HBFP eating batteries

I received my HBFP yesterday. I immediately noticed the "flight times" (in quotes because I can't actually fly it, just hop around) were dramatically shorter than with my Lama. After a few flights my batteries have been rendered useless - this morning I'm only getting a couple hops out of each battery and then there's not enough power to lift off.

I thought maybe the new battery that came with the HB could be a dud, but the other is an older battery that was giving me good flight times right up until I stuck it in the HB.

????

Right now I've got two of these batteries that are brand new and unused. I don't know if the Lama or HB chargers can charge these or not. If not, I guess I need to get a better charger.

What do I do next?

I had the same situation a few days ago. Then I thought all of the batteries probably didn't go bad at once. The two other common links are the charger malfunctioning or the main drive motor crapping out.

I changed out my main motor and I was back in business! If you have been flying for a while with the same main motor, it may be failing on you sucking the juice out of your batteries.

Curt

What kind of batterys do you have? What kind of charger do you have? Can you use the same batterys in both of your helis? If so see if they do better in your other heli, after a fresh charge.

There are many things that can make the battery seem to be bad.

Donnie D

The HBFP is brand spankin' new. If it came with a dead motor than I am

Donnie D - The batteries are the stock Esky 800 mah 7.4V.

The chargers are the Esky chargers that come with Lama's and HB's.

I've been using the charger that came with the HB and the Lama charger. I just put both batteries on charge on the Lama and Commanche chargers, which are known good. I'll test them out on the Lama in an hour or so and report back.

Great, don't assume when that happens that your batt is bad or your motor. I replaced my main motor a couple of weeks ago, just to find out my problem was just an adjustment problem in the heli. Yesterday, I was flying my HBFP, plenty of power, landed too close to the edge of the sidewalk and tipped it over gently. When I tried to lift off after that, almost no lift. Readjusted flybar paddle, plenty of power. Helis are fickle things. There are many small things, usually in the head and rotor adjustments that can cause your problem. Good that you can test your batts in another heli.

Donnie D

You guys get my "know what they're talking about" award for today I ran the two batteries that were having trouble in the HB, and another one I thought was bad, through the Lama and all 3 were o.k.

Soooooo now I've got to figure out what's wrong with my HB and my Commanche, cause they're both getting ridiculously short flight times.

Let's start with the HB because I'm getting bored with Lamas. What do I need to look at?

Just go thru everything and make sure all is set up properly and nothing is damaged. Some things I have experienced that definately cause it are:

Main blades badly out of track or balance or even not tightned the same.

Flybar paddles must be the same ( they dont have to be set level, you can have a bit of pos or neg pitch, but they MUST both be the same)

Pop off the rotor head and check if the center hub is broken or even cracked.

Also be sure both flybar paddles are the same distance from the rotor head.

I've found that with the HBFP, sometimes you will have something that may cause a bad vibration, but it seems to fly fine, and then something off that causes almost no vibration, and you have almost no lift. It's just weird.

Finally if you can find nothing wrong in the head, change out the main motor. If that turns out not to be the problem, you can just use he motor again later. Just take your time, you will figure it out. After a while you will become pretty good at diagnosing problems, which is harder to do than repairing them.

Donnie D

I found a few problems - one of the flybar paddles was at negative 1-2 degrees, the other was at positive 4-5 degrees. I eyeballed them both into the zero degree range. Then I got the blades tracking better. I'd say they're around a 1/16th of each other now. It's within the limit of what I can see with the naked eye.

I also took off the crash kit.

Altogether this vastly cut down on the amount of vibration and I was able to get in nearly an hour of n00b hopping. The battery went longer than I did. The helicopter is far more controllable - being able to hover it steadily seems like a reasonable proposition now. If the weather's good tonight I'll take it outside and see if I can get it out of its backwash. I bet that'll help a lot although it will probably lead to damaging crashes without the crash kit.

It's still vibrating too much. Has anyone got plans for a homebrew blade balancer? Yeah I could order one, but then I'd have to wait for it to get here

With the HBFP you don't need a blade balancer, you have a built in one. Just leave them on the rotor head. Pop off the rotor head and let the link balls set on two drinking glasses and there is your pivot for balancing.

If you have a smooth surface to practice on, you can use your training gear without the balls. Will cut way down on the vibration that way. The balls are just to keep the training gear from catching on carpet or grass and stuff.

Also, you really should limit your flights to 6 or 7 min max. If you run down a lipo batt to far it will ruin it. 6 or 7 min should leave the cells at about 3.8v each. Also let the batts cool down a bit before recharging.

Donnie D

The wind calmed down and I got in a little outside training time. No problems with the batteries any more, they're outlasting me. I haven't seen red on the 4-in-1 today. I always stop when I do see it.

I didn't use the crash kit outside. Outside comes with it's own crash kit - flowers, dogwoods and soft grass. I'm quite good at getting the HB into one of the three when it gets out of hand.

I managed to hover it within a 6 ft square for 20 seconds and land. Not to bad for the first day First day with it trimmed halfway right anyway.

Looking forward to seeing how much better it flies with balanced blades!

Great! I knew you would get it figured out. Just takes a little patience.

Donnie D

correct me if I am wrong but the red light comming on on the 4in1 is a throttle indicator. Green light till full throttle then it turns to red. Nothing bad about the red light.

A great doc about balancing
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showatt.php?attachmentid=812476

A good source of info for the HBFP
http://www.helitown.com/ESkyHoneyBeeFP.htm

So, to balance the main rotor -



then



I suppose on this round you'd have to put the 2nd piece of tape over the cg from the first balance.

Not sure how I'm going to mark CG on these black rotors . . .

To balance the entire heli, suspend by the flybar and shift the battery pack around or otherwise add weight until it balances.

To balance the tail rotor -

Quote :

The easiest way to balance the tail rotor is by simply taking out the rubber tube that keeps the blade and the gear from slipping out of the tail shaft; then move the gear out of contact with the pinion and lo! the tail blade is being balanced! The tail shaft is secured by ball bearings so it is the best balancer for the tail rotor blades.

To balance the rotor head -

Quote :

BALANCING YOUR ROTOR HEAD

You can do this by removing the blades and the main drive gear from the heli or I just remove the rotor assembly and put the main shaft and assembly into an old frame that has ball bearings.

However before you get to balancing the rotor head now is a good time to make sure you main shaft is straight. You can chuck it into a coordless drill and spin it while watching for wobble on the end. Make any adjustments as it doest take much to get it back to being perfectally straight. Usually the bend in the main shaft is right above where upper bearing sits on the main rotor shaft

Now that the main shaft is straight I put it in an old fram (with bearings) and hold the frame so that the flybar is vertical. You will probably notice one side will be a bit heavier than the other. Here is where you make adjustments to the flybar (back and forth) until you get it so that it is perfectally balanced and there is no heavier side. This will come easier with practice.

To make the blades track right -

Quote :

To adjust the tracking of your rotor blades you will have to change the lengh of one of the pitch change links. Twisting the blades will not help correct the problem- as the blades will eventually flex right back to where they were.

Do fixed pitch heli's have pitch change links?

Adjusting proportion and gain -

Quote :

First off since you dorked it make sure that the tail rotor blade and rotor blade shaft spins freely and that there is little if any wobble in the tail blade and or tail blade gear. Next the easiest way to tune the 4 in 1 is to first remember what each setting does the proportional controls the RPM of the tail rotor blade in relation to the main rotor blades so when you adjust the proportional you are really adjusting the ratio between the main blade and rotor blade the gain or gyro adjustment adjusts the amount of dampening of movement on the tail. The proper way to do this setup is to first turn the gain way down to just below half off with the gain way down and the rudder trim on the radio set to center and the porpotional set to center start tuning as you take off the heli will want to spin in one direction or an other make note on how each adjustment effects your input on the stick. You should be able to adjust the proportional with the gain completely off to the point where you can hover the heli, granted any large stick movement will be wild since the gain is off but once you get the proportional "close enough" then you can start increasing the gain. Increase the gain about a 1/16 of in inch at a time until the tail starts to wag or hunt and then turn it back until the wag goes away, the process will take you some time to do the first time you go through it but after you do it once the heli can be completely tunes (proportional and gain ) within 5min ..

Misc tips -

Quote :

There was one post a while back some one posted a video or somthing to set the tracking and boost headspeed by lifting the helli by the tips of the main blades and bounce the weight of the heli by the blade tips. This folds the main blades upwards and it takes some of the pitch out and it really works. It does go back but just testing this is really cool how it works.

Quote :

Also, I went to 20C capacity 1000mah lipos and that has cured the last of my tail control issues. Tail is rock steady till the very end when the battery finally gives out, between 15-20 minutes of steady hovering.

Quote :

I knocked about 2in off the tip of a main blade and lost the piece, I was desperate so I cut it square and chopped the second blade to match and balanced... my heli flies much better....

Plus after I started looking for info on blade sizes I found out thta people regularly chop their helis smaller and it makes them all fly better.

Don't know about that last one . . .

No a FP (fixed pitch) doesn't have links to change pitch. I would leave trimming the blades till you knock the tip off of a blade lol and then I would have to weight up the cash flow and shipping time against need to fly. When messing with damaged blades always keep in the back of your mind that on your HBFP the blade tips are traveling at 140+mph. Thats a lot of damage if part of a blade breaks off.

I gave up on using the 7.4v LIPO battery all together. I think it's under powered so I used an 11.1v LIPO modified with a fuse installation to protect the Rx. It works great. You can goto my website for more info. Here is a video of the E-SKY HBFP modifed with a brushless motor using the 11.1v LIPO.

RTF-HELI wrote:

I gave up on usig te 7.4v LIPO battery all together. I think it's under powered so I used an 11.1v LIPO modified with a fuse installation to protect the Rx. It works great. ou can goto my website for more info. Here is a video of the E-SKY HBFP modifed with a brushless motor using the 11.1v LIPO.

So this is about 10% original HBFP?

It's impressive, but, why? I considered modding my Lama's but instead of spending $100 just for two turbo kits I got an HBFP. I don't regret buying the more advanced heli. I think I'll take Nuttcaze's advice - use the HBFP basically as a trainer to get the hang of hovering and put the modding money into a Belt CP.

I'd like to see your super HBFP fly though, have you got video of it?

I definitely agree with the feeling that the 7.4 V battery is underpowered in the HBFP. It takes far more throttle for the HBFP to lift off than the Lama did. Hopefully that will improve when everything's balanced.

Speaking of which, I don't recommend trying to balance the tail rotor on it's shaft as quoted in my previous post. It won't rotate freely enough.

All you have to do to balance the rotor blades on the HBFP is to pop the rotor head off and use the whole assembly as a teeter totter to balance them.

All you have to do to balance the tail rotor is put some kind of shaft thru the hole in the rotor that is slightly smaller than the hole in the rotor, and use that as a teeter totter.

Donnie D

While it's your heli and you can do what you want with it, I like to make sure all my helis are worthy of flying. The modified FP rocks versus the regular Fixed Pitched. And while it is a trainner to goto a 6-channel, I don't want to let dust collect on my 4-channel. Unlike Nuttcaze, he is selling his 4-channels, I;m keeping mine. You can fly it inside the house on rainy days since it is not as big as most 6-channel helis and the spare parts are a lot cheaper than a 6-channel. The small 6-channel heli motors keep on failing at the tail end, so until they get a belt going, the smaller 6-channels aren't worth the trouble.

The Lama is a decent co-axial 4-channel, but the motor replacing is costly. Go brushless and you can fly all day without ever having to replace those motors. Flying a LAMA is not like flying a single rotor heli. So practice on the E-SKY HBFP. That's what I did and went into the 6-channel CP helis.

And when you do get a 6-channel CP heli, make sure you have mastered flying because when you do crash, the parts will be expensive and the time to repair will be a lot longer than repairing a simple 4-channel FP heli.

You can view a video of the E-SKY HBFP brushless flying the website below.

Has anyone got a link to detailed instructions for removing and balancing the rotor head?

I've balanced the blades, the main rotor, the tail rotor, and the overall heli. 14 grams of useless lead in the nose - but it's become quite flyable. I've only been able to test it inside, looking forward to getting outside when the wind stops blowing. I'm not finding it to be as hard to fly as I've read about. It takes smaller control movements than a Lama, but it's o.k. My flybar and rotor head are probably crazy out of balance too, if the main rotor and tail rotor are any indication. Uhm and I forgot to retrack the blades when I put them back on - there's another stability improvement to be had.

RTF-HELI wrote:

While it's your heli and you can do what you want with it, I like to make sure all my helis are worthy of flying.

Well, I think the way it's going to work out is, I'll be spending my time with the heli that is most worthy of it, and the others will be collecting dust and occassionally serving as back up planes. I haven't touched the Lama's since I got the HBFP, other than to test batteries. The same will likely be true of the HBFP once I move on to CP helis. I'll keep the trainer helis flying but to me building a hot rod HBFP makes as much sense as building a hot rod Civic when you're getting a Corvette anyway.

I can see doing your mods where they are cost effective replacements, like the tail motor. I've got a spare, but when I have to swap it in I'll consider a brushless replacement.

RTF-HELI wrote:

The small 6-channel heli motors keep on failing at the tail end, so until they get a belt going, the smalle 6-channels aren't worth the trouble.

I was planning to go for belt drive.

If the tail rotors on non-belt CP's keep failing, why not offer a brushless upgrade for them?

If the tail rotors on non-belt CP's keep failing, why not offer a brushless upgrade for them?

The only non-belt CP that can take a brushless tail motor ascting as a direct drive is the E-SKY HBCP2(35/72Mhz is being discontinued) and possibly the E-Flite CP2. The electronics on the Walkera #22E and Exceed Eagle 50 and Venom 3D cannot handle the brushless tail motor system. So if you are thinking of getting a cheapo on-belt 6-channel get the E-Flite or find an E-SKY HB CP2 otherwise a nice 450 TREX clone would be the way to go. The Blue-Ray SE is getting very good reviews.

not sure about the rumor of the CP2 being discontinued.......seen a 2.4g version of it is out now
http://www.esky-heli.com/esky-24g-6ch-honey-bee-3d-cp2-ccpm-rc-helicopter-rtf-p-2747.html

Who makes TREX/Blue Ray helicopters? I don't feel too good about buying Chinese since they're trying to sink our economy/economic recovery. I'm not freaking out about it but an American option would be good.

I'm getting decent at tail-in hover. Can't turn it around yet, but I'm working on it.

Align are made in Taiwan and I think the Blueray is probably made by Jiayuanxing model Co., LTD in China.
None of us would be able to afford to buy American made birds no matter how good the economy is.

Jack the R'

You were looking for a vid on balancing the rotor blades and head:

Go to Nuttcaze.com, click on the Honey Bee Fixed Pitch link on the left, scroll down to the spot where it says Beginnerss Videos and click that, scroll down until you find the video for blade balancing.

That should be what you need.

Donnie D

Eh, I just learned a minorly painful lesson. Flying a heli with only a canopy in front, in the dark, is too hard. Maybe I'll get the blaze orange Bell 222 body . . .

Prel - I've got an American car, built in Michigan.

Taiwan is better than China, at least until the Chinese absorb it.

Donnie D - Thanks, I'll check it out.

Also go to youtube and key in "Honey Bee FP Center Hub Replacement".
That should be somewhat helpful for rotor head removal and center hub replacement. Also if you ever have to replace a center hub, be sure to look under "RC Info" in this forum at the sticky "Tips and Tricks" for center hub.

Donnie D

I've found that there are alot of people who prefer to stick with FP's rather then move on to 6ch's so if you find you're one of those people then upgrading your HBFP like RTF-Heli says would be something to look into.

Eh, now my tail motor is firing off erratically. It isn't constant, but every now and then it shoots off, for about half a second, for no reason.

I'm getting fairly "good" at tail in hover, but spinning the heli is causing me trouble. It seems like you need to give it a little forward pitch and left aileron when spinning to the right? I'll get it eventually. I got it to go around once and not crash but that was a fluke.

The tail motor maybe failing or you have to add a line filter between the Rx and Tail motor as the RF Noise from a crabon brushed motor system can be very high.

Maybe I'll be upgrading sooner than anticipated then

My TX batteries were getting low too, those Chinese ones the HB ships with sure don't last long. I've swapped in new rechargeables and not seen a problem since. Keeping my finger's crossed . . .