It Stopped Being Fun About An Hour Ago...

In my previous post I tell about how great today was! But now it seems my EXI 450 and I have a tradtion too, just like the CB180D! I fly it, it bites the dirt with its blades, and I replace the main gear, the main shaft, and the feathering shaft. But tonight, there's more fun!

I knew I needed to replace the main gear, so I did, and in doing so, I had to pull the main shaft which I found difficult to do because it was bent... So I replaced it, and the generic replacement part is just a few molecules too big, so I have to break out the Dremel and grind it down a bit, but its easy and I get it to fit. Now, where the's a bent main shaft one checks the feathering shaft, and lo and behold, it too was bent, though quite subtly. And in replacing it and pulling the main shaft I had to move the servos a bit, and... wait for it... wait for it... yup, one of the servos was stripped! One of my nice strong metal gear digital EXI D213F servos. And this being a Trex 450 Pro clone, the pitch and aileron servos are impossible to get to without pulling the battery tray, which has 4 screws on both sides. So I remove the battery tray, remove the servo. I plug the new servo in the receiver to check 90 by moving the servo to both ends of motion and centering it, and then put the servo arm on it. Its pretty much spot on. I install the servo, rescrew the 8 screws with a touch of CA. I reconnect the swash links and then to check CCPM I fire up the transmitter, set throttle hold, and it binds. What's this? The servo I just replaced is up at a 30 degree angle tilting the swash. How can that be, its centered... but no, somehow its not. And because the servo arms on the Pro are buried in the frame, I get to take it all apart again. So I do. But I am pissed, and without thinking I accidently change the model in my Dx6i when scrolling the menus. You guessed it! It unbound, and the motor, which I didn't unplug (I ALWAYS do but didn't) fires up and before I can unplug the battery my nice carbon fiber tail blades destroy themselves on the glass lamp, which fortunately doesn't break. Geez... So, back to removing the battery tray and the servo... 7 screws come out just fine, but one just won't budge... and it strips, but not before rounding off my Mugen steel hex driver, which I then grind down as well to fix. Yay! I have to break out the extractors. Which don't work, so I drill out the bad screw, replace it, and put its 7 good brothers back in. I reconnect everything, and make a minor adjustment to the elevator link to level the swash. All that's left is to put the blades back on and recheck the CCPM.

And tomorrow I will do it all over again! But I hope to solve the tail wag problem... Yay...