MD500 Tow Defender Build Page 7
Fitting the Mechanics inside the Fuselage: (Part 1 of 2)
Here comes some moments of truth. The fuselage I have is not for the mechanics I want to use. I am hoping I can make them work together or I did a lot of work for nothing, or I will be buying yet
another helicopter that will fit inside the fuselage. I have done too much work to stop now, so follow along and let's see how this goes.
In this photo you can see the mechanics are not sitting on the wood base
of the fuselage frame. I think the correct heli would have.
So I will be shimming the mechanics up off the base a little bit.
No big deal as I have seen lots of photos on the Scale RC Heli forum of the same thing.
Here the swash plate looks to be in the correct spot. I am not totally sure so I have
posted on the above mentioned site to ask some experts for advice. Hope I get some...
I do think I will have to start off with a flybarless setup in order for this to work at all.
When I spin the head around the flybar will hit the fuse when fully tilted. YIKES!!!!
Here you might be able to see the tail rotor servo hitting the side of the fuselage.
It will for sure have to be relocated. I also think I will need to use some kind of flexible
shaft from the servo the the tail rotor pitch control arm. There is no way the original metal
rod and rod supports from the Trex600ESP will fit through the fuselage tail boom. Bummer, more work!!
Here I have cut the tail boom to length (hope I got that right), stuck on the
tail rotor with the mechanics sitting about where they should be. Starting to look cool.
Here you can see I did some pencil CAD to come up with the shims I needed. It actually took lots of measuring,
measuring, checking, and then more double checking to get these figured out correctly. I had to make sure everything
is centered, and that the tail boom comes out centered also, along with getting the height correct. I think I finally got it.
I had to cut off the front lower frame section where the rcvr battery sat.
It was going to interfere with the cockpit instruments. Couldn't have that.
The shims are mounted to the heli frame and ready to be put into the fuse
for still more measuring and checking.
I also had to notch the rear shims to fit over the booms for the side mounted missle tubes.
Here you can see what I am talking about. I guess I cut them a little bigger
than needed. Next time I will measure just one more time i guess, huh!!!
Here it sits all screwed down in place. I did not know at this point that when I screwed the back shims
down they shifted to the starboard side just a little. Just enough to frick it up so that I will have to redo
them and get them centered somehow. Sometimes it seems no matter how hard you try something still
gets messed up during assembly (big stinking bummer). I am taking a break and actually working on this
website right now because , well, I need a stinking break!!! LOL...
I stuck the front fuse and windshield on to give myself something to look at
while I work on this web page.
Another view of it to keep me going. It is really allot of work putting one
of these scale projects together. More than I thought, but it will be so cool flying around. :o)
