Oh my Gords!

OK, fitting the bits

 I have a JGF 400DH brushless motor, a Sonix 30A ESC and a Hitec Electron 6 channel receiver.

I had been delaying the fitment of these items mainly because I thought it was going to be difficult and I didn’t know what I was doing. In the end it was all rather easy!

The motor
The pinion was half on, but not set right to mesh correctly with the main gear. So, first things first, I removed the old motor. Very easy to do using a long-ish screwdriver passed up through the landing skids and frame.

This is not recommended - but I positioned the pinion using gentle but firm taps with a hammer onto the pinion. The motor shaft is flush with the rear of the case, so with extreme care this method worked. A more suitable method is to use a vice or a G-clamp.

To position the motor correctly, I placed a piece of paper between the pinion and the main gear and then pushed the motor against the main gear. Once the screws were tight, I rotated the main gear to extract the paper. This means that the pinion meshes nicely but does not push hard into the main gear’s teeth.

The Receiver
The Electron is slightly smaller than the stock ESky receiver, so fitting it was not a problem. the only slight issue is that the connectors are on the top rather than the end. I fitted all the connectors first, then I positioned the receiver with a sticky pad and reinforced the mounting with 2 zip ties.

The ESC
The Sonix ESC also has a BEC attached as a separate item which made it slightly moer interesting, trying to position everything. I have a slight advantage in that I have a Trex canopy which gives me more “nose” space. The ESC was attached where the original one was and the BEC was attached underneath the main frame.

Finally
To finish off, all wires were zip tied to the frame, in a number of places, to ensure the couldn’t move. Below are pictures of the end result

I am starting to think - OK not necessarily starting to think - that model helicopters should come with a health warning! “This hobby may seriously damage your bank account“!

 Alright, moaning over … I’ve recently bought a few new bits for my King and I fitted them this weekend

It all started (here comes the excuse) because the stock motor failed fairly soon after I bought the helicopter. Luckily, I had been donated another by a very kind chap. The duff motor was swapped with the new and my heli was back in the air - kind of, so to speak

There is constant chat on the heliGuy forum about the stock motor being less than reliable. “Go brushless” is the usual advice. So when a brushless motor and ESC appeared for sale, it seemed the obvious thing to buy it! Now then, the usual upgrade appears to be the Esky 3900kv and 25A ESC - and many people seem happy with it. However, that is not what appeared for sale - rather it was a JGF 400DH and Sonix 30 ESC.

 I confirmed with the seller that it was suitable for a HB King 2 with standard blades - no problem came the reply - “sold” was my reply!

That should really have been the end of the story … but that would be a bit short, wouldn’t it!

I then decided I ought to read up on what I’d bought and eventually came to the conclusion that I should really get myself a programmable Tx before I fit this motor. The standard ESky Tx does not allow you to alter the throttle and pitch curves and the JGF website seemed to recommend a non-linear throttle curve. Good enough excuse for me

From a newcomers view, the Tx of choice seems to be a Futaba of some sort or a Spektrum something or other. So, what do you think came up for sale and caught my eye? Yes, that’s right … a Hitec Eclipse 7 !? It’s lucky I don’t feel the need to be the same as everyone else!!

I investigated the Hitec and it certainly appeared to be a very powerful transmitter, with all the functionality I would need for quite a while. As part of the deal I also got a new Hitec receiver.

Excellent, all sorted!

So there it was - a pile of stuff just dying to be installed. All I needed now was the time and knowledge to perform the upgrade. Time was not a problem…

The actual “doing” is worthy of a post on it’s own, so it will be

We have been blessed, in Surrey, with some pretty reasonable weather just recently. This has allowed me to get a lot of flying time in

Today, started off rather cloudy and cool, maybe even cold. Being a family man means that I always have a number of chores to do - today’s chores involved mowing the lawn, putting the garden furniture away for the winter and other similar jobs.

And my reward? Just as I was finishing there was a distinct clearing of the clouds, the temperature went up and there was still no wind!

OK, the next bit is obvious …

 I now feel confident enough to say that I really am starting to get the hang of this helicopter flying thing! I had 3 batteries (1000mah) worth of hovering around the garden. Zero crashes, a number of recovered “scary” moments and nearly all landing were controlled!

My 4th battery seems to be a bit low on performance so I don’t always use it. I was having such a good day that I decided to try the last battery too. While I was swapping the batteries over I had a sudden rash thought … “I wonder if I should try it without the training gear?” … well, I was in a confident mood

So then - training gear off, fresh-ish battery ready, pre-flight checks done, hh gyro ready …

I started up, enabled the hh gyro and throttled up to take off and up she went!!!

The first take-off lasted about 15 seconds and then I decided that it was best to land while the going was good. Well I never - I managed to land without incident!

The rest of the battery was spent hovering about 1 - 2ft for periods of up to a minute or so. It was excellent fun and terrifying at the same time, the heli looked so small and I felt like I / it was balancing on a knife-edge! Overall though, it was hugely satisfying to see that I was actually capable of doing it.

The training gear will be going back on for a while as I still have a lot to learn - nose-in and side-on hovering for example, but today was progress indeed!