Official RotorScale B222 Shadow Black 450 Size Helicopter Discussion Thread

[Cyclone 7]

Thanks for the detailed reply Scott - sounds good. I'm thinking of one of the fuselages for a Tarot 450 pro v2 I have.

[Scott214]

The fuselage is actually 3 pieces: the body, the canopy and the tail cone. The fiberglass body is high quality and the paint is really very nice. It's a gloss black and a white white and the separation lines between them are very clean. The body isn't flimsy at all. The canopy is made from the same quality fiberglass with smoke colored windows and windshield. the windshield is held on by four small screws. The tailcone is also fiberglass and is affixed to the end of the fuselage tail with 3 small screws. The canopy has a couple of small alignment pins and magnets to hold it securely to the body. The fit between the two is good and I don't see anything to cause the canopy to come off during flight. Likewise the fit for the tailcone is good also.

I had no issues with chipping the paint or fiberglass when I was removing and inserting the frame and mechanicals back into the body. Chipping can be easy to do when you're trying to get past the fuselage opening with the main gear and cyclic servos.

The only thing that I think is wrong with the fuselage is that they've added some rivets around the body. If you were to scale up this fuselage to full size then each of those rivets would be about the size of a dinner biscuit. I know why the designers do things like this, and I'm probably being too picky, but you shouldn't be able to see any rivets on a scale heli this small. But again, that's me being picky. It's not a bad thing and if you're into steampunk then you'll like them.

There are also a couple of tail wings that need to be glued/epoxied to the tail. I'll be getting to that in the next couple of days.

Overall the Shadow fuselage is very nice looking and I think the entire kit is a good value. If you consider that you can buy a Tarot 450 Pro heli (kit with electronics) for about $275 (w/o shipping) versus the MotionRC Shadow at $329, the value of the fuselage itself easily makes up the $50 difference between the two.

[Cyclone 7]

Hi Scott, what is the quality of the fuselage like - in particular, the interface of the two halves and overall integrity & fit?

[Scott214]

Hey, does anyone have any plans to 3D print the left and right stub wing gun sets for this 450?

[Scott214]

There was no grease on the thrust bearings nor any loctite on the bolts holding the blade grips to the feathering shaft.

I almost always disassemble the heli the heli all the way down unless I know who I am buying the heli from and their build ethic. I also like building because it gives me a good working knowledge of the heli and reassurance that it’s built to my standards.

[icepirate3]

Thanks for the pics of the mechanics! It only takes one destroyed heli to remind you to never trust the dude (or dudet) on the assembly line to have properly applied Loctite. Were the thrust bearings greased at all?

[Cyclone 7]

I strip down anything on a new heli that I haven't personally assembled - I have always expected that these 'kits' would require disassembling and a rebuild before flying, notwithstanding the initial assurances about quality control and testing.

[Scott214]

I'm posting several photos of this project to provide you with a closer look inside the Shadow 450 heli. I hope they are helpful.In an earlier post someone asked about the motor so I've also included a photo of the Gartt motor for your reference.

I highly recommend that every pilot take the mechanicals out of the fuselage and give everything a good "once over" before flying these helis. There are four screws on the bottom of the fuselage and you'll need to remove the tail assembly including the tail rotor. Not a big deal but this gave me the first indication that I needed to apply loctite on the fittings. I found a couple of issues that, had I not removed the mechanicals first, would have led to serious problems later. First, as with any RTF or used heli you buy, you need to make sure that all of the appropriate screws and fittings have loctite on them. I did not find any evidence of loctite being used on my heli. If you don't do this you can have screws or link balls back out in flight and then you have a serious problem. After removing the frame from the fuselage I went through and loctited and greased all relevant fittings, bearings, etc. Second, I found that when I powered on the heli the tail rotor pegged all the way against the tail section. The servo arm was centered correctly but the entire servo had moved forward towards the frame, pulling the rotor inward towards the tail section. This may have happened when the factory was installing the frame into the fuselage and it pushed the servo and mount. I moved the servo and mount farther backwards toward the tail until the tail slider was centered correctly. Then I applied loctite to the servo mount screws and cinched it down.

Since I had the frame out of the fuselage this gave me the ability to place the 7 channel receiver and FBL controller in the best locations. The receiver went under the battery tray and the gyro on the left side of the fuselage with the servo plugs facing forward. This allowed me to connect everything including the retract servo. Once everything was connected I was able to program the gyro and get my main rotor head set up to the correct angles. I spun it up on the bench without blades (but with the tail assembly installed) to make sure everything was moving correctly before putting it all back into the fuselage.

Before doing that though, there are two small plywood pads that sit between the frame and the inside of the fuselage. The four mounting screws go through the fuselage, through the plywood pads and then screw into the frame. These plywood pads are not secured to the inside of the fuselage so I decided to epoxy them into place. Once it was all dry I inserted the frame and mechanicals (with the tail assembly removed once again) into the fuselage, lined up the mounting screws and then secured the frame to the fuselage. It was very easy to do. After that I reattached the tail assembly and affixed the tail cone.

I connected the retract servo lead to Aux 2 on my receiver and tested it. Being new it was a little sticky but after a few opens/closes it all worked pretty well. I did go into the Servo Speed function and adjust the open and close time to 4 seconds each so the wheels would drop in a smooth scale-like manner. It looks pretty cool.

I was planning on using some 6S 1350mAH LiPO batteries I had for another heli in the Shadow but they proved to be too heavy in the nose. I have ordered a couple of the Admiral 1100mAH batteries from Motion RC which are recommended and they should come sometime later this next week. Until then I've still got some additional work to do to complete this build.

[ridgerunner]

Ordered! :)

[F106DeltaDart]

Any idea what headspeed you get at 70%? Are you using the stock Hobbywing 40A ESC? Governor mode enabled (Governor High)?

On the Airwolf, I just did a quick and dirty setup and did a throttle curve, no governer enabled. I need to go back and actually set it up soon. Here’s the throttle curve as it sits now.

[Tron]

With the stock setup, it should be somewhere around 3300. I have mine cranked down as low as I can get it without the ESC overheating, sticking around 70% or so.

Any idea what headspeed you get at 70%? Are you using the stock Hobbywing 40A ESC? Governor mode enabled (Governor High)?

[F106DeltaDart]

I found specs on the Gartt HF450L-1800 motor as 9N6P (9 stator magnets, 6 rotor poles)

What headspeed should we be targeting for these 2 bladed stock heads?

With the stock setup, it should be somewhere around 3300. I have mine cranked down as low as I can get it without the ESC overheating, sticking around 70% or so.

[F106DeltaDart]

Thanks!

Any chance you have the pole count for the motor?

I believe it is 6 poles.

[Tron]

Thanks!

Any chance you have the pole count for the motor?

I found specs on the Gartt HF450L-1800 motor as 9N6P (9 stator magnets, 6 rotor poles)

What headspeed should we be targeting for these 2 bladed stock heads?

[Highfly!]

Thanks!

Any chance you have the pole count for the motor?

[F106DeltaDart]

Does any of you have information as to how many teeth the main gear has and how many the motor pinion? Need to know calculate the gear ratio.

Received mine today and had a short test hover after setting up the swash which was way off mechanically.

Pinion is 13T, main gear is 150T.

[Highfly!]

Does any of you have information as to how many teeth the main gear has and how many the motor pinion? Need to know calculate the gear ratio.

Received mine today and had a short test hover after setting up the swash which was way off mechanically.

[Tron]

It's a Hobbywing Platinum Pro 40A. Click here for the manual.

The link to the esc manual doesn't seem to match the esc that was in my kit (huey).

I found this on Hobbywing's website which appears like it might be closer. https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/01...tinum.pdf?1713

[Scott214]

When I got home last night the big box from MotionRC had arrived. It was like Christmas morning and I was 11 years old.

What you get is a box within a box. The exterior box has a big red warning label indicating the contents are handmade and to be careful when handling/shipping. Open that box and there's another one inside. The boxes are study so it really minimizes the potential for shipping damage. If you're expecting pretty boxes with pictures of the heli on them you won't see that here, they are just plain brown boxes. That's not a big deal for me because the boxes usually get tossed when they aren't needed.

Inside the interior box is the heli and all components, in my case that includes the fins, main rotor blades and the underbelly cannon set. These are in plastic baggies taped to the sidewalls of the carton. The heli is carefully bubble wrapped and then taped to cardboard formers inside the box. The heli is secure and safe, you shouldn't see any damage unless it's very extreme. There is no Instruction Manual in the box so print out the one that MotionRC just published on the website. At the same time you should download the HobbyWing 40A ESC manual so you can have it available for programming the speed controller

Once you remove the formers and bubble wrap you'll get a close look at the heli. In my case with the Shadow the fuselage and paint really stand out. The fiberglass fuselage is first quality and the paint job was complete and the transitions between the black and white areas were crisp and clean. The cockpit is attached by rare earth magnets and pins to keep it held in place firmly in flight. The mechanicals are attached to the fuselage by four screws on the bottom. The heli frame is carbon fiber and aluminum is used on the rotor head. It's all a fairly common layout among 450-size helis.

So here's where I have a little gripe - the servo wires are bundled up together inside the fuselage. They aren't marked to indicate which leads goes to which servo so I'm going to have to trace them back to figure out exactly which one is which. Not a big deal but if the factory had pre-flown each heli it would be nice of them to label each servo wire for ease of identification. If this isn't your first heli then this shouldn't be a problem. If it is your first heli I'd strongly recommend that you have someone with building experience help you set this heli up. You definitely don't want to accidently connect a servo to the wrong port on your controller.

As expected there's not a lot of room to work with inside the fuselage. This heli will need a 7 channel receiver because you'll need the extra channel to operate the retracts. As a side note, the retracts are aluminum with foamy wheels and are operated by one servo. The linkages are solid and I expect the opening and closing of the retracts will be nice. I plan on adding a delay to the opening and closing so they will operate slowly and more scale-like. Because of the tight spaces inside the fuselage I'll have to get creative in placing the receiver and having the wiring out of the way of the retract servo linkages. There's a flat space at the front of the frame for the FBL controller which will make it easy to access for programming.

So that's as far as I got the first night. I'll try to post more as I go along and include some photos.

[Aros]

Sweet! Good luck with it and let us know how it goes!