Align Trex 600e Rebuild Progress Report

 

The tail assembly, from the power take-off assembly on the left to the tail rotor assembly on the right. The torque tube and those two bearings with their housings are inside the tube. I like this arrangement as it is easy to remove the entire assembly from the frame to make repairs.

 

Tail assembly installed into the massive frame. This thing is well over a meter long, I think.

 

The other side.

 

 

Main gear/auto-rotation gear and the reciever battery pack, main shaft and the entire CCPM assembly installed. It took some time to adjust the control rods, since I had to replace two and wanted to get somewhere close to zero pitch. All the servos are functioning and the swash was essentially still flat.

 

Blades on. tough to balance since I don't have a balancer bit enough (will get one). These more expensive blades are always balanced, but I still like to check. All that is left is to check zero pitch and make sure the CCPM a pitches are still good, and to balance and install the tail blades. I will first remove the blades after setting up the CCPM to make sure everything spins clean without vibration.

This was a lot of expense and time, all for missing a loose elevator control ball snap.

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Hangar 9 Sopwith Rebuild Complete

With the arrival today of the new prop shaft from HeadsUp RC (the fastest shippers I have ever frickin' ordered from!), I was able to adjust the motor for centerline (no offset), install the prop, check CG and call her done! She is looking really good, and I can't wait for first flight.

 

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Chip's Frankenplank

Chip Young got a fuse from an estate sale, that needed a wing. The chord was a perfect fit for my old Eflite PulseXT 25e wing, so I gave it to him and he's installed it. It looks marvelous! Th margins and the tail shape make me think this is a model of an MX2 (UPDATE: Turns out Chip says its a SIG 4 Star, a 0.40 glow model). Will be fun to see it fly! Well done, Chip!

 

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Warping the Sopwith Wing

Worked a little on the Sopwith today. The more I thought about it the more I realized I really need to unwarp those wings. It's sloppy, non-aerodynamic, and adds too many lift variables and drag.

This is the pre photo, where you can see the bottom of the top left wing (on the right) and the top of the lower right wing (on the left). That top wing is really wacky.

 

 

I needed to twist the wings in opposite directions, brining the back of the left wing up and the bottom right wing down. I made a set of guide wires to induce and hold the wing twist. This is the guide wire I installed under tension on the left wing outer strut. It pulls the top wing leading edge down, and pulls the bottom left wing up a touch.

 

This is the wire on the right wing, pulling the front edge of the right wing up and the back of the top one down. You will notice that the right and left wing wires run in opposite directions.

 

The top wing is straight all the way across!

 

And the post pic. Both wings are straight. We'll see if the wires hold in flight, they are under a little tension. I suspect the tension will lessen as the wood begins to shift to the new stresses.

She does, by the way, lean a little to her right. This is the way the landing gear, which are flexible, settle. There are rubber bands acting as shock absorbers on each wheel, and the landing struts are mobile, able to flex side-to-side. She likes to lean right. I may work on this, not really sure what I can do.

Waiting for the prop adapter. I also wanted to do the guide wires, but some of them snap under load, so I thought some high test fishing wire? I may just start using the wires I have (a set of replacements I bought long ago).

 

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Hangar 9 Sopwith Rebuild

I started work on the Sopwith Camel today, cleaning up and patching the fuse, resetting the servos And control arms to make everything as zero/ninety as mechanically possible. This puppy has got some issues.

I found that the prop shaft is ever so slightly bent. Any offset will cause significant vibration, so I removed it and ordered a new one from HeadsUp RC. This motor is pretty ginormous, not as big, I don't think, as the one on the MX2. If I cared I could check the specs... I will be flying this 6S. It has a 100A HobbyWing Pro ESC, but it's not high voltage, and 6S is more than enough power.

 

I installed the wings after working the fuse. These wings are warped, always have been. The flaws seem to balance out.

 

You can really see the warped wings; looks worse in the pic than it really is. The upper left (on the right of the pic) and the lower right (on the left) are warped in opposite planes. The elevator is also warped on the right, and I will likely need to rebuild it. Right now I have it clamped, but I don't expect that to work, it never does. Tomorrow I will rebuild it. I just don't have the time, skills or supplies to unwarp the main wings. They were warped like this when I first flew her and it balances out. It probably is a contributor to her poor ground characteristics on take-off.

Waiting for the prop adapter, and I need some heavy gauge leader wire from a fishing shop so I can restring the guide wires. Then we shall she how she flies!

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From Our "It's Always Somethin' " Department

Working on the Trex 600e Pro rebuild this afternoon, and it was brief, hence the title of this post...

Took the worn main shaft bearing blocks out of the heli. The bottom one was terribly worn, in fact an edge was actually damaged (I knew that...) and I discarded it, the top one was fine, but I will replace both of them. Pulled the new blocks out and when I went to install the bottom one I noticed it was too short. Dammit. Turns out it's from the standard Trex 600 and measures 48mm, not the Pro, which apparently is wider at 50mm. I don't want to McGyver this so need the right parts.

The one on the left is the original, the one on the right the new "too small" block. I ordered what I believe to be the correct size.

I turned then to the tail boom assembly which includes the power take-off assembly, the torque tube shaft and bearings, and the tail control assembly. When I pulled the torque shaft out I found one bearing. No bearing "holder" block. And I like two bearings, so... Back to the order and ordered a bearing holder and bearing set (it comes with two of each). Good thing I left the order open. The stock build requires only one, but most builders recommend two asymmetrically set to prevent vibration harmonics from developing and transmitting to the tail. I set that aside, and went on to disassemble the tail control assembly. I replaced the bent tail shaft, cleaned and re-lubed the bearings and controls. I couldn't get the tail torque tube mushroom gear bearing off the gear, and since it was unworn, undamaged and functioning fine, I decided to leave it in place. Tail assembly done and ready for installation.

According to the return policies of the Align Trex Store I need to have returned the part 15 days after I bought it back in July. I just opened the parts box yesterday, some 6 months later, so that ain't happening. I just ordered the replacement parts; maybe they will at least give me some store credit.

So the Trex 600e Pro project is set aside for a couple of weeks as I wait for those parts, the holidays and some work days to pass. This heli won't be ready until after the new year, and even that is sure to be delayed because there is always somethin'...

 

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Rebuilding the Trex 600e Pro

As I noted, I completed the rebuild of the HDX 500se and she is ready for flight testing, possibly as early as tomorrow. She was one of my best flyers before her frame failed in flight and then the whole seizure thing. But those things are resolved!

Back in Mississippi this summer, sometime in late July I think, I was flying my Trex 600e Pro when the elevator control rod separated from the ball clevis and she performed a jaw dropping flip from thirty feet, ass over teakettle, landing hard on her gear. It snapped her landing gear and ripped the tail boom off, fractured the main blades, but the frame was intact and unharmed. It was an impressive crash and I would have sworn I blogged the incident but I can't find the entry. I mentioned that I had noticed the ball Clovis was loose and needed to be addressed when I was in the middle of another repair, and I never got back to it. I missed it in preflight, launched, got up to altitude and initiated a turn. As I was coming out of it, BAM! It was over in an instance. Someone asked me if I did it because it was spectacular 3D, but I immediately recognized what had gone wrong, and on post crash the clevis was unscrewed, not ripped, off the elevator, and the motion it did in flight was clearly full up elevator. I took her home and stripped off the broken bits, ordered the new ones, and packed them away as they arrived as it was the week I moved back home to New Hampshire. Some of the last parts arrived here, and I set them aside. I didn't fly or work on much as I was in a bit of a funk for the next couple of months, but since I started my new job I am renewed, flying and rebuilding everything.

I pulled out all the new parts and inventoried them.

The intact main frame and the inventoried parts. I put the new gear struts and skids on today. Tomorrow I will start with both sets of main bearings, which were going bad when I bought her, then set up the tail power take-off, torque tube, and tail assembly, which I had to completely disassemble. This will be followed by the main rotor and CCPM, etc. this may take several days. She too was an excellent flyer and I am sure she will fly as well again!

Step one!

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