AR bracket in absolutely no time at all I'm sure if it were it to happen, the end result of which would be too sad for words lol. And I can't relocate the bracket further back as the guidance pin then falls out at extremes. Longer pin is a possible option, but that's too easy.

So, since I'm cutting my own frame anyway we can be a bit more creative! The 600 ESP moves the cyclic servos further forwards and then spins the swash 180 degrees and runs linkages from the front to the back, with the rear servo running a linkage through to an elevator arm at the front.

This is stupid. Too many linkages, servos at the front driving the back and vice versa.

However, on the 600 pro they do it better - an elevator arm at the back with two direct drive servos at the front... a setup that will work great here. The issue is that the frame doesn't have the bearing mounting points required and is significantly thinner than the 600 pro frame.

So a combination of this




some frame mounting bearing blocks I've just whipped up for some 5x10x4mm bearings





...and then once I've made some measurements an appropriately relocated elevator servo and bearing mount hole in the frame, and I'll be able to lose the AR bracket altogether. I think it'll look better too without the AR bracket sticking out so it's win win really. Only complication is that I may need to cut down the axle and re-thread, and I also need to watch my servo arm lengths so I don't mess up the geometry.

Next up, I also dislike my tail's clamping mechanism. Put simply it sucks. I've designed this new clamp (to be made from Aluminium) since I couldn't find any similar style 24mm clamps on t'interweb (please pipe up if you've seen something suitable!). I also took the opportunity to add a small hole at the top for an anti-rotation screw that will help stop the tail case from turning on the shaft.




And proof, if ever it were needed, that I'm a moron... I was sizing up the mechanics to the heli and cut the fuselage tail boom down to match the mechanics like it says to in the instructions... but of course being the muggins that I am, I hadn't checked how much the boom needed to be extended to tension the belt correctly - something which only occurred to me after I had gone crazy with a dremel... turns out I didn't need to trim the tail down at all - doh!

So whipped out the epoxy and stuck it's little tail back on, here it is with some filler waiting to be sanded smooth again. I won't tell mum and dad if you won't...

[wgt40w]

Sorry to hear of your 'Tail' problem, but it is nice for us 'plebs' to be reminded even you can make the odd mistake - as opposed to the many most people make !!

[Zeeflyboy]

I make plenty I assure you lol....

Anyway in the mean time, I stole the elevator arm from my 600 Pro for some measurements and the idea should work. Here's the re-designed frame... You can see the elevator servo has moved further back to make way for the arm mechanism, and then I've added a hole for the bearing mount block. Now I just need to find a suitable length 5mm m3 threaded tube.... or make one.

[Zeeflyboy]

 UPS lady kindly just dropped some stuff off.

First up we have my Naza GPS mount. This came out somewhat taller than I thought and now I'm starting to think about the blades lopping it off if they come close to a boom strike... I may redesign the central section a cm or so shorter.

The parts: Boom mount (to be inserted from inside through a cut out and then blended in), main body, and lid.




here with the Naza GPS sat inside (note it allows a few degrees movement if I need to set declination - around here it's only 1-3 degrees or so though)




and assembled (note little hook on the underside to tidy up the wire, neat lol)






Next up, the OSD Pro case... this one fits very nicely. When I get around to it i'll print up some new stickers minus the holes.






Altimeter case, also a perfect fit




and eLogger case, this one didn't turn out quite perfect, I'll have to do some small design revisions perhaps, but it works with some tweaking






and here you can see how they will make my install that much neater, the OSD Pro and altimeter are installed on the floor pan and will later be joined by the guardian for FLIR AHI... eLogger will go on the underside of the opposite side battery plate.

[CurryKitten]

Do you know I've got so used to seeing exquisite little bits of 3D printed plastic, that I was thrown a little bit by seeing the Helicopter canopy.  I think I'd forgotten this was something that will be flying :D

[Zeeflyboy]

Haha, yeah sometimes I forget too!

So just attacked one door with a dremel, poor chap looks like he is wondering where it went. I've forgotten this one's name... given the pilot is Juan, lets call him Julio!




Juan and Julio, sitting in a tr.... err AH-6 Zeeeeeee

[Zeeflyboy]

Oop, looks like I forgot to post this one


So today I've just finished off drilling tapping and cutting my second battery mount brackets, now installed on the heli... I decided to do this for several reasons - having them mounted up here rather than on the floor pan a couple of inches below raises the CG which makes for a better handling helicopter in theory... it also gives me all the floor space to install components such as ET OSD, altimeter, guardian, light controller etc etc. Finally, it also gives me a useful shelf to install the power components - the Gryphon will mount on the underside of one, the DJI BEC on the underside of the other and then the eLogger at the back of one.





And here with a pair of 6S 3300mah. I've designed the plates to take up to at least 6S 5000mah size batteries, so these are looking a little small:







And I also finished off my Naza mount by counter sinking the holes and installed it. I used the DJI supplied foam tape on the underside of my mount and then as before sandwiched the Naza between the two pieces of omicron anti vie gel. The top plate puts some pressure down on the unit and compresses the gel, while locking the Naza in place. It feels very firmly mounted so it'll be interesting to see if the Naza complains about the mounting method at all.




And I'm not a big fan of something about this cockpit... It's designed so that you place the windows on the outside (one big upper piece, two small lower pieces) and then mask off the windows so you can paint the panel lines. My issue with this is that it always looks like a window has been stuck on... I prefer to install from the inside so you have the nice clean lines... which is the way they do it on the incrementally larger 700 sized fuselage.

So now that I've already made the plug of the lower canopy I decided to put the old part to use. I cut out the window shape and installed with epoxy, then trimmed it down to the edge of the fuselage. This fills the indentation and once I've used a bit of filler and sandpaper it'll be blended in nicely and I can then put some rivets along the edges for scale detail.

[wgt40w]

Hah yeah, a problem to solve is a good excuse to create something!

Did they ship your EzUHF holder yet?

And the aerial bung - they were ' being created in our factory of the future' as of Dec 18th. Awaiting UPS shipping email - no panic.

Friday Jan 4th - just been advised items have shipped.