AH-6Z Littlebird Night-Ops build project

[Mudders]

Finally I can contribute a little, this is what I use for rivets

http://www.deluxematerials.co.uk/pages/scenicproducts.htm

The pinpoint set is ace, I find titebond wood glue (yellow looking stuff) ace as it holds it's shape and doesn't shrink much.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, ACE THREAD!

Muds  :)

[Zeeflyboy]

I'll have a look for some titebond and see how it compares, cheers.

[Zeeflyboy]

So what's the very definition of frustration?

- Your 3D printer that you ordered 2 months ago finally ships but then gets stuck in customs....
- 5 Days later you still hear nothing so you call up and in your finest Franglais try to find out what's up. Turns out there's a missing invoice so you send them the info they need...
- Postman Pat comes knocking on the door with a big heavy parcel, but needs €290 for import duties and you only have €250 in your wallet.... So he walks away with your much beloved box.

Argh!!!!

On the plus side some bits and bobs from HK finally arrived so maybe today I can grant Juan the gift of legs once more.

[FPVSteve]

That's a lot of stamps :o

[Zeeflyboy]

innit...

In other news I promised Juan some new legs today and so here we go:





AH-6Z FPV project rudder preview

Also hooked up this little board which is designed to make things easier... just need to get some liquid tape to finish it off. Basically this goes into the side of the seat under the centre console and allows me to plug all servos except collective, for which the servo isn't in the seat... So that's Aileron, Elevator, Rudder, Pan, Tilt. The last one on the end with the shielded wire is for the video out.

Doing it like this is nice and space saving, plus by bridging the servo negatives and positives I cut down on 4 pairs of pos/neg wires to run back to the ppm decoder.

[Zeeflyboy]

So just got mugged by a criminal in a postal worker's uniform.... now I need to somehow turn this into a 3D printer... this may take some time....

[Zeeflyboy]

Just got back from my days off and finished off my printer build....




And she's already up and running printing off her first test print!


Makergear m2 first run

[Zeeflyboy]

so, got a little time to play at last.

my very first self-printed parts for the heli... some guides for the pushrod to position it properly and hold in place. Okay the finish can't compare to shapeways but for non-cosmetic stuff this is just brilliant. For example the larger piece ended up holding the pushrod off slightly higher than I'd like, so a quick adjustment on solidworks and a re-print, problem solved! Just brilliant.









And I globbed on some epoxy to the back of my little breakout board and installed it in place. All the servos for the seat, pan/tilt and the camera connection plug into this board... the camera cable (shielded) then runs down directly and the rest are run through the centre console and around the bottom where they will connect to the PPM decoder in the front.

[Zeeflyboy]

So man oh man oh man.... if there's one thing I hate more than anything it's filling and sanding.

Spent hours doing this today, not much to look at mind you! Had to get rid of the joins in the two halves, finish off the right door and some other bits and bobs. Tomorrow I need to sand off the remaining moulded hinges, fill and sand those too, then give it a coat of primer. Once that's done I can start marking out rivets and making some panels etc.














Oh, and I also laid some copper tape on the bottom of the GPS mount and for good measure wrapped another piece around the bottom of the naza itself.

[Topgun Scotland]

stunning build! cant wait to see more

[Zeeflyboy]

So just looked in the post box and something was waiting for me!

I needed some Coax to hook up my nice Fractals. I was just going to buy some RG316 but then I saw they had this low loss CFD200 cable and I thought why not - It's nice and smart black after all! So Here's my attempt at soldering the Fractals up, with the proximity of the soldering I thought I better check with a multimeter to see if I had a short and just as well I did as the second one did indeed have a stray shielding wire causing a short.









I think My plan for mounting these will be to find some thin black double sided tape or similar and use that to attach them to the sidewall once the interior has been painted.

[tdmodels]

I have used this stuff....

http://www.maplin.co.uk/double-sided-foam-tape-33766

which can be found in varying widths. Sticks like Sh&$ to a blanket  :D

[Zeeflyboy]

cheers!


did i mention how cool it is to have a 3D printer to call your own?

whipped this up today.... It's my external camera mounting system that I've come up with, hope it works!

Fairly simple - permanent mounting block in the heli that has been glued and bolted into place, couple of boom clamps and a 10mm CF tube... the arm at the end can be angled for height and distance, then there will be a vibration damped platform on top for the camera... still need to design that bit.

The boom clamps can also be slid closer together to shorten the distance or a longer boom could be used to get a wider angle.

Can't wait to try it out :)


Permanent mounting block:




Some more filling and sanding required - ugh




Boom:








And mounted:

[wgt40w]

"External camera mounting system"

Is this to mount a camera looking forward or back towards a smiling Juan ??

[Zeeflyboy]

Back towards the heli for some in flight footage... It won't always be there, just for when I want to record some footage of Juan and Julio