Santini Air Project (Mechanics Assembly)
This is my first build using Century Scale mechanics kit. The kit is designed for a 50 size nitro, but I am going electric with it. I have bought the electric conversion kit and electric motor from Century, along with the CCMP servo conversion also. I fly a Centrury Radikal Gasser and have been very pleased with it. So I figured I would try this route and see how I like it also. Time will tell.
I don't have any real plans for this project other than to make it look like Santini Air. I have thought about making a controlable hook on the bottom, but I am not sure yet. I will do some cockpit details like instruments, lights, seats, and pilots. I will also do nav lights. But that's about it. Trying to keep it simpler I hope.
So here you can see the kit as it arives. Lots of bags of parts,
and some assemblies are prebuilt. You must disassemble them
and reassemble using loctite. Here's a few photos of what you get.
Mechanical mixing of collective pitch. I don't like and will switch to eCCPM.
Main mechanics as it comes from Century.
The parts in the upper right are for the nitro setup and are not needed.
I have chose to use the clutch with the motor. I have read it makes the spool up more realistic.
Test fitting motor into mechanics.
Motor mounted in place. I had to use smaller screws and nut than the ones that came
with the kit. They were hitting the side of the motor case.
I decided not to make my own CCPM kit and to just buy the kit from Century. The next two photos
are what you get in the kit. Doesn't seem like much for $90, but I would have spent more of my time
trying to make my own system. So this kept the project moving forward instead of stalled out.
The next two photos show the CCPM servo mounts installed. Much cleaner than the mechanical mixing.
The servos have been installed and await linkage connections.
Swash control with servo linkage installed. Very clean setup.
Here you can see the entire rotor head and swash assembly completed.
Radio has been setup and it's ready for a test flight.
Here is the completed mechanics. I borrowed the skids and tail boom support
from another heli that is now a scale machine.
Here it is ready for it's maiden flight test.
NOTES: I originally built the mechanics using the supplied tail rotor control rods. Then after the first flight test
I found the rod was very hard to move. I thought switching to GOLD-N-ROD setup would be better, not so. What I found
was the tail rotor pitch slider and linkage were the problem. They were very tight. I had to remove some material on the
rotating portion of the tail pitch plate where it connects to the tail pitch ball link and blade grip. This helped a ton, but the
slider on the tail shaft is still a little tight. Once I free that up it should work fine. I have two Century helis and this seems
to be the one area they missed when doing a quality control check.
Another area that I think should always be upgraded is the tail rotor hub and blade grips. The ones with the standard kit
are plastic and only use one bearing. Century sells a very nice thriple bearing CNC metal hub and blade grips.
