AH-6Z Littlebird Night-Ops build project

[wgt40w]

Cheers - it's an X6-1500GT

Is it a 4 axis machine?? - I assume the 4th axis was used to cut the 45 degree chamfer around all the edges

[Zeeflyboy]

It does have the option for a 4th axis, but I don't have it. The chamfer was simply done with a v-bit

[wgt40w]

Understood.

[wgt40w]

Err, any more news on this project ?

Does it fly stably yet ?

[Zeeflyboy]

It hasn't flown since the crash.

However, I did finish off the rebuild and wiring yesterday. It now has the kontronik ESC instead of the YGE (and the spool up start is now nice and smooth), and I have set the ACE One up for the new head.

I was going to give it a go today, but it was raining like mad. Hopefully at some point soon I'll get another chance to try it out. I must admit to being quite nervous this time... normally I'm very comfortable flying heli's but the issue is that I don't know that I can trust the flight controller after last time.

Anyway, hopefully friday afternoon perhaps after work.

[wgt40w]

I hope all went well.

[wgt40w]

Did it ????

[Zeeflyboy]

I've been in the process of buying a house ready for my move back to the UK... no end in sight for this project yet I'm afraid lol.

I will just catch you up on proceedings though:

I actually nearly flew the mechanics for the first time since the crash, but it was raining :(

I've set up the Ace One again, it's all screwed back together with a blend if titanium and aluminium to shed a little weight, fitted the kontronik Jive 80HV (start up is much smoother) and set up the new tail... It was basically ready for another go, just waiting on free time and good weather to coincide.

However, you wouldn't believe what I managed to do the other day...

I was spooling it up with the tail blades (no mains) to test out the tail, and the thing drew so much air through that it pulled a loose cloth up and through the tail... sigh. I can't believe how stupid I can be sometimes! I hit hold as soon as I saw what was happening but it was already too late lol.

So I broke the tail pitch lever, bent some push rods and also completely stripped out the forward tail drive gear. AWESOME. The damage was very limited at least, the tail itself seems fine and I didn't damage any blades etc.

I needed to replace the gears and align have since released a much stronger and longer lasting (plus less warped) black material. Unfortunately the forward torque tube gear didn't fit the standard tail boom, so I had to design a new one with adjustable mesh. While I was at it I replaced the bearings with ceramic hybrids - something I had avoided doing previously as it was all assembled.

Here's the newly re-designed tail boom block with upgraded gears and adjustable mesh:








Next up I just need to figure out how to best repair/replace my tail pitch arm as the part isn't available separately for that particular tail:

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So I've been busy buying a new house, which I now can happily say I own :)

One of the first things I set up was the CNC lol, so that is now up and running again... I'm in serious need of some better lighting in the garage to use it more easily but that'll have to be done some time when I have money again!

Well as we know I managed to destroy a couple of key components of my tail, so as usual I've taken the opportunity to do things better... I was never happy with the side to side slop in the stock tail's pitch slider links and I really prefer a dual point slider design. On top of that the tail I was using was heavy and had no locking pin to help sure the tail, thus was purely reliant on friction from the clamp.

Soooooo as you have seen a few times, when I rebuild I upgrade.

that has lead me here...

This is the current tail unit I am working on... all fitted out with ceramic bearings on high speed parts now of course. At some point when I find some spare time the shiny metal parts will get painted black to match the rest of the tail, and I may bug Ian to see if he can turn down the ends one of the new black geared tails shafts to 5mm in order to get that last gear in the newest hi performance black material.







So that gives me a much more robust tail attachment with lock pin, and I designed a new tail piece that will also hold the pushrod. The pitch slider mechanism is vastly superior to what I had before and is buttery smooth with no slop... and it's lighter than the old one. Brucey bonus.

tail pushrod guide and tail lock piece:





But that's only half the plan of course and the rest requires me to make more custom parts. First up we have this new pitch slider mechanism that I need to cut on the CNC:





Combined with some little nylon (or maybe alu, not decided yet) anti-rotation pitch links, control balls and m2x8 screws to build a pitch slider that looks a little something like this...similar idea to the old one but much more solid design.







My one big problem is I am not sure as to the type of thread used on the pitch slider bushing. I am guessing it is a m8x0.5mm extra fine thread... It's about as close as I can estimate anyway - I ordered an m8x0.5mm tap and so we'll find out soon I guess lol. The next problem is that towards the maximum inwards travel, the aluminium pitch link part will strike the arm. To solve that and help get full travel I have also designed a new shortened mounting arm for the whole slider mechanism... This along with the tail lock will be printed at shapeways using the sintered nylon for strength.




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so today I got a chance to make some parts...


Cut the tail piece of of alu




Threading with the M8x0.5 which I am hoping is the right thread!




And the part along with some plastic arms I cut from black nylon. Obviously it all needs cleaning up a bit and I need to print out a little jig to make sure the holes all get drilled in just the right place.





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So this is my little drill jig I came up with to make sure the holes all ended up nicely aligned. 3D printers are so useful!




And here is the drilled part after a little polishing with a dremel brush thing just to get a slightly better surface finish.






balls fitted




And hooray - I guessed right about the bushing being an M8x0.5 extra fine thread, all fits! You can also just about make out the new shorter slider mechanism side mount that I designed to increase clearance - it finally arrived from shapeways.




Just waiting on some screws and pushrods that haven't yet arrived for some reason and then I can get this tail up and running.

[wgt40w]

And there was me thinking you had abandoned the project.

Seems it's more a case that could not be further away from abandonment if you tried ! Gosh you have been busy.

(Next time any delay might be the patter of little feet - that usually can happen after a move back to the UK and a house purchase!!)

[Zeeflyboy]

And there was me thinking you had abandoned the project.

Seems it's more a case that could not be further away from abandonment if you tried ! Gosh you have been busy.

(Next time any delay might be the patter of little feet - that usually can happen after a move back to the UK and a house purchase!!)

Too much invested to abandon it lol... it might take a while but it will get done eventually ;)

So another day, another jig. Turns out it's surprisingly difficult to drill a hole centrally in the like pitch links and there's not a huge amount of spare material so I needed to be accurate.

To help I whipped up another jig:








End result is a nice straight and central hole:




Cut down some push rods:




And finally we have a working tail again, it's much improved compared to the previous version:

[Zeeflyboy]

I realised I really need to build a storage and transport case for this thing. I had planned on doing it once finished but of course things dragged on and now I'm looking at having to transport this back without damaging it.

I saw this box while looking at pictures on the internet and thought that could be quite a cool quirky idea... so I am setting about building a box using that rough idea as a basis:


The inspiration:




My attempts:









So the box is now more or less built, I just need my lid latches to arrive and put a handle on it, then give it a paint job. Perhaps add some rolling wheels on the back because it's going to be a big thing to move around. I had the idea that I can use the lid upside down as a landing and take off pad too if needed so might hook up some battery powered strobes on there for fun.

Next job on the box front will be figuring out the internal design to safely secure the heli in place for transport.

So where are we at with the actual heli? Well I am just waiting for some new ball links for the cyclic rods as I fitted a slightly longer main shaft. With the new head and a DFC shaft it was making me nervous about boom strikes... the new shaft is about 15mm longer which moves the head up in line with the top of the T tail but does mean I need longer ball links. They should arrive this week from quickuk.

I have also re-jigged my ballast - previously it was just a strap holding the weights to the front aluminium bars and wasn't very sturdy or easy to play with. I cooked up this little design which seems to work well... just printing up a spacer to bring the OD of the tube up to the ID of the weights and then that's done.






Soooo... she's almost ready to have a take 2 on the ACE One test. I've set it all up now so it should simply be a case of putting the new ball links on and levelling the swash, then off we trot.

[Zeeflyboy]

well guys, the sun was shining and the wind was blowing (doh), and I decided to give it a quick run before work... The school just across from me has a small carpark and since it's summer holidays the car park is empty - ideal for some testing:)

Unfortunately the wind was going to make it impossible to really get a proper idea of how she's flying or to get any serious tuning done, but I just wanted to see if it flew.

My report:

First hop.. spooled up, thumbs shaking on the sticks a bit with flashbacks from last time, and then it popped up into the air at first, then started to develop a rotating oscillation that progressively started getting worse. Before it got out of hand I quickly popped it back down on to the ground and spooled down. The training gear performed it's job admirably!

I adjusted some gains and then tried again - she fliiiiiiiiiiiiiies. It was manual mode only (the instructions for Ace One say to get it flying in manual before even attempting to mess with auto modes), it was windy, I only hovered around a bit, but she FLEW. All in I probably flew for around 10 minutes across several tests, tweaking the gains a bit to get it flying better.

I didn't have a camera man handy, and flying a heli in manual mode requires all my digits, but I figured you guys would probably castrate me If I didn't show you something after all this time, so I put my iPhone on the ground and recorded a short test hover. I'll upload that video now. Like I say - it's far from tuned, but it's proof of concept if nothing more ;)

WAHOOO!!!

[Zeeflyboy]

And here is the video. As said, nothing special... but proof she flies  :sparta:

Ace One take 2 (just a quick hover)

[Ratty]

Looking good Zee, congrats on a successful maiden.   :D

[ClippedWing]

Congratulations bud!

That thing sounds sexy as hell on spool