Hey All.

Thought you might like to see the latest project which I am very lucky to have been asked to get involved in: The setup and test fly of a T-Rex 700N converted to Turbine power with a WREN MW44.

Vaughan, a member of the MK Heli Club has created this conversion himself using the skills and tools he has aquired along the way, and being a very knowledgeable engineer has done a superb job! Unfortunately due to personal circumstances he is struggling to get the models flight ready quickly and has made a promise to the other club members they will fly there. Notice the “they”, as there is also a Turbine Bergen FBL machine to do next

A great and fun project indeed.

Ian

Hey All.

I wasn’t expecting anything in the post today, but was pleasantly surprised when some Team Midlands clothing fell through the door.

The hoodie and T shirts look awesome, making it easy to spot Team Midlands pilots at events etc.

Thanks guys, they looks awesome! Glad I went for XL though lol

Ian

After a good 3 years of solid abuse and crashing (thanks Steve…) I felt the Winter time would be a good a time as any for a thorough overhaul of the little Rave 3D. With a new motor, canopy and servos I wanted to swap it over to flybarless. With CYE out of stock of Total-G’s I was on the hunt for a stop gap and decided to give a Thunder Tiger GT5 unit a spin (pardon the pun!).

The initial reports and reviews I found on the web didn’t inspire me with lots of confidence that I had made the right decision, but undeterred I thought I’d give the little unit a chance!

First up the touch interface is novel, pretty and useful when you don’t have  a laptop handy. However I don’t have big hands and even I got a little frustrated now and again tapping away on it! I kept all the values at default to start with and soon had the machine ready for it’s first flight.

Which didn’t go well.

My prime suspect was the piro-compensation being in the wrong direction (not something you can really check on the ground!). A quick play in the menus reversed this option and I tried again.

Success!

Things were much happier now and the model felt much nicer to fly. At this point I upped the gain on the transmitter to 90%.. and then gave up with any more setting up as I was having too much fun flying it! Piro flips, piro loops, hurricanes, axial rolls.. all tracked well and the model felt very natural on the controls. Some flybarless units look and feel very digital in flight but this had a nice balance between a flybarless and flybarred feel to it. This feel is adjustable in the menus but I personally found the stock value a nice balance and am not inclined to change it.

Now one comment here I will make which I hope will help others with this unit (and stumped me for a bit to be honest) is that whilst the gyro gains for the cyclic and tail rotor are separate on the unit they are linked on the transmitter. For example, if you set the cyclic gain at 50% and the tail gain at 60% on the unit and increase the unit gain by 2% on the transmitter then the cyclic will go to 52% and the tail to 62%.

At first I thought this was infuriatingly mad.. however thinking about it some more it does make sense to a certain degree. Once you’ve found your optimal gains the chances are that they cyclic and tail gains will need to be varied by the same amount with changes in rotor speed. Therefore why change them individually when you can change them all at once? You could even mix your gain channel to your governor channel on your transmitter so that your gains track your headspeed.. cunning..

As a matter of note my gains I’ve left at stock and am running at 90% on the transmitter. The system could go higher but as the model is flying so nicely I’m not going to touch anything!

Having got some more flights on the Xxtreme I can’t help but like this helicopter more everytime I fly it.

Got the Midlands Logo on the canopy now, Sure you will agree it looks very nice.