Walkera Quality? But I love this heli... :-(

My Walkera UFLYS arrived today, and right out of the box it had issues. During spin up tests it spun alright, hard to the left. No amount of right rudder compensated for it. Checked the rudder motion, trim and servos, fine. Could not make this work. On further inspection I found that one of the balls and both linkages had separated from the flybar collar. The H guide bar had sheared off one of the guides, making the H an h. I'll need to replace that... I replaced the ball linkage using some loctite, and replaced the linkages. All fixed except the guide, but there is no vibration or instability. Need to figure out how to replace the guide. xheli and Helidirect are both out of the guide sets. But this doesn't account for the spin issue...

I examined the gearing closely, and found the main shaft rotor had 2mm of play because the fixing ring was not properly positioned. This prevented the tail rotor pinion from fully engaging the main gear, preventing the tail rotor from developing adequate headspeed. I removed the securing screw, snugged up the collar, and resecured the fixing screw along with some loctite. Retested the heli and the problem was gone! Until a pin securing one of the tail rotor blade linkages flew off somewhere and the affected blade went rogue, causing the spin to return. I replaced the pin with a piece of paper clip trimmed to fit, and voilà, problem solved again. Tomorrow we try to hover it.

I noticed that at rest the blades fall below the boom. I wonder if during the spinnups if the blades momentarily got stuck below the boom and the horizontal fin, shearing the linkages? Not sure how that would happen. No boom or blade marks.

I hovered the CB180D successfully today in the garage! Time on the simulator is paying off.

Hopefully my UFLYS won't fling itself to pieces. Looking forward to first flight tomorrow if weather permits. Busy first day with the UFLYS...