RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
check your crystal is in tight (tx / rx) check for nearby radio interferance transmitter battery transmitter ok
Posted on: 10/6/2006 9:20 PM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4837342

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
managed to get a stock remote, i scored it from someone who crashed their new falcon and gave up on it :) if all the fin does is prevent tailblade strike I may make something a little better, the stock fin doesn't protrude down enough anyway.
Posted on: 10/5/2006 5:10 PM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4832585

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
anyone know if the falcon will fly without the vertical stabiliser? i've just put on a new tailboom and couldn't get the old vertical stabiliser off the broken tailboom in one peice (too much glue).
Posted on: 10/5/2006 4:37 PM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4832467

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
channel 1 on my first TX is dead (but it worked in the SIM also). luckily I could get my hands on another one so I haven't bothered to diagnose what died in it. Toby
Posted on: 10/5/2006 4:34 PM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4832458

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
if you think your receiver is stuffed, first check the TX, i thought the same and subsequently discovered it was the TX. Toby
Posted on: 10/5/2006 3:02 PM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4832144

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
I just want to say a big thankyou to everyone who has been adding and editing content on the new falcon 3d resource website at <a href=http://falcon.np.co.nz>http://falcon.np.co.nz</a>, there is some really great info going in there. A few people have messaged me asking if its ok to edit or add content to the site, the answer is YES most definately!!!!! Please don't hold back, this is your resource for your benefit and I'm only a relative novice myself so I shouldn't be the one to approve content, if you don't know whether to post something or not, post it and add a question mark, someone is sure to correct it if its wrong and thats how we all learn from this. I've been pretty flat out the last week so haven't had a chance to fly or add much more myself so I was really pleased to check in today to see the site has grown like topsy. I've started setting up the structure of a maintenance manual, if anyone is doing maintenance on their falcon or replacing parts, it would be great to document the process (including photos) so that others can follow a step by step guide that includes photos. Cheers Toby
Posted on: 10/2/2006 5:29 PM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4819437

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
Yip i modded my TX. opened it up and bent the metal ratchet out the way so it doesn't click and is instead a nice smooth motion. I left it inside incase I decided to change it back later but i prefer the smooth feel.
Posted on: 9/25/2006 10:04 PM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4792890

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
thanks gary, i agree this thread should keep going. my thoughts are that its there for people to use and add to if they want to, my thought was that if someone asked a new question here, the answer could be added to new guide and linked to from here, thereby making it easier to find in the future. if someone duplicates a question we can link straight back to the answer as opposed to trolling through this thread to find a post number.
Posted on: 9/25/2006 4:32 PM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4791537

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
Gary, not sure why you could not access the site, i'm still ironing out a couple of kinks but it should be available, please let me know if you still can't get to it and that the error is. Cheers Toby
Posted on: 9/25/2006 3:53 PM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4791400

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
Hi I got sick of reading over this post to find what I wanted so I just setup a dedicated falcon website for us all to use. I've gone back over the whole post and extracted (up to page 29) all the great advice that and common questions that have been posted and consolidated them. You can have a look at it here http://falcon.np.co.nz This is a work in progress, I'd like to add a lot more to it. Please note I have not yet credited all the authors of their work, I hope you all don't mind??? I've basically just read through the post and cut out all the good bits, what would be great is if we could all work on refining it and if the original authors could check they are happy (Gary most of it is actually your material). Anyway, anyone can logon and edit the material, so hopefully we will start to build up a great resouce for all falcon users, my guess is there will soon be many more and this forum is starting to reach the limit of its usefulness. Cheers and Happy flying Toby
Posted on: 9/25/2006 1:50 AM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4789551

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
found an excellent way of tracking the blades and also ensuring everything on the heli is running smooth. get yourself a cheap party strobe with an adjustable flash frequency. set it up in a dark room with your falcon and then crank up the flash frequecy quite high to somewhere between 2 and 4 flashes per second. spin up the blades to a decent speed and then adjust the strobe frequency until the blades look like they have stopped (you'll know when to stop as the heli looks like its an animated stop motion). Every bit of movement on the thing jumps out at you and you can see the blade tracking perfectly. I picked up all sorts of things that were out of alignment that you simply can't see in natural light and it makes it very easy to see exactly where your vibrations are and what is causing them. Cheers Toby
Posted on: 9/24/2006 5:12 PM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4787363

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
Dave CPD4 is going well for me on the falcon, its made flying that much more enjoyable and less stressful for me and paid for itself 10 times over in parts Toby
Posted on: 9/24/2006 4:01 AM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4785606

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
my recommendation (from an engineering perspective not from a heli experts perspective) would be for newb's to avoid 'strengthening' the falcon too much. when you crash there is a huge number of forces put on every part of the heli and generally the weakest part(s) break. the best strategy is to try and engineer it so the cheapest and easiest parts to replace break. if you put carbon blades on, your blades are less likely to break but your more likely to bend a main shaft or break a tail boom. if you strengthen your tail boom your more likely to damage the main frame of the heli. my strategy is to actually 'weaken' certain parts of the heli so that in a crash those parts break leaving the most expensive and difficult to replace parts unscathed. your cheap and weak parts absorb all of the force of the crash and limit the damage to the rest of he heli. i've achieved this by cutting a small V near the base of my wooden blades. in a crash they simply snap off. blades are relatively cheap and exceptionally easy to replace. the tail shaft takes a good hour to fix and a bent main shaft takes a very long time. unless your a very experienced flier i would highly recommend avoiding carbon blades or a strengthened tailboom.
Posted on: 9/23/2006 9:30 PM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4784586

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
Everyone, this forum is getting long and i've noticed a lot of the same questions coming up, I wonder if it is worth seeing if we can get a threaded discussion on the falcon setup on http://www.helifreak.com/ which has a seperate forum for each brand of heli. that way we can browse back over topics rather than search one long thread and have the same things keep coming up. Any ideas or proposals?
Posted on: 9/20/2006 4:05 PM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4772062

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
i've been using the 315mm TRex blades which are slightly shorter, and yes they do look good
Posted on: 9/20/2006 5:45 AM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4770463

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
Regarding the earlier post about collective pitch on the tail rotor. It is correct behaviour for the tail rotor to only have collective pitch in one direction. In the other direction the blades will almost be flat and not doing anything, in this case its the torque of the main blades rotating in the opposite direction that causes the heli to spin around. I had an interesting incident today, my main blades flew off in mid air. I thought it was all over but luckly no damage at all. It looks one of those tiny screws that holds the main blades on came out. Possibly the 315mm blades off a TRex may be simply too much weight for those tiny screws to hold. I'll try it once more (with some loctite on this time) and if it does it again, order in some smaller blades from overseas. It looks like the thread is ok they just worked their way loose. Damn being so far away from the rest of civilisation!!!! Cheers Toby
Posted on: 9/19/2006 6:57 PM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4768632

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
to get the sim working you need to map the controls correctly. i haven't really played with it much but i was using it to check a transmitter i thought was faulty. have a look at the attached image to see how i mapped the controls. you will probably have to change the mapping when you go between helis and fixed wing. i'm not sure if you should have Exponential on or not but I turned it on as it was easier to fly.
Posted on: 9/18/2006 5:23 PM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4763935

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
chestercopperpot, yes it does work as gary suggested at those settings. I was finding my motor was getting a little bit hot in normal mode (i'm running much larger 315mm blades) so I've been flying in 3d mode which maintains the rotor speed and reduces the influence of the torque when you adjust the head speed to go up or down. I'm a relative newb and i've found adjusting to 3d mode isn't bad and its actually a lot smoother to hover. in an added note, i just chalked up my first two flights without training gear, feeling pretty good about it as I managed two perfect landings just as the motor was starting to slow down. The falcon is certainly a lot more responsive with the training gear off and although it seemed to blow around in the wind a bit more it was a lot easier to get it to respond.
Posted on: 9/18/2006 4:45 PM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4763787

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
ok, it does look like it was my ESC that caused the motor to die yesterday, I have replaced with a spare until i can look into it further. on another note, i discovered a nice way of going into 3d mode if your a bit worried about doing it mid air. turn the PIT knob around to Zero which will set the blades at about a 1 degree negative pitch. spool it up to about 45% throttle. flick it into 3d mode. at this point the motor should stay about the same speed and the blade pitch is about the same as well so your falcon should be trying to push itself into the ground. just gradually increase the collective and you will take of smoothly in 3d mode.
Posted on: 9/18/2006 3:12 PM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4763387

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
Just had a scary moment. I was about 30 seconds into my third battery for the day and was quite high when the motor cut out. Luckily I was able to flick it into 3d mode and attempt my first forced autogryo landing. It hit quite hard but no-where near as hard as it would have dropping all the way from that height. No major damage, just annoyingly broke off and lost one of the plastic shafts that holds on the cannopy. I'll have to come up with a hack to replace the shaft with something else. I'm thinking maybe a long thin 1mm bolt. If it works I may break off the other side so they match. I'm more disturbed as to why the motor cut out. Its possible it was too hot but I left it a good 10min between flights and the motor was only warm to touch when I went up. Anyone had anything like this before? It fired straight back up and I ran the battery flat at full throttle with negative collective to make sure it was ok and it didn't cut out again.
Posted on: 9/17/2006 9:36 PM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4760558

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
I'm back in the air as of this morning - yay. Rebuild seems to have got everything back in the right place which is a relief and it flies much more smoothly now. Incidentally, I managed to buy two 'damaged' falcons from someone else who crashed them and gave up. I'm using them for spare parts and I've been able to confirm my original problem was in fact the transmitter. It appears that channel 1 on my original transmitter was eratic resulting in it sometimes working or either no response on that channel or full on or off. Very scary. I got two full batteries in this morning without incident on a pair of 315mm TRex blades. The new blades work well and make a FANTASTIC chopping sound. I will have to move the tail fin back a little bit though because if you are in 3d mode and go into reverse collective it forces the blades down enough to just clip the tail fin. I wouldn't use these blades for 3d stuff but they should be fine for hovering around and gentle flight. They are also cheaper and can be sourced locally here in New Zealand as opposed to importing the falcon blades. My co-pilot is still working well, I'm now down to 50% gain on it so I'm really starting to feel like I am flying it as its taking more and more minor corrections to keep it stable where before i just pointed it where I wanted it to go and could let go of the sticks if I got in trouble. Cheers Toby
Posted on: 9/17/2006 7:29 PM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4760016

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
yay, my parts have finally arrived yesterday so hopefully i'll be back in the air this weekend. over the last week I completely disassembled the entire falcon (i was bored and not able to fly). I took out every single screw and laid the entire heli out on a table in the order I took the parts off. (wow there is an awful lot of bits to these things) Cleaned and loctited every appropriate part as I put it back together so I'm starting to feel a lot more familiar with it now and its certainly helped in understanding how it all works. I spun it up again for the first time this morning with a new pair of T-Rex blades on it and it seems a lot smoother with fewer vibrations than when i originally got it. no offence to art-tech but i definately get the feeling these things are put together fairly quickly on a production line. When you do it from scratch and take your time it really seems to make a difference to how smoothly it runs. I would say its worth doing if you have some time (ie waiting for parts) and feel confident you can get it all back together ok. Fundamentally there seems to be nothing wrong with the individual components but quite a few issues surrounding the build. Its a pity art-tech didn't offer a kitset so you could build it yourself from scratch. Cheers Toby
Posted on: 9/15/2006 1:39 AM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4750387

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
well it was about 300 meters away from me which is much less than i would have thought the radio would have range over. if it wasn't range then something else happened as it just wouldn't respond to anything. i've been having problems with that receiver since the lipoly incident and have been trying to get another receiver with some difficulty.
Posted on: 9/11/2006 3:46 PM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4736251

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
yes, copilot on brain off went out of radio range :) co-pilot kept her steady steady all the way into a tree
Posted on: 9/11/2006 7:48 AM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4734910

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
ok, my falcon had a wee accident :( i broke the tail boom which is easily fixed but i notice that the base of the swashplate is now oscilating. would this indicate a bent main shaft. anyone changed a main shaft on a falcon yet?
Posted on: 9/11/2006 5:22 AM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4734756

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
no, unfortunately i have to pull mine out to adjust the thrust knob. if you find a way, let me know. Toby
Posted on: 9/7/2006 4:09 PM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4721826

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
yes its possible to learn on the falcom (I have) but you need to either: 1) get an experienced pilot to help you or 2) buy an fma co-pilot for it (thats what i've done) or 3) clock up a million SIM hours first or 4) stock up on a LOT of spare parts
Posted on: 9/5/2006 5:31 PM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4714035

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
I don't have any access to local spares, apparently the small Trex blades work but you have to be more careful with blade strikes as they are longer.
Posted on: 9/4/2006 4:28 AM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4707668

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
search the forum, i've posted some in an earlier post.
Posted on: 9/4/2006 1:28 AM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4707376

RE: New Mini Electric is here the Falcon 3D!!
I had no SIM experience and didn't even bother trying the SIM that comes with the falcon, the falcon is my first chopper but i've flown RC planes before. I just bought a co-pilot and use the real thing rather than bother with a SIM. I've got 7 flights on the falcon / co-pilot combo now, no crashes, no training, no sim. I'm down to 80% gain now on it and on my last flight finally got the courage to flick into idle up and did my first high altitude auto-gyro. I'm having a ball with this thing, and its a whole lot more fun and less stressful than trying to learn without stabilization. Basically I just wanted to get out there and fly and have fun so I don't really care if the hard core guys say I'm cheating with a stabilizer. I'm having tonnes of fun and I'm not crashing so its not costing me an arm and a leg to learn the hard way and therefore I think I'm more likely to be still doing it in 6 months time rather than becoming disillusioned the first time I crash. I know I'm likely to crash at some point but at least it won't be on my first flight and now that i've been bitten by the bug by having so many successful flights i'll be very eager to get back up in the air if it does come down hard. The best advise I think I could give you is... 1) go slowly, don't rush it, check, double check and triple check the co-pilot is working properly. 2) if it isn't right, don't fly. go home and repeat step 1. 3) don't let the co-pilot fool you into having a false sense of security, when things go wrong they go wrong quick. 4) go through all the recommended training steps, learn to hover with the co-pilot just as you would without it, don't jump straight into scooting around I had a couple of close calls early on. I'd like to report that the co-pilot works very well even on the falcon in relatively high winds. Yesterday I flew in what were quite strong gusty conditions and all that happened was the falcon rose in the breeze, i just pointed it into the wind and lent on the forward stick and it just sat there in mid air. I'm enjoying the falcon more and more every day and when its used in conjunction with a co-pilot i reckon its a winning newb combo. You get a very stable platform with tonnes of power and the ability to move on 3d when you are ready.
Posted on: 9/4/2006 1:06 AM by Author "millst" in the forum "RC Helicopter Beginners Forum"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4707303