AH-6Z Littlebird Night-Ops build project

[wgt40w]

Hurrah - we're off again.

So - laser jig saw; cnc router; 3D printer.   I bet a trip round your 'workshop' would be quite interesting.

MkIII frames and its' never even yet flown - now that is as badass as I am. My plane builds often involve numerous 'retakes' before I dare fly!

[Zeeflyboy]

Erm yeah... Workshop...

Maybe one day.... At the moment I just piss off the GF lol

[wgt40w]

Go steady - not everyone is as lucky as you to have a GF who buys such 'suitable' hobby pressies as yours does !

[Zeeflyboy]

Indeed!

just got back to my man cave and had a few things waiting for me (plus my heli patiently sitting on the table waiting for me, bless it's little cotton socks)...

So first up, a slightly saucy nude 1/6th scale body to test. What can I say, dude is mega buff.... Now while his nakedness probably makes him look a bit smaller I think he looks pretty good size wise here. A lot of the extra length seems to come from the legs, something which would be easy to shorten a touch anyway... what do you guys think?






This scale has several advantages, more detail being a big one, but also fully posable hands and better articulation for the passenger to get a natural looking position.

Here he is standing next to Julio for a size reference, and next to Juan as well...







Anyway, if you've had enough of naked man nipples for one day, here's something we can all agree makes up for it... MINIGUNS

[tdmodels]

Do the mini guns work?    If not, I think it's time to go back to Google Sketchup!!!   >:(

Everything else is working scale! WHY NOT THE MINIGUNS!!!!!    :'(

[Zeeflyboy]

If by work, you mean fire 1/6 scale size slugs of lead at 6,000 rounds per minute then no....

They will however get implanted with a small electric motor to make them spin just for giggles.

[Zeeflyboy]

So couple of little updates

First, the chain finally arrived for my FLIR pod pan... here it is fitted. Happy to say my 3D printed cogs worked out perfectly. I changed to a turnigy 180 degree servo but on the servo tester I'm only getting around 315 degrees out of the setup as a whole... It's good enough though to be honest so I'm not overly worried about it!




and secondly just done a little work on the mechanics... glued in the bearing supports and fitted the elevator arm. You can probably see here how the servo at the back pushed the arm on the front left, which then rotates on the axle and moves the rear of the swash. This allows me to get rid of the problematic (and frankly ugly) anti-rotation guide




and lastly a sullivan pushrod for the tail. This consists of a nylon rod inside of an outer sleeve... this gives a nice flexible pushrod that can much more easily fit within the constraints of the fuselage. The tape is just temporary, I'll come up with a better mounting method down the road.




I also just found out that they are releasing a torque tube version of my tail this month.... UGH!! I went with belt purely to use this tail, but now there is the option of TT I'm leaning towards that. Much easier in general as there is no need to tension the belt (a pain in a scale fuselage) and the tail unit can just pop on/off the end of the boom for maintenance as it doesn't need to be looped under the belt. Will just need to order the new tail and some TT specific parts for the boom block.

[wgt40w]

FLIR Pod Pan servo - only achieving 315 degrees.

Would it help if you added a servo extender board ?

Such as:   http://www.firstpersonview.co.uk/index.php?main_page=advanced_search_result&search_in_description=1&zenid=8b456a0fd32d256d0f1e69ec219e239f&keyword=extender&x=0&y=0

Yes -  do realise it is called 180 degrees, but wonder if it would still extend angles for you.

Alternatively - Read this for inspiration:
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=330432

[Zeeflyboy]

Servo extender would make it something like 630 degrees.

The servo resolution would be too jumpy at that level, each step would be excessively big.

It's not a problem, the pan is kind of redundant on a heli that can just rotate anyway lol. I can probably get it to 360 by playing with travel adjust, but like I said I'm not that bothered really, I was originally just going to have 90 degrees so this is way above what I originally intended

[Ratty]

Looking awesome, nice work as always.

The bigger man does look better imo, but like you said it seems to be all leg.

Love the little miniguns, and having them spin is just sweeeeet.

Keep up the good work.

[Zeeflyboy]

Sorry for the lack of updates guys, been a bit busy lately!

However here's just a little work on my minguns...

I broke them open and did a little dremelling so I could insert a pololu 1101 gearbox motor. I used some brass tubing as a centre shaft for the barrels to mount to the gearbox shaft and then stuck it all back together, I will paint the brass tube too I just wanted to make sure it all worked and spun on the axis.... I'll probably chuck some small caps on to reduce RF noise too when I find some small ones.






These are designed to run from around 3-9v so will just be powered directly from the non-essential BEC at 7.4v through a remote switch.


Also, my shaft drive tail arrived... I'm actually quite happy I changed here. The design has a number of improvements including extra bearings in each blade grip, a bigger pitch arm to accomodate the extra authority from 4 blades, a FAR better tail boom clamp, and the whole thing spins up so beautifully smoothly...






Speaking of the mechanics, I've pretty much finished wiring up the main electronics now... Once I get the last bits I need in the post I should be able to get it up and flying for some testing. Here you can see the servos installed with wires routed internally, the ESC sits on top of the bottom plate just behind the motor and the gryphon sits on the side supplying the Naza with go go juice.






I also finished wiring up the SPS switch and eLogger, this now just needs to be installed on the underside of the heli and plugged into the ESC.

[Zeeflyboy]

Miniguns test

[Badlands]

oh.. i was expecting it to fire?



Hehe... seriously - very nice job.

[wgt40w]

Going back to the last picture of your 'crew'

Suggest Juan and Julio  should be renamed        Butch and Minnie !!

[Zeeflyboy]

lol...

just one more little pic - shows how the SPS switch/elogger mounts to the underside of the heli and battery plates.

You can see the two EC2 connectors for feeding both BEC's the full 12S voltage (downstream of the current sensor to include in total mah) and the filtered JST connector for feeding the vTX with just 6S from one pack, unfortunately it has to be upstream of the current sensor but draw should be utterly negligable.



Oh and that lead from the ESC should be able to give me RPM info on the eagletree. I just need to plug that into the eLogger and it gives out the rpm info... should work - It works in the same manner as the eagletree rpm sensor.

So just a couple of connectors left to solder and then I'm just waiting for the last mechanical parts (torque tube and associated parts, pushrods etc) and I can finally get the mechanics up for a spin.