Turbo Shaft kit vs Xtreme aluminum upgrades

Hanol wrote:

Let me ask you one question. How long are you going to stay with Lama line?

I've been asking myself the same question lately. I've had an HBFP for a month or so (down with burned out motor at the moment) and initially my plan was to jump up to a Belt CP as quickly as possible. However I'm not sure the advanced helis are such a good fit for me anymore. With the extended inner shaft the Lama is as fast as I have room for, and it will only be faster with a brushless conversion and 20 C 7.4 v or 11.1 volt battery. If I flew higher I'd have more room, but if I lose control of the heli it'll likely be stuck up in a tree top until the wind blows it down. I had a glider wing stuck up in a tree top for months once, and a heli has so many more grabby spots for a tree to latch onto. If a heli got into a tree top it'd essentially be gone.

Then there's the danger of collision with full scale Army helis that like to train over my house, or possibly a Cessna on approach to an airport that's a few miles off.

And there's the bugs. I can barely fly the Lama for things diving at my eyes or trying to bite me. I nearly lost it twice today for having to swat bugs. No way I can fly a single rotor heli like this. Maybe when winter comes around again.

Hanol wrote:

It's only good indoors or in very calm weather.

I can't fly it indoors either, but I can usually fly it outdoors at least a couple days a week.

The same argument shoots down the HBFP, so what am I going to train with to progress to Belt-CP?

Hanol wrote:

Mods that will let you to fly it outdoors like brushless conversion will cost you hundreds of dollars and many hours or tweaking.

The brushless kit was $65, so yeah, more than a hundred if I do the Commanche too. I really love that body so I'll upgrade it sooner or later.

Why would the brushless kit be time consuming? It looks basically plug-n-play. Maybe have to wire up a battery plug.

If the single rotor helis aren't going to work out for me, I don't have anywhere else to go. The Big Lama might be nice but it doesn't look like there are any upgrades for it yet.

Hanol wrote:

If you are into just tweaking this thing, so it can do some stunts it wasn't designed for, it's up to you. It's fun too.

I wasn't aware Lamas could do any kind of stunt at all. What can a modded Lama do?

I'm having fun again with the new mods, and Lamas can go places I wouldn't try with bigger helis. It's cool to be dodging slowly through trees and branches one moment and then banging around the sky at high speed the next.

Hanol wrote:

Now they are. So I am going to move up to the smallest 3D electric very soon.

If you are looking at HBFP, consider buying it in pieces and build a good one from scratch. The RTF is about 3/4 throw away parts. The only thing you'd keep is the 4-in-1, servos, frame and tail boom. And the frame and tail boom could be upgraded too.

Jack the R wrote:

I've been asking myself the same question lately. I've had an HBFP for a month or so (down with burned out motor at the moment) and initially my plan was to jump up to a Belt CP as quickly as possible.

Thanks for the informative opinions. I think I may rethink my plans for switching to CP too soon after reading your post. I also have rather confined space to fly and trees present a little problem. But you always can get a paintball gun or slingshot to get get your heli out of there. Or call a tree service and let them cut the branches that are on your way. Or call a police so they can shoot it down :)

However I have a little state park with abandoned baseball field just across the road from my house, so I have a place to fly. Grass and weeds are knee high, but no trees.

So far I did all the mods to combat the wind, but it's still not very effective. It gets blown away by strong gusts. And it's very frustrating. I did consider brushless conversion, but so far I didn't find a good straightforward recipe for it. If you have a link to a complete kit, I will appreciate if you post it.

And by "stunts" I simply meant the ability of Lama to fly at high speed and do the sharp turns. No loops or rolls, of course.

Hi again!

Here is the site with the brushless motor set.
My front motor on my Lama 4 died today, so I have to get a replacement, and I was thinking of purchase this ser myself.
I also found this place when I was surfing around today. I don't know if the parts is the same as the Lama, but it looks wery much alike.

Here's proper link to brushless kit manual:

http://www.aeorc.com/download/manual/BCCombo180_Manual.pdf

You will need to remove the pinions from old motors and then install them on new ones. You will also need to trim the frame so new motors will fit. Otherwise it's looks pretty much straightforward conversion.

Some reports from Discussion on seller's page (link in the previous message) report multiple problems. However I think many people simply don't have a clue what are they doing.

Brutus5 wrote:

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I also found this place when I was surfing around today. I don't know if the parts is the same as the Lama, but it looks very much alike.

They all look similar, but they are not the same. And some parts on this page look completely different. I think shaft gears are bigger. I didn't count the number of teeth yet, though. :)

I've got my eye on the Blazing Star chrome stove pipe. Totally useless bling, nothing wrong with my plain grey one. Still, next time I order from X-heli . . .

Will these Turnigy micro servos work -

Link

Probably need to solder on an eSky connector - but I can get 3 of these for the price of one eSky servo off SlickZero.

I looked through the brushless conversion pdf - yeah, it does look like a PITA. I don't want to lose my little jet engine to mount ESCs in it's place, and I can't think of anywhere else to put them. That'd make it harder to remove the tail too.

Oh well, the Lama is fast enough as it is. My flying area has become too small. Maybe I'll go for the Aero Nutz motors, the 20c battery, and swap back a few plastic parts if needed.

Hanol - I've got a State Park nearby too which I flew at a few times - never again. I lost that glider into a tree by a road and worried for months it would come down in somebody's windshield. I tried to get the park work crew to get it down, but that's work . . . I also had a bunch of soccer kids swarm the field one day while I was flying an Electro-Uhu, which is a moderately high speed glider. I managed to put the UHU down right at my feet which is not easy with that plane. Coulda cracked a rug rats skull - stupid parents need to pay attention to the environment they release their kids into. No more flying in or near public places for me.

I'm sure you're right about Lama flying in the wind, not going to happen with any mod. Lately I've been getting as much flight time as I ought to have though - I work from home and if I had a heli that could fly all the time it would be too tempting

I'll probably try HBFP again later in the year, but unless I can build it to be more stable I doubt I'll get any further with it. I nearly lost the Lama again today because of a biting fly. HBFP would have crashed.

Jack the R wrote:

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Will these Turnigy micro servos work -
Link
...

No clue about servos. I use 2.4G variant. And they keep saying "digital servos". I couldn't find a clear explanation so far. There must be a difference, as usual conventional servos are controlled by a simple analog voltage level and it was a standard for many years. May be digital servos are really using some kind of real digital control. I mean some kind of coded pulse modulation instead of simple voltage.

Jack the R wrote:

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Hanol - I've got a State Park nearby too which I flew at a few times - never again. I lost that glider into a tree by a road and worried for months it would come down in somebody's windshield
...

This is funny thing. My State park is inside the the township of Edison. Town doesn't take care of the park, because it's state park, and the state doesn't take care of it, because it's in Edison town. As a result, the place is a dump. You can find car engine parts, tires and all other kind of junk. Sometimes they put the signs "no dumping, $200 fine", but signs don't survive for long and nobody enforces the rules anyway. Local police doesn't care for sure, and state police never comes here. Sometimes groups of volunteers come by and try to clean the mess. Doesn't happen too often.

One of the features of this park is the abandoned baseball field. May be once a year some parents come here, mow the grass and have a game for their kids. Probably, by a special permit. But usually entrance is chained and and no car can enter. So this field is always empty. And it's just like a 100 yards from my house. All I have to do is to find a way around the pond and mud that separates my house from this field. My house is on the side of the park and nobody knows that there is an easy access to it by foot.

And the tall grass has some benefit to a heli flier. It absorbs the impact forces. It may take some time to find your little birdie there, but the damage is minimal. :) Just some green spots on your white blades.

I know all about tall grass, and landing v4's with busted landing gear in it

FWIW I managed to repair the Commanche gear leg I broke. Drilled holes down the legs at the broken spots, stuck control rod wire in, and glued it back together. Has held up fine.

Shame if those Turnigy servos won't work.

Jack the R wrote:

Shame if those Turnigy servos won't work.

Guess what? One of my servos went bad. So I connected one of my 20 yr old BIG Futaba servos to 4 in 1 just to test, and it worked fine. So I guess "digital" is only a buzzword. And all standard servos should work.

Interesting . . .

Jack the R wrote:

Interesting . . .

Perhaps "digital" applies to the internal guts of the servo, not to the interface. And I think "digital" servos are little bit lighter. I was really impressed by the size of the motor. It's no more then 5mm in diameter. :) I don't know how they make them. I needed magnifying glasses to put it back together.

If you are interested, the problem was stripped teeth on the second gear from the top. However, this gear doesn't make a compete revolution from one limit to another. So I just had to rotate it, so the stripped part doesn't get in contact with the gear that drives it.

Hanol wrote:
Some reports from Discussion on seller's page (link in the previous message) report multiple problems. However I think many people simply don't have a clue what are they doing.
That is for shure. I have an old Chinese prod. 3ch. junk heli, the parts looks different, but some of them fits my lama 4.
I found another site (I have purchased some parts from them before, but never notised this part before)
I'll think this and this is what you are looking for. And this will fit the Lama's

I have done a lot of mods. on my HBFP and my Lama. Partly because I wanted to improve the performance, and partly because I like to build and rebuild them, as much as I like to fly them. But that's just me tough

Brutus5... wrote:

I found another site (I have purchased some parts from them before, but never notised this part before)
I'll think this and this is what you are looking for. And this will fit the Lama's

Thanks for the links. It's really useful as stock gears break when you just look on them.

As a funny part, I have a friend who makes silver jewelry. He has a little machine shop and casting ability. So he said he can cast the exact copy of the gears out of silver or brass. Not aluminum though. And he was serious. I wander if it worth a try to make a gear out of some silver/copper alloy? I know he can do it, but I am not sure about the added weight.

How did I miss the outer shaft gear at Miracle Mart? I've looked through the Lama parts section a couple times. Oh well, glad to see it available as a seperate part.

As I said before one of the ways to increase maneuverability is to remove the little brass weights from under the rubber ends of the stock flybar. I kept putting them on and off for quite some time, and I found that without them helicopter gets too unstable and too difficult to control. I guess some aftermarket fly bars with adjustable weights can solve this problem. But I am cheap, so I used my friend's lathe to cut the weights to half the size. Works fine so far. I can negotiate moderate gusts now and still have some stability. Just make sure both have same weight/dimensions.

I'm finding it to be plenty manueverable with the control links in the outermost holes. I'm not noticing a problem with the servo trying to push past the swash plate's limit, but even if it were, I rarely push the servo to it's maximum travel and my flight times seem o.k. now (not sure what the problem was before, perhaps it has to do with the outer shaft gear).

I'd like to try the adjustable flybar, but I'm not unhappy with what I've got.

How is the outer shaft gear removed from the outer shaft?

A little thought on making the Lama more aerobatic - what if you put another swashplate above the lower rotor, and tilted the upper rotor too? Probably need to make custom parts, but assuming both rotors were controllable, what would the result be?

Or how about taking the Big Lama and modifying it into something like an AH-56 Cheyenne? Big Lama's got a 6 channel receiver with 2 channels going to waste, right? How about a pusher prop, stub wings, ailerons and elevators?

Jack the R wrote:

...
A little thought on making the Lama more aerobatic - what if you put another swashplate above the lower rotor, and tilted the upper rotor too? Probably need to make custom parts, but assuming both rotors were controllable, what would the result be?...

I've seen dual swashplate conversion on the same RC Groups forum. But only pictures. No discussion. And I think it was in the same BL conversion thread. It didn't look too difficult to make. The basic idea, as I remember is that lower blade grip links also connect to the lower links of upper swashplate. And the upper links from upper swashplate connect to upper rotor grips. Did I say UPPER enough times in one sentence? :) The trick is that upper links have a bend, so they connect to upper grips at 180 degree angle. So when the right side on the lower grips goes up, the opposite side on the upper grip goes up.

And you can't use standard swashplate. It should be symmetrical. I mean upper and lower ball joints should be at the same distance from the center. Perhaps you can use the swashplate from some other heli, or may be make one out of 2 Lama swashplates. You also have to use some things to prevent rotation of the swashplate rings relative to the grip hubs. Something similar to a fork that is used between the swashplate and lower grips on standard setup.

This is something I am very interested in also. And yes, it looks like you will have to make some custom parts, but I don't think it will be too difficult.

This kind of design is used on Russian KA (Kamov) helicopters.

Jack the R wrote:

How is the outer shaft gear removed from the outer shaft?

It can't. Looks like it pressed or glued into the aluminum sleeve that is molded together with the gear. I wasn't able to remove the shaft without destroying the whole thing.

Is your outer shaft o.k.?

Unless Miracle-Mart has the shaftless white outer shaft gear misplaced in the Lama parts category, there must be a way to at least put an old outer shaft into a new gear.

Jack the R wrote:

Is your outer shaft o.k.?

Unless Miracle-Mart has the shaftless white outer shaft gear misplaced in the Lama parts category, there must be a way to at least put an old outer shaft into a new gear.

Don't know exactly what you mean. I simply showed how the original outer shaft and gear assembly is made. The one on the picture is the original Lama part with stripped gears. So I simply broke it apart. And I found that the orderly disassembly and reassembly is not possible. So you have to buy a compete thing. Shaft with gear.

And I didn't see the separate outer shaft gear on their page. Perhaps you can use some set screws?

Anyways, I ordered some white gears and I will tell you how they perform after I crash several times into trees, walls and fences. :) So far black stock gears don't survive for too long. Especially ones for the inner shaft. One good hit, and some teeth are stripped.

Brutus5 wrote:

Hanol wrote:

I'll think this and this is what you are looking for. And this will fit the Lama's

First link is shaftless outer shaft gear in white plastic.

I tried to get the outer shaft out of the gear (original esky part). I wasn't able to do it without breaking the gear. However, shaft itself didn't get damaged. From the pictures of white gears, I guess you just press it in and it's held there by friction. I didn't notice any retaining screws or anything else to hold it in place.

I was able to fix my servo the same way you fixed yours. Thanks for the tip! I had a tooth shear off on the final gear, which seems odd. You'd think it'd be one of the finer teeth further down the gear train that would go.