Rave 450 build thread.

[Guest]

Looks like it's time for another build thread.In my never ending quest to find the best 450,this has sat in it's box since christmas waiting for the choice of electronics to arrive.

I prepared the carbon last night to get it out of the way with the trusty Sally Hansen hard as nails for the edges.





First impressions when opening the box are just Wow.The instructions are in full colour and the quality of the paper is like good photo quality paper.Great start.



The setup is as follows,
Scorpion 2221/10 motor
Kontronik Koby 40 ESC
Spartan Quark gyro
Futaba brushless 257 tail servo
I'm breaking my normal habit for lipos with the Hyperion G3's.
I've wanted to try 4 cell in a 450 for a while so it's having the 4s 2200 35C packs.I'm hoping for a cool runner with lots of power.
Radix 350 blades.
The only upgrade I'm using is the carbon frame stiffener set.Thats it,can't find anything else to upgrade.

All the parts bags have sealed off sections to separate all the parts.Very impressive.




The frames went together very smoothly and the parts fit and finish is excellent so far.
Here's a new way to build up the head.
First you fit the main gear and main shaft with collar.
Then you assemble the swash paying carefull attention to the main swash bearing.Instead of the bearing being glued or pressed in you have to use 3 small set screws.You screw them through the swash gently untill you feel it touch the outside of the bearing,then leave the threadlock to do it's thing.

Then you drop the swash onto the main shaft and proceed to build the washout,and install that on the main shaft.
Then it's time for the grips and feathering shaft,Mmmmm.The head looks very nice,a perfect mix of satin black with pollished bits.Nice.
And finally the flybar cage is assembled and installed.
The only thing I'm not sure about is on the ammendment page that's seperate from the book it tells you to use ca glue on the head dampers to make them last longer.I don't really like the idea of that because I want the feathering shaft to be able to teeter in the head.
With mega stiff dampening you can end up with a bobbing head.
I've just used grease on the inside and outside of the dampers,we'll see what happens.



Thats as far as I've got so far.Hopefully tomorrow I'll get the tail built and fitted and start on the electronics placement.
Fingers crossed for a maiden indoor on saturday.

Danny.

[Mark Barnes]

nice work Danny,

I had the scorpion in my 450 its a reet power house

M

[Guest]

Thanks Mark,the Scorpion looks good as well,so I have high hopes for this one now.

Danny.

[Stubbsy]

Sally Hanson tough nails - Come on Danny admit it - Its really part of your friday night dressing up kit!

[Guest]

Now I think about it,a person could use a nail file to file the edges.
Stubbsy where did you get the spinning woman thingy?

Danny.

[Guest]

Just a quick note that I forgot last night.
I've read a few times about people that say the swash screws wouldn't tighten down onto the balls,as in the holes weren't tapped deep enough.This is what I found.

When you get to bag 2 which is step 2 in the manual,You have some countersunk 2x7 screws to attach the balls to the swash.
Also in the same bag there's some 2x8 screws for the following step.If you accidentally install the 2x8's they bottom out and leave the balls loose.Ask me how I noticed this.
If you put the 2 screws side by side at a glance they do look the same,so it's an easy mistake to make.

Something else worth mentioning is that this is a real builders model and there's no prebuilt assemblies,which I like.
All the ball links need sizing also,which is mentioned in the instructions,and the ball link sizing tool required is a 4.7mm one which is the standard size for most heli's.

Coffee break over.
I'll be back with pics later.

Danny.

[Andy Sayle]

Danny, what does a ball link sizing tool look like? Is it just a spherical reamer type tool?

Andy

[Guest]

Here you go Andy,
It's kind of like a reamer,but the ball end has 2 little slots cut into it.Then there's a little countersunk screw in the end that opens it up to fit bigger links.
You just pop it into the link and give it a few turns and it shaves off a tiny amount from the middle of the link.
The one on the left is the 4.7mm one for most standard links and the one on the right is a 3.5mm version for the 250 ect.
They cost between £2.99 and £4.99.



Actually there is a nice one just out this week made by Synergy called the Boto.
It is a posh handle that houses 3 different size ends.
http://www.fast-lad.co.uk/store/synergy_boto_sizing_tool-p-13291.html
Posh.

Danny.

[Guest]

Just finished for today and managed to get quite far.The tail is now assembled and attached.

This is the best tail I've seen so far and is simply sooo smooth.
There's no special trick to building any of it.It just falls together exactly as per the instructions.






The tail setup is very interesting and simple.
Instead of thrust races in the tail grips,they give you 2 ballraces that stack together with a shim in between.
Once tightened there is endfloat that allows the grips to float in and out about half a mm.This is how they designed it.Simple and fool proof.

I found a small error in the ammended sheet that comes seperate from the manual.
When you attach the flybar cage to the seesaw,there is some fore and aft play.They tell you in the manual to build it like this,which I wasn't happy with.
Then while I pondered what to do I had a glance at the ammended sheet where it tells you use a 2mm washer on either side.
That's 4mm of shim,way too much.I found that a single 0.2mm shim on each side was just right.I'm pretty sure they mean 0.2mm and not 2mm.

Other than that the head would look right in H samuels window next to a Rolex.
What a peach.
Hopefully tomorrow it's time for electronics placement.

Danny.

[Guest]

Just finished up for the night.
The motor is in with a 13 tooth pinion and the cyclic servos are also in.
All that's left is the gyro,tail servo,esc and receiver to fit and then it's wiring time.
Looking at it now I think it'll be easy to hide all the wiring at the front in between the frames.

It took a good long while to set the mesh at the front and rear of the torque tube.
You keep the boom off the model while you do this and start with the back gearbox.
It's very important to get it spot on or it will strip it's gears on first spool up.
After the rear is meshed it's time for the front.It's done in much the same way as the back.

Once that's done you then insert the boom assembly in between the frames and tighten everything up.
Now you have the joy of trying to mesh the flat gear at the front of the boom with the autorotation gear.But it's all in a fixed position .

The way I sorted this was to loosen the front boom blocks 4 screws.then on the boom block behind it you leave the 4 screws tight and slacken the clamp bolt and remove the boom supports.
Now you are left with about half a mm of in and out boom movement,so you pull the boom back with moderate force and tighten everything up.Result.

Right I'm off to browse online and I'll put tonights pictures on in the morning.

Danny.

[Guest]

Phew,finally I'm getting somewhere with the wiring.So far it's taken about 12 hours to get the wiring neat and it is hands down the hardest one I've done so far.
If you don't mind having the wires outside of the frame it is pretty easy but I like it hidden.
The worst part was trying to get all the cyclic servo wires past the motor and the main gear/pinion,then still having enough length to reach the reciever.
3 times I've finished it then pulled it all out again.

This is how I did it.



I also used these neat little pieces of heatshrink on the ends of the servo leads.







The tail servo mount was a bit of a challenge as it's designed primarilly for the JR3500G but there is an amendment note for the Futaba mounting.
The thing is though I've installed the tail servo as high as possible up the frame and for the tail linkage to have a straight shot down the boom I need the ball link to be about 12mm out from centre.
Optimum for this size and gyro is around 8mm so there might be a bit too much mechanical gain but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.If need be The servo can always be mounted on the boom and then try a different tail linkage.

Other than that I normally like to mount the ESC under the battery tray out of sight but the Koby is too big for that so I used that space to hide all the wiring.
Here's a couple of pics with the canopy on.




Jobs left to do are,
Finish up the tail servo,
Make up and size the last of the head linkages,
solder up the batteries,
Setup the head,gyro and esc,
Finally double check all the threadlock on everything.

The canopy looks fantastic and is really good quality.As a bonus there's tons of room under it so running up to 6S would be easy.

Danny.

[Rich]

Another fantastic build thread from Mr (Helicopter) Moffat.

Couldn't you use bigger tie wraps though..!!!

[Guest]

very very Impressive Danny Boy

[Mark Barnes]

Another fantastic build thread from Mr (Helicopter) Moffat.

Couldn't you use bigger tie wraps though..!!!

Agree totaly, very nice build. On the tie wraps Danny, us proper fliers use fuel tube round the tie wrap to stop them chaffing the wire!

M

[Guest]

Thanks very much guys.
I agree about the tie wraps,I just couldn't get the thicker ones through the holes in the frames.
The fuel tube's a good idea Mark,I'll have to use that one.
I tried using heat shrink on the servo wires in the areas that they're close to the edges and between the ties but it made the wires too thick.
Checkout the picture with the cable ties.At the bottom you can just about see the black motor mount and once the motor's in place them wires are about half a mm from the motor.(insert smilley with head banging a wall)
All I could think of was the little ties so I tightened them one click at a time until they just started to hold the wire enough,then snipety snip.

Even the 250 was an easier wiring job.
Rich do you think between you,Mark and Andy could make up some wireless servos?


Danny.

[Rich]

Yes Danny, I really meant they were a bit on the large side but that's just my "sarcasm", (remarks that mean the opposite of what they seem to say)

What size are they, 2mm x 100mm, smaller or larger.

Still a cracking build thread.

[Guest]

Haha,I didn't catch on there.
They're not large though,they're the smallest I've got.

Right that's my 6 hour break over,time to ponder what to do with the tail setup.

Danny.

[Guest]

Well looks like I'm finished for the day.All the soldering is done as are the head linkages,which at a glance are going to need some tweaking to get zero degrees at centre stick.

All the electrics are working fine and look neat.
I hit a snag today though that has stopped me finishing it today.

I've read about a few people having trouble getting the main blade bolts through the blades because they're too tight.I also have this problem.
When I tried a blade on the thread of the bolt would not go more than about a cm in.
So I figured it is more likely the bolt and set about gently turning it in some 800 wet and dry to remove the black anodising.
Once I did this it went through a little further and really got stuck.In fact it got that tight that when I removed the bolt it pulled the brass sleeve out of the blade with it.

I called Fast Lad to tell them about it and they're sending out replacements,so I'm hopefully still on for trying it out on Saturday.

I'll post some final pics tomorrow and I'll post what my transmitter settings are.
I'm really excited to try this one.Even with the few tweaks it's needed during the build it's still been very enjoyable.

Danny.

[Guest]

All finished with final pictures.And a bit of a rant.
The blades came back today,a very quick turnaround from Fast Lad as usual.
They tried some new bolts in a new set of blades and found they were to big as well.So they tried some 450 pro blade bolts which went straight in.However they aren't long enough so they sanded down some standard bolts untill they fitted and all is fine and dandy.

I wasn't happy with the position of the tail servo geometry having the ball link 12mm out because it meant it would only use about 40 degrees of servo movement.
At the same time the c of g was way too much forward so I mounted the tail servo on the boom and now have the ball link 7.5mm out which is perfect.




Another thing I did was to use the upgraded aggressive tail gear set.
These are apparently a lot stronger than the standard gears and at £6.75 I thought why not.
This led to a problem with meshing the torque tube.One of the gears,namely the tail output shaft gear was slightly out of round making half the rotation smooth while the other half was clunky.
Many hours were spent trying different shims and slightly trimming the gear but I just couldn't get it spot on.I think Next D's quality control over these gears could be better so I've gone back to the stock gears which mesh perfectly fine,and I've used the upgraded gears at the front.

The flat gear at the front that meshes with the 100 tooth auto gear has a slight high spot which cannot be tweaked because if you loosen the mesh of the 2 gears you end up with the mesh being too loose on the rest of the gear.
This isn't unusual as almost all of the Trex range has this when new and it's usually fine after a few flights.

Last but not least when trying to get perfect head symmetry with zero degrees at centre stick there was a quarter of a degree difference between the 2 blades.
If you go one turn on either of the swash to flybar cage links you just end up being a quarter of a degree out in the other direction but it'll fly fine as it's not enough difference to worry about.
I've picked up a full set of links as spares in case I want to start again.

Rant over and on to the good stuff and there really is much to love about the Rave.
The looks are stunning and it's easilly the prettiest of the 450's,
The canopy is very big so you can fit much bigger batteries in this than the other 450's,
The tail is the smoothest tail I've seen so far and literally has no slop whatsoever,
It has a very low parts count as they've avoided over complicating the design,
Having the flybar above the head means there is a ton of cyclic movement with no binding even with 14 degrees pitch,
Parts fit and finish is top quality only let down slightly by the inconsistent machining of the gears and the blade bolts.
It swings bigger blades than other 450's so should have a better big model feel.

Here's the final pics.






I don't think it's suitable as the first model to build and the Trex 450 pro is a much quicker build and much more suitable as a first model.
Also the pro is much cheaper overall to build,and the Thunder tiger mini titan v2 sits somewhere in the middle in terms of cost,

Once I've tested it tomorrow I'll post here my final transmitter settings and final verdict on how it flies.
Time to start charging.

[Rich]

spotted a quality servo there as well, some major 3D indoor tomorrow then Danny

[Guest]

Oh yes,these brushless Futaba tail servo's are really happening this year.
Quiet,quick and a bit cheaper than the JR 3500.Ahem,I can't believe I just said that.
3D,me,indoors?I might be able to squeeze out a stall turn.

Danny.

[Mark Barnes]

Vidi cam is all charged buddy,

Great build well done mate

M

[Guest]

Thanks Mark,I can't wait till tomorrow now.I haven't done any flying this week due to this tornado outside.

Danny.

[Guest]

I managed to get my first couple of flights in today,and it's truly got the nicest feel to it that is tricky to describe.
The closest model I can think of to compare it to is the trex 500.
You can tell straight away that it feels very special and the lack of any slop anywhere really gives a stable precise heli.
There was no adjustments needed anywhere so here are my transmitter settings.

Swash mix elev 60%
Ail. 60%
Pitch 70%
The pitch range in normal is -5. 0. +12
-12. 0. +12

Throttle curve

Normal 0--50--100
Idle 1. 70--70--70 in governor mode
Idle 2. 80--80--80


Pitch curve

Normal 30.5--50--100
Idle 1 0--50--100
Idle 2. 0--50--100

Gyro gain I've started with 40% just to begin with and I'll tweak this on it's next outing.

Dual rates all at 100% and expo on aileron and elevator are 20%.

I had a brief radio glitch on the second flight and after googling the 6110e it came up with loads of people having the same problem indoors.
I've been checking it all over tonight and I've just stuck another receiver in it.

Also I set the timer at 5 mins just to break in the lipos and I put back in around 980mah in both batteries which is about 45% of the pack used.Hopefully I could be looking at between 7 and 8 mins flight times which is nice.I think I'm gonna like these Hyperion's.

The first gap between the rain and I'll be off up the field for a good thrashing and I'll come back with the final transmitter settings.

[Guest]

Well I thought it was time for a follow up now I've had a good 25 flights or so as well as a little bling bling.
After a couple of flights outside I noticed a little extra gear noise when spooling down.On closer examination it was the tail end bevel gears that had tightened slightly,but since the front ones hadn't altered I stripped down the tail for a little investigation.

Here's what I found.Check the picture first.


At the front and rear of the boom you have a single bevel gear that pushes into 2 bearings that have a sleeve clamp over them,then you push them into the boom.
When you push the first bearing over the gear it clicks into place,and the second bearing is held in place by the sleeve before inserting in the boom.

What I found was the rear gear had moved very slightly forward of the bearing as I was able to click it back into place with relative ease.Even though it was only slight I believe it would've stripped the gears if gone unnoticed.

The cure that I really should've done to begin with is to use a little medium ca glue to stick the first bearing onto the gear.
Only a little bit on a cotton bud,then put a thin coat on the part of the gear shaft where the bearing will sit,then push the bearing on till it clicks.
It's important not to put too much on otherwise if the glue ends up in the bearing it will sieze.

Other than that the friendly postman woke me up at 7.30am yesterday with a little parcel.
This contained some Radix Stubz paddles,a Canomod Salivate canopy,a couple more Hyperion 4S packs(woohoo),and the stainless steel screw set.






It really does fly as nice as everyone says,and is a real keeper heli,and after it's first flights nothing worked loose and there's no sign of any gear wear or vibes.
Run time I'm getting 6 mins and putting back about 1400mah in the 2200 packs so I'm going to get 7 mins now and still be well within the 80% rule.

It isn't just nicer than the 450 pro to fly.It actually feels nicer than the 500 as well.

Danny.

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