the hk 450 again.....

The HK 450 is now flying a bit. I await a decent Gyro and servos. Anyways.... Guys keep on asking about the quality of the kit. Here are some pictures and hopefully this will help. Very plasticy but also quite solid. Definately better than a Belt CP.

lifePO4's

Bought these really cheap lifepo4's for deal extreme for about R110 for a set of 4. They come in twin packs for $6.50. I did not hold out much hope for them as no specs on the site and only dismissive comments on the web. Listed as 1350 MAh. Low discharge etc, etc.



First reading on each cell out of the pack was.....



First charge. The pack would not balance.





After 4 6minute hovers the pack settled down and balanced perfectly. Apparently these cells only start settling in after about 2000 to 3000 cycles :-)

blingola heli time

Received this bling from mm "for test". Quality is actually pretty nice....... if a little bit clunky er .... very clunky!




Look at this tail box ..... late dark-ages, early industrial revolution design.
only it's father could love it but it works very well!

New Birdy hk 450

I'm Going to call it the R350, because in rand terms, excluding postage, thats what this kit cost! Quite a decent lot and much better quality than Esky's BeltCP crap. All linkages just butter smooth in the head and tail! It's all black so it's difficult to get a fix on how the flippen thing looks so good luck to ye all!

a123 world

Thanks to Ms Zee van der Fort, I received my A123 cells from America. Very easy to open up and cut up and solder together as the have tabs attached! Looks heavy on the bird but in fact flies very well. The first hover was 8 minutes with no sag. Charges to about 14v. After those 8 minutes the charger indicated about 3.31v per cell..... so lets see how it goes!




This is the pack.


This was the reading after the first charge on the LifePO4 setting an my Accucel charger.

no more curly wires

Thanks to Johnny Crash for the curly plastic stuff to control those ugly wires. Here is before


and after

yet another king

Well as I said, one was not enough. Here is a better pic of the 2 carbon jobbies.

hello suzee!

Just felt like another honeybbe. Meet SUZEE, part king with trex skids and Belt cp head. Very nice. Awaiting 43 tooth mod to get the tail sorted.

Wild blue yonder

Went to wake up young Simon so he could film me flying Little Bird on a field in Woodstock. This was my first real toss around in windy conditions. Must say that the heli handles the wind with aplomb, but that the pilot handles the wind with less aplomb! Aplomb is defined as "great coolness and composure under strain" so you get the picture!

Little Bird Returns

After a short and mild illness Little Bird returns with a new boom and paint chips but also with whiter and more robust teeth!

A Beautiful death

THis righteous kill in a small review on the fields at Youngsfield this Sunday. Having done my highest, biggest descent ever and with Little Bird swooping down awesomely towards and what was supposed to be away from me, I dumn-thumbed and tilted her right instead of left into the ground....... WUMP!!! ...... but I managed to cut throttle just before the hit so the only damage was a snapped tail and one of the washout arm balls which I just fixed with Belt CP balls! The HBK crashes quite well and cheaply too, if you have prepared for it.

new home for little bird

After "screwing my courage to the sticking place" I took Little Bird out onto the Kenwyn fields in perfect weather on Saturday morning and did my first really big, fast figure 8's. What a buzz. I was prudent to stick to the golden rule of heli rc "Always fly one less battery than you want to...." So I was ok and so was Little Bird.
But I thought she deserved a decent home instead of a cardboard box. This was from Pastimes for cheep cheep. The Pastimes hobby guys are pretty clueless about helis.....


And I think this box is a bit stuffed, but what do you expect for the price.... Anyways, everything in RC becomes secondhand really fast.


Here she is sitting in her box.

Hanging Helis

What to do with that trashed boom? 2 -5mm rawl bolts and boom = heli hanger.

new canopy

What to do with an old 450 canopy that's lying around and is quite nice? Snip Snip. Burn Burn. Paint Paint.


And here we have the mounted canopy.

How to Fry a Finger

Guys, shorting out a lipo on your finger is completely painless. Just a puff of brown smoke which indicates that your finger/hand/face has been fritzed. The wound is now completely quarterized and is thus clean and safe, just like the bullet-gunpowder trick they do in the westerns!