Unpacking the Exceed-RC MadHawk 300 heli was easy enough. It comes in a variety of body styles. If there is one thing I’ve learned int this hobby so far, I’m going to CRASH. So I went for the simple ‘Normal’ canopy style instead of the cooler looking full-bodied birds. Madhawk 300 at XHeli.com
Closeup photos of the heli
The box.Parts as packed. Typical Chinese blister pack maze.Parts unpacked. Heli, radio, battery, charger, spare blades (yeah!), mini-tool.Programmable 4-channel 2.5GHz transmitter that comes in kit. 300 class electric heli - Madhawk 300 'Normal Edition'Extra blades, charger, power supply, LiPo battery, mini-tools.Metal rotor head and swash plate. Impressive for such little money.Metal swash plate, and shaft-drive tail motor w/ heat sink.Gearbox drive 3-blade fixed pitch tail rotor (plastic)Bottom view with battery bay. Low in body and near rotor shaft CL.Side view of heli with laptop to show scale.
I dot not yet have any in-flight video of this to upload, but I’ll say this. WOW, it’s fun! Establishing your first full hover with the blades of death whirling violently around, is as cool! The blades also make that trademark ‘whoop whoop whoop’ any proper helicopter should. It just adds to the fun.
There is a lot to learn about handling helicopter physics, but I’m finding that the 300 class with training gear installed is EASIER TO LEARN than the smaller co-axial craft. And the price is just about the same (or about 1/2 that of the CX3 to be honest).
So, the advice I’d received from a few people, and read on a few other sites is RIGHT ON. If you really think you are going to get into this, just buy a decent Fixed-Pitch kit for $120, add the $8 training kit and learn. You’ll be happier in the long run. Less frustration from slow co-axial heli response, heavier so you can fly in our outdoors, and it’s probably going to be fun to fly for quite some time.
So, once I get my head-in hover fully mastered I should have a nice EXI-500 built and ready to go. The EXI-500 will be good for years. I’ve met a number of people who suggested going from the little trainer STRAIGHT to the Collective-Pitch 500 or larger birds. And as crazy as it sounds, right now, I think they are right.
For now though, I’ll keep learning on the Co-Axials and Fixed-Pitch helis littering the house. Weather is pretty nasty outside so having some good indoor fun is a bonus. One of the next ‘upgrades’ to the CX3, after I fix the swash plate issue, is going to be a cargo hook. 🙂
Good times. The Blade CX3 is one heck of a fun bird to fly.
The first update today was to add the factory heat sink for the main motors. E-Flite CX3 heat sink
After removing one of the motors, installing the sink was pretty simple. Heat sink install 1/2 complete
Motor re-installed and bolted back into position: Motor re-installed.
The fame looks a little naked without the body installed. But it does not take long to put it back together, and ready for flight. E-flite CX3 with body removed.
A little time lapse video of re-assembly:
Ready to enjoy some indoor heli flying fun. Completed bird, and Spektrum DX6i flight controller
Well, it was, until the plastic factory swash plate decided to separate. I’d been fighting with adjusting the swash links most of the evening, after putting the heli back together again. I thought that maybe I’d bent a servo link rod during the heat sink install, so I worked on adjusting the cyclic/swashplate links.
Trying to stop a hard forward and starboard liftoff, and full rear cyclic would barely have any effect. It was not until an hour or so later I noticed that the plate where the servos attach was separating from the bearing and main rotor shaft. Duh. This explains why 2 directions worked great (pushing up on the plate) but the opposites failed (pulling down on the plate, but the upper bearing remained in position, thus no control. No control, but one check of an exciting crash!
The official term for this is TBE (toilet-bowl effect). Not fun. There is quite a discussion of the problem HERE. Once I discovered the problem, it was a matter of deciding how to solve it. There are a couple of solutions.
First of which is a pretty inexpensive factory replacement part. Stock replacement swash plate.
Second is one of the CNC or cast metal solutions from E-Flite (the original manufacture) or other sources. Research indicates that the E-Flite is the one to buy. E-Flight aluminum replacement swash plate.
Fortunately, there are plenty of other heils in the shop ready to fly. Blade CX3 (left), Exceed-RC Madhawk 300 (right)
Excellent! Package started heading north Saturday morning. Not sure why it would take 5 days to get from CA to WA via UPS. I guess that’s what Brown is doing for me! LOL.
UPS package on the slow boat.
Took a long time to get to WA, but it’s finally out for delivery. 🙂
I also have video shot with my old Canon DV camcorder (found it in a storage box yesterday). Right now I don’t have the right Firewire cable for my MAC. Hope to get that resolved tomorrow.
It’s been, almost a decade since I picked up an X-Acto Knife and built a styrene model. This weekend changed all that.
The reasons are many, some I can’t even go into. The ship was picked for 2 reasons. Price (about $10) and it had below waterline detail. That’s all I was looking for and this fit the bill. What turned out to be serendipitous fortune simply makes the project that much more poignant.
Blucher
The Blücher was a German Admiral Hipper-class heavy cruiser. The Kriegsmarine’s newest ship at the outbreak of World War II, having been in commission for just over six months, she was sunk by Norwegian shore defenses at the Battle of Drøbak Sound on April 9, 1940, the first day of the invasion of Norway (Operation Weserübung).
It took approximately 4 hours to formulate the plan for the build, and the first plastic was cut on Saturday night.
12 hours later, the final result. And I’m quite pleased with it. Moving some of the parts did not require much skill at all, but moving the starboard side screw was, well, a several hour effort. In the end, a fair bit of plastic welding was done, and body filler applied to completely conceal the original location. I hope you can see the final result in the side shot.
It was bound to happen, taking the next step and actually taking 2 minutes to edit my little ‘movies’ (really a personal video diary of my learning to fly and crash little flying machines). Here are the first two that I actually was able to load into iMovie and convert.
First is the Revel Proto CX. My micro counter-rotating blade heli: I cut a bunch of worthless time (more worthless that this video, hard to image but true) out of the middle and focused on the ‘good stuff’:
Next is video of the bird #2, the Blade CX3. EFlite Blade CX3 - MD520 Notar
I had just unpacked it, installed the training gear extensions (the funny orange balls) and bound it to the Spectrum radio that came in the ParkFlyer HobbyZone P-51 foamy. That was a nice little treat. Blade CX3 - MD520 Notar
For the most part it worked great. Here 90% condensation of about 25 minutes of actual flight time with the CX3. This was my first attempt.
However, yet again, I managed to mangle the landing gear after a few panic throttle chops as it got a little close to big steel things that would break it. :/ Back to the hobby shop for MORE stuff! Blade CX3 replacement landing gear. I left them 1 on the rack. At least they are not TOO expensive!
And finally, here is my repair video. First semi-successful attempt at time-lapse with the Canon S1100 micro-camera. The hardest part, I thought, would be learning how to do this with iMovie ’09. Nope, after some prodding around it turned out to be pretty simple. Sadly the camera was doing some sort of zoom-in and zoom-out madness. Site down before watching, you might get ill. Some are going to wonder about the music. Did I shot the video with this music in mind. NOT! Who’d try to shoot video like this, outside the brain-dead corridors of intellectual bankruptcy one finds in L.A. or N.Y.? No, but the frantic into to a good German industrial metal song just… WORKED! I only hope YouTube does not over-dub the music with something totally lame out of their music library, as I’ve heard they have started to do this.
UPDATE!
YouTube send me this message today. Hopefully they don’t over-dub the music. But, when you’re using a free service, their hardware, their network, it’s not a stretch to concede they own that copy of it.:
Your video, Eflite Blade CX3 MD520N (Notar), may have content that is owned or licensed by UMG.
No action is required on your part; however, if you are interested in learning how this affects your video, please visit the Content ID Matches section of your account for more information.
It’s beyond obsession at this point. I’m going to need a 12-step program.
Yesterday I converted some old ‘iron’ at the gun shop to one of these at the hobby shop (I don’t have a need for a piddly 9mm anyway). This is Heli #3: Blade CX3
As I type, the batteries are charging for the Heli, and the transmitter.
I saved $35 by buying the BNF (Bind-n-Fly) version of the kit. The Spektrum DX6i I already obtained is compatible with this (and the P-51 too as a matter of fact).
Then this morning, I received shipping confirmation of ‘Heli 4’ from the on-line retailer XHeli.com. This is my first time ordering stuff from them. What surprised me was that within 24 hours the merchandise was picked, packed and on it’s way!
Thank you for shopping at XHeli!
Your order’s shipping label is generated and is scheduled
to be shipped on 05/21/2010 via UPS.
EXCELLENT!! New Heli and parts on the way!
I’m having it shopped to my office in Tacoma since I don’t want to have it sitting on my porch all day at work. Plus, there is ALWAYS someone there to sign for it, since we are 24×7 shop. Fast FAST shipping and great prices. We’ll see how it all works out.
This is what I’m expecting. 🙂 Exceed MadHawk 300 ESky Flight Training System
Now, I already had this one here. Which now I think I paid WAYYYYYYYY too much for: RealFlight Basic
I’ve been practicing with it for a week now. It’s OK, and it has some cool planes in it, but the helicopter physics seem… weird. Really weird. And I completely irritated that I had to build a WINDOZE box to use the thing! Luckly I still had an old (circa 2006) Dell computer floating around, and it’s running Windoze XP (which the new software needs too.. got lucky there), but the hardware was not up to the task. Wish I’d known that when I bought it. So $100 for the software kit, then I had to toss in another $80 to get a decent DX9 compatible video card for the OLD PCI (not enhanced regular old PCI) interface, AND 1GB of memory for another $50. (poor thing only had 128MB in it.. not enough to even open the program.
So almost $250 to construct a flight simulator with a used computer!
Then.. then, I find this recommendation lurking around one of the Heli message boards. Heli-X.
It’s written in Germany AND it runs on Mac OSX!!!! So of course I downloaded it (it does not come with any controller, BUT the controller from RealFlight works PERFECTLY!). It’s also fairly pricey too at $50 Euro, and it only handles Helis BUT the physics in the trainer are SO much more realistic, at least to me.
Here is a shot of the simulator (sorry, I don’t have the controller hooked up at the moment so it’s just a shot of one model on the ground). It’s pretty good, and I’m learning that Variable Pitch, fixed throttle flying IS A LOT more intimidating that fixed pitch variable throttle! Screen Shot of Heli-X
After a number of pretty bad nose-in crashes (flying nose in is the most challenging), the bird was getting pretty beat up: Proto CX crash worn
With the landing gear broken and the canopy smashed, it was looking very ragged. Not only that, but the metal rod and zip ties I had holding the landing skids together added enough weight to make it fly a little funny (balance, what balance?).
Removing the weight of the rod, well.. that was not really an option: Broken and beaten Proto CX
Fortunately, the local hobby shop has a variety of replacement parts for these things (big shock, isn’t it?). The landing gear itself was about $8.50 to purchase. Easy enough. However, with all the plug-and-play miniaturization on these things, one thing that was not plug and play was the landing gear + battery tray. I’d have to perform some micro soldering to complete the repair. Replacement landing gear for the Proto CX
I lit up the soldering iron and did my best. Turns out that it was a little easier than I thought it would be. Plus, I didn’t accidentally melt any of the sensitive parts, like that servo there, located perilously close to the solder points I needed to use. Completing the repair.
With the important structural stuff fixed, the canopy was re-attached and she’s ready to fly. Good, maybe bad, but the shop did not have replacement canopy in stock. It’s OK I suppose, since I’d crashed this many times on the nose before the canopy finally shattered.
Broken gear left, repaired bird right.
Some pieces are still missing, but some clear tape and Sharpie marker returned it to serviceable condition. It’s not going to win a beauty contest, but it does fly, as you can see here!
