MD500 Tow Defender Build Page 8
Fitting the Mechanics inside the Fuselage: (Part 2 of 2)
So I am back at it again. This section will pretty much finish off mounting of the mechanics inside the fuselage. There might be some little stuff, but the major part of this install is done now. On page 7
I was questioning whether the Trex600ESP would even fit in the fuselage. Well it will and does. It took lots of prep work and the making of custom parts, but it is in. YIPPEE!!!!
Here I have the 'T' tail mounted on the tail rotor gear housing. I should taken a photo of the setup, but I did not.
I just took the Trex600 stock tail fin, lined up the front and rear points of the two tails sections, marked and drilled
the mounting holes. Very simple and it worked out great.
A side view of the Defender with tail installed. The tail does need to be shimmed away from the
tail boom to allow the internal boom to be centered inside the fuselage.
Here I was checking to see how this thing would balance out. WOW!!! It is tail heavy big time. You can see I have
a 2S1P way up front, one more 2S1P lipo in front of the FLIR compartment, and a 3S1P lipo sitting on the center
instrument console. I also have all 10 A123 batteries inside. The other thing not installed yet are the missile pods.
They mount aft of the main shaft so that add to the tail weight. I plan to put two speakers inside the pods for my
sound effects. They will be mounted far forward so hopefully that will help with forward balance. TBD I guess.
These brackets came bent at a 90 degree angle, but are not meant for this kit. So you can see here I bent
them so they would work. Only problem is where the long flat bends back to line up with the mounting hole
is too wide to fit between heli frame and the fuselage. I cannot bend it tight enough to work, So plan 'B' again.
The other problem with the stock brackets was the angle was not enough. You can see here
how they were hitting the fuselage long before they could reach the dog house mounting flange.
So I figured out what angle I would need and and decided to get busy and make new mounts.
The black marker shows about where the dog house flange mounting hole needs to be.
So I dug out some plastic and started figuring out how to make new supports.
This is my first one. After I drilled the first hole I thought to just mark on the
wood where the hole should be and then drill it. DOH!!! Wish I'd done that first.
Just a close up of my poor marking skills. That looks pretty bad.
Heres the new mounting support secured to the heli frame.
A top down view shows that I also had to notch out a big area in the support
to allow the mechanics to go back as far as needed.
Here is a port side view with the hole marked out before I drill. I'm learning, LOL...
I may add a photo showing the supports bolted in, but I think you can figure out what
that would look like.
Here I have the nyrod cut, installed, and secured in place using
Hirobo's SDX 50 Tail Rotor control rod clamps. I think this will work okay.
Close up of servo end. It has a slight angle but I think it's okay.
Close up of tail rotor control connection. More of an angle than I would like
but there is not much I can do. Or at least that I have thought of yet.
Once I added the new X-era motor I had to cut out the side frames.
After doing this I made some aluminum stiffners to reinforce the frames around the motor. The motor basicaly inside a cage now.
