Barryorbik

All those are probably true Denis and good result Rich - if only I were so lucky, in fact if it was not for bad luck, I would have none at all ! Barry

In fairness to the BMFA when we reported the incidents they instantly blocked the sellers to help prevent further incidents but it still hurts when you have been ripped off. My club mate went one further and put video's on Youtube showing the problems wit his Trex 800. Barry

Hi Stuart, I looked at that advert too, as I have a couple of well used E325's in my fleet and spare parts are starting to dry up but after a club member recently got well ripped off buying a supposedly "only flown once and never crashed" Trex 800 off there, which turned out to be a very badly assembled mongrel made up of odd Trex 600, 700 and 800 parts, I decided to tread warily unless I can check it over fully before parting with any cash. I too lost some money recently on the BMFA buying a box of Trex 250 parts on there which turned out to be Hobbyking or other non Align copies and despite paying properly through Paypal and raising a dispute I could not get a refund as the seller had disappeared, so it seems there are quite a few dishonest people advertising on the BMFA site these days, so remember "caveat emptor". Hope you manage to salvage some useful parts from your purchase. Barry

Hi Richard, I fly mainly (older) helicopters and the servo to swash, head links and tail servo to tail horn are all threaded rods and in many cases becoming hard to find so, on the smaller helicopters and only when parts are no longer available, I have made replacements from either un-threaded 2.0 mm piano or silver steel rod using the annealing method described by Denis but with a small filed chamfer on the end of the rod to aid starting the die. A close look at the threads on the original parts indicate they are often rolled threads and not cut with a die, so I am always wary of over stressing my replacements but have not had any failures with the die cut versions to date. Barry

Hi Mal, I have had one of these for a couple of years and I have upgraded or modified some parts too to improve performance, so have some hands on experience with them. Sadly the 'magic smoke' normally means a catastrophic failure has occurred on the main board and because your motors are spinning as soon as you power up the quad it sounds as though the motor output FET transistors have gone short circuit. There was a guy on E Bay that offered repairs to the Blade MCP-x helicopter boards, so he might be a good first choice but if he cannot help the only option is to try to find a new board or a complete working secondhand quad. Barry

Hi tigerman, Is your 450 a flybarred or flybarless? I bought a clone flybarred Trex 450 off E Bay some time ago and although it had been well built it had unbranded servo's and gyro and it was rubbish until I changed out pretty well everything for genuine Align parts and Hitec cyclic servo's with a Futaba digital tail servo and Spartan gyro looking after the tail. Still preferred my Mini Titan though, so I sold it to fund a V Bar and digital servo's to convert the Mini Titan to FBL. Pity you are not a member of a club with more helicopter pilots, as like Colin many pilots in our club started out without gyro's in the 1980's and many still fly Kalts, Shuttles, Concepts and quite a few have nitro Thunder Tiger Raptors still using old technology and one still uses a 27mHz transmitter!!, so we have a wealth of helicopter pilots to ask questions of. Our latest members know more about programming flybarless units and ESC's than setting up a flybarred helicopter but everyone chips in when a member is in trouble, so the learning process is much less painful than trying unaided. Keep your chin up and see if there is a local helicopter club you could join. Barry

Tigerman, I think they are still available but see my reply to your other post. Barry

Tigerman, I have been flying and crashing helicopters for about six years now but the first two years were a disaster until I joined a club where help and support (plus the usual banter!) from the other helicopter pilots was always freely offered. I started with an ESKY King 2 which regularly fell apart in the air despite very careful assembly and building/rebuilding. I dread to think how much money and lost flying time I spent trying to keep her in the air before I finally shelved her an bought a Thunder Tiger Mini Titan. Despite still having plastic frames, head and tail mechanisms she was a revelation and soon help restore my confidence and my flying became very enjoyable. Then I bought a GAUI 550 which terrified me with its size and the blade and motor noise but eventually after much perseverance I fell in love with her too. All of my fleet started out as flybarred but I have gradually converted them to flybarless which does reduce set up and takes care of a lot of the fine flying control needed for flybarred helicopters and makes the experience much less stressful. Today Blade do some brilliant RTF helicopters with safe technology to remove some of the crashes. The 130x is great as a trainer and bounces well, whereas the 180CFX and Trex 150 are a little more fragile and crashes normally take out the servo's and other bits. Have you considered the Blade 230 which has bail out and other safety related flying modes? Best of luck with your next purchase and keep up the practice then as is often the case "the more you practice, the luckier you get" and you will soon find yourself taking your helicopters home complete and in the boot of tjhe car rather than the glove box! Have you joined a club yet?

Maybe they'll play tree as side on there !

Could be so they can play a game of tree halves ! Barry

Well done Robert, I knew there was a setting for the swash as loads of guys at our club use the DX6, DX7, DX9 and DX18 with their MCP-x BL and 130x's etc which all use the same basic swash set-up. Motor problem could be a dirty commutator in the motor or the brush arms are worn through causing intermittent contact and a replacement motor is the only option here. Another possibility is that one of the two main motor drive FET transistors (they work in tandem) may be going intermittently open circuit. I have had this happen a few times on well used models where the main motor has eventually failed and shortly after replacing the motor one or both FET's fail. Hope this helps Barry

Hi Robert, You may have a problem there as the original non brushless versions of the MCP-x were for use with a DSM2 transmitter (old DX6i etc) and I believe the new DX6 is DSMX only, so they may not talk to each other. I have not used one of the new DX6 transmitters but it should have the same menu's as DX9. Try setting your new DX6 to helicopter mode then have a look through the menu's for swash settings and you should find the 1 servo 90 degree option. Set the throttle trim set to minimum then try binding to see if they will communicate. Please let us know how you get on. Barry

Two and a half years of none flying may have been one of the reasons you had problems as the batteries are probably well past their best now. The main boards are expensive but if you are handy with a small soldering iron then replacing the three motor drive Field Effect Transistors (FET's) is fairly easily. They are readily available on the famous auction site for less than £5.00 and I suspect your tail motor FET has shorted out source to drain, making it run flat out and one of the main motor FET's has burnt out - that being the source of the magic smoke, as I have never had a motor smoke yet, they normally just get weaker and stutter before eventually stopping altogether as the brushes wear out. The tail motor FET is located on the left side of the circuit board immediately below the tail motor connection socket and the main moor FET's at the top centre of the board below the main motor connection socket. One other thing that may have contributed to the crash is the three linear servo's which suffer from oxidation of the slivered track which the slider travels along. When this oxidizes the servo's become erratic or do not operate at all, so when the initial repairs are done it would be worth dismantling all three servo's and carefully wiping both the black carbon and the silvered track with a cotton bud soaked in 3:1 oil. This is far better and longer lasting than spraying electrical contact cleaner into the servo's. Have fun and let us know how you get on. Barry

I read recently that the wasps annoying us currently are the male workers that have been kicked out of their nests in readiness for the queen to move and establish a new nest and colony. Obviously the workers are in a bad mood now as they have no home or food and that is why they are attracted to anything sweet or sugary and ready to sting without much provocation. You have been warned! Barry

Terrible to see such a lovely aircraft destroyed but does anyone know the cause? and does it really say 'skip' on the aircraft piece being carried to the trailer in the still photograph at the end of the video.

I've bought quite a lot from Banggood and there delivery times are very variable. I use the CH site which I believe is classed as European, so have never been charged customs but I do separate items into individual orders, as I have had the odd part go missing when a multitude of parts have been on one order, plus it does seem to take longer for them to send them that way. Barry

If you like to see a few of the better pilots also have Controlled Flights Into Terrain - then Friday is definitely the best day for that as they practice their display manoeuvres and the evening flying is definitely off-peg. Trade is normally a bit thinner on the ground on the Friday and much of it does not arrive until late afternoon but it does allow you more time to browse the stalls, talk to the traders and possibly pick up a sale item. We will be camping there from Thursday, so just hope the forecast change in the weather happens or I will end up with a very unhappy wife and dog ! Barry

Hi Kevin and welcome to the dark side!, I had not tried printing direct from the IDE. You have obviously progressed quicker than me so maybe you can help with some questions I have. 1 have you changed any of the code to correct the landing light not fully extinguishing or did yours work straight off? 2 which Tx/Rx are you using and how many channels do you have connected to the Nano and to which pins? 3 I have not tried the servo yet but which output pin is it connected to, as I could not see any reference to it in the sketch I think that will do for now. Barry

Hi Allan Bennett, Not sure how advanced you are with these things but I'm still a novice but the easiest way I found was to register and download the Arduino software direct from their site (you will need this package anyway to upload programs to the Arduino Nano), then download the navigation light program and save it as a zipped file on the desktop before right clicking on it to "extract all files". When you open up the Arduino program you then click on "file" "open" and select the unzipped navigation light program from the desktop. You can then look at the program in detail and it you need to copy any to print off etc just press the left mouse button and highlight the text you want and then control C to copy it, then paste it into paint or word etc as you wish with control V. Sorry if this is too basic but it works and saves a lot of frustration. Barry

Using that sketch has fixed it Allan, The only issue now is the landing light on D4 is not fully extinguishing but I have now gained a nice quick flashing strobe on D9 and a simulated revolving beacon on D3. If I get the time and enthusiasm I will compare the old and new codes and post the difference on here. In between time I have used my second Nano as a sound generator to reproduce the five note tune from "close encounters of the third kind" as it seems most appropriate at the moment!! Many thanks to Allan and John for their patience and help as we jointly enter this new world of discovery (or black magic) and I'm off now to make myself a very well deserved cup of tea, as STMBO is watching Midwife. Barry

Touche John!, No pictures of my set up but I have the signal lead from Channel 5 of the Spektrum AR6100e going to D2 which switched between normal and landing modes when I operated the gear switch on the Tx. I have made my set up 'stand alone' as my Arduino board is now powered from the ESC output to the AR6100e by connecting the ground and positive connections from Channel 5 to the ground and + 5V inputs of the Arduino board, which is probably the set up I will use in the aircraft. The LED's (that are working) are connected through 150R current limiting resistors as follows: Green navigation light to TX1 on Arduino Nano Red Navigation light to RX0 " " White strobe 1 to D7 " " White strobe 2 to D8 " " Landing light to D4 " " My rotating beacon LED is currently disconnected from D3 as it does not work and looking through other Arduino sketches of similar LED drivers the 'boolean' statement has me truly bamboozled. Next project on my list is to make a servo move! Barry

Hi John and Allan, Nothing on the TV, so I just tried your wiring configuration and bound up an old AR6100e with channel 5 (gear switch) signal output to D2 on the Nano and it all works now except for the rotating strobe which does not come on and the landing light still glows dimly when in gear up mode. I still have the nav lights on Tx1and Rx0 as D5 and D6 still have no output but some progress has been made! Looking forward to seeing Allan's reply Barry

Hi Allan, Sorry for the dumb question but I have only just started playing with my Arduino Nano board and am trying to get my head around the device. I cannot work out from reading through your sketch where you are feeding the channel outputs (PPM) from your receiver to o the Nano, so currently I have uploaded your the program to the Nano but only the two green LED's on the Nano board and the red/green navigation lights are lit fully, with the LED's D5 and D6 (strobe and beacon) dim and flickering slightly. Sure it is a case of pilot error on my behalf but some assistance would be most appreciated. Barry

I cannot find any confirmation but believe that Bosch bought out Dremel a few years ago and it appears the quality changed. I still have a black cased twenty+ year old Dremel which has done lots of use and that has never had anything other than a couple of sets of brushes but my second one (a 3000 purchased about two years ago) had a switch failure at less than 3 months old and was replaced under guarantee and I had to replace the switch assembly again last year. Seems nothing lasts these days !! Barry

I repair these units on a regular basis both at work and for other club members and I normally warm the stickers with a hair dryer first then to soften the adhesive then use a scalpel blade to carefully lift one corner before removing the sticker. The adhesive on the stickers is good for two or three reapplications. The switch is a weak point but it is also a good idea to have a look at the four field winding connection pins which locate into sockets in the brush holders. The field winding wires have varnish to insulate them and are merely a push fit into a slot in the connection pins, so if there is any sign of blackening on any of them (indicating a dry or poor connection between the wire and the pin or sometime the wire may have fractured and has been sparking to the pin) carefully remove the pin , scrape the enamel off the wire and carefully solder them to the pin to make a secure connection. Care is need as the wires are quite thin and I normally use a dab of flux on both the wire and pin to ensure the solder flows freely. Barry