HELP!! With Roban 700 Apache Tail

[Aces]

Sorry for all the posts. Just doing this while i am off work. So does anyone know if a longer shaft is available for the 800mx motor? Before I go looking for the right hardened steel shaft to turn our own I thought I would see if there might be another shaft that can be utilized. I will be researching but thought I would throw throw it out as I go back to work. Thanks for everyones input.

[DCORSAIR]

All this talk about broken shafts made me go out to my shop and see if I could fit the bearing brace to my OH-6 mechanics, I have no idea why I didn't install it from the beginning but it fit like a glove in about 15 minutes, I'm running the Align 750MX 450KV motor with stock length on the shaft and it fit perfectly. I did drill a hole in the front motor plate to be able to tighten up the pulley set screws easier. Now I need to check my Magnum PI, but I'm pretty sure the shaft was to short on the Pyro 700-450kv motor that's in it, I'm going to check it next time I pull the mechanics out, it must be fine without it because I have a whole bunch of flights on it and it would have broke a shaft by now I would think.

[sfcfury]

So I was looking up the specs on the 800MX, and there seems to be three versions? Do you have HML80M01, HML80M06, or HML80M11? Looks like M06 AND M11 have 50/51mm shafts and M01 had a 37mm shaft. Perhaps you could find a replacement for the M06/M11 version to put in yours.

[sfcfury]

So, looks like you could find this: HMP85M01T. It's the long version. I see one on Amain- but the part number says HMP85M01... (without the T). But the description says 6x10x112.5 and the picture of the shaft in the bag says HMP85M01T.

https://www.amainhobbies.com/align-850mx-motor-shaft-agnhmp85m01/p-qeartquqgc2xactz

The shorter one (which I think you currently have) numbers are 6x10x93.5.

[Aces]

Hi. Looks good DC! I think it provides a great deal of confidence. And thank you Fury for all of that info. I have been in communication a guy at the "ALIGN TREX SHOP" and he believes he has one for my motor. He is double checking the length and will get back with me later today or tomorrow. I will let you know. I have complete confidence in the motor itself and with the longer shaft to accomodate the shaft brace I will be in good shape. Then it will be back to the tail issue

Or maybe this will help?

[Aces]

Hi Birdman. I was looking at other motors but if I can just get a longer shaft I don’t think there’s a need to replace the motor itself. The problem really comes from the torque on the bottom of the shaft. If I have the brace there to support the shaft, and the belt at the proper attention, then motor has plenty of power for the helicopter.
I Will have to look into that feature on the icon. Do I remember you saying that it was under and advanced tab?
another thing is just trying to find an actual “gain” feature. To increase or decrease the gain of the tail gyro. I would have to look back through this thread but somebody suggested putting the cane on a dial on my radio but I don’t even know where to do that in the icon? Since this motor incident I have not been able to look at the icon settings. I will probably try that tomorrow.

[PawPaw]

Open the Wizard tab and the gain adjustment in under the “transmitter setup” menu.

[PawPaw]

You don’t assign the tail gain to a switch in the Ikon. You do it in your transmitter. You find out what channel in your receiver is gyro by searching your Tx menu, then assign a VR switch (I use a slider) to it. In the transmitter. I also set up my Futaba T10J to display the gain value on the display.

[PawPaw]

Aces, trust that I have helping you as my focus here. I really am concerned there might be some critical settings in your Ikon Setup Wizard that may be wrong, missed, or incomplete. I offer this simply based on your confusion of the tail gain location in the Wizard. If you are using an app on your phone, then scroll down the left side of the screen and click on “Wizard”. Menu item #5 is “Transmitter Setup”, and tail gain is there. I suggest using a PC or IPad for your setup instead of a phone. My advice is not tinker with any advanced setting until you have a good handle on the tail gain, then you can experiment with those advanced features after you are satisfied no amount of gain adjustment helps your problem.

[Aces]

Hi Paw Paw. I completely agree with you. I am NOT good at setting up these gyros and although I felt like these ikons were fairly easy to navigate, I am sure I have missed something somewhere. I have only ever used Align FBL units before getting this heli and the Bavarian Demon. And although I know that is an excellent unit it was very hard for me to understand the programming and no one in my area had them. I did my setup (on the ikon) on my laptop, not my phone, although I do have the app for making adjustments at the field. There is no one around my area that uses the ikon so I dont have anyone to check it out.
When you say you assign the gain to a VR switch (like a slider or knob), I am not familiar with VR? the only thing that comes to mind is virtual reality . But tomorrow I will go through my programming again. Cant test it obviously but I can find the tail gain.

[F106DeltaDart]

Hi Paw Paw. I completely agree with you. I am NOT good at setting up these gyros and although I felt like these ikons were fairly easy to navigate, I am sure I have missed something somewhere. I have only ever used Align FBL units before getting this heli and the Bavarian Demon. And although I know that is an excellent unit it was very hard for me to understand the programming and no one in my area had them. I did my setup (on the ikon) on my laptop, not my phone, although I do have the app for making adjustments at the field. There is no one around my area that uses the ikon so I dont have anyone to check it out.
When you say you assign the gain to a VR switch (like a slider or knob), I am not familiar with VR? the only thing that comes to mind is virtual reality . But tomorrow I will go through my programming again. Cant test it obviously but I can find the tail gain.

If you are ever up in the DFW area I'd be happy to help go through the setup. What radio system are you using? On Spektrum, you can enable a channel for tail gain and have different gains for each position on a 3 position switch. Not as simple as a slider, but still pretty easy to dial in a good gain setting.

[PawPaw]

VR is variable rate…a dial knob or slider.

[Aces]

I have a spektrum 8 channel. I have a couple of knobs but no sliders. And I live in Georgetown! About 30 miles north of Austin. I just may take you up on that offer if I cant figure this out. Going to bed. Thanks.

[Aces]

Thank you Paul Paul far all of those hints. I just now got to the point where I could check my icon settings. And I think that I do see the issue. The proportional gain function at the bottom was set at 5%. If I check the box that says “is set in software” it allows me to then adjust that game up. So I am going to bet that 5% on the tail was not enough. I will play with the settings once I have the motor back up and running. I do want to set it up to adjust through my transmitter. However I think that having the app installed on my phone will be just as easy.

[DCORSAIR]

Thank you Paul Paul far all of those hints. I just now got to the point where I could check my icon settings. And I think that I do see the issue. The proportional gain function at the bottom was set at 5%. If I check the box that says “is set in software” it allows me to then adjust that game up. So I am going to bet that 5% on the tail was not enough. I will play with the settings once I have the motor back up and running. I do want to set it up to adjust through my transmitter. However I think that having the app installed on my phone will be just as easy.

5%, I don't think that is enough to keep the tail straight, , looks like you might have found the issue, and as far as the transmitter gain settings, it should say in the ikon program somewhere what channel your gain is available on or you can assign a channel, like my Microbeast, when it reads what rx I'm using it automatically assigns the gain to channel 5 which on the older Futaba radios like mine, that's what I always use to set my gyro gains, then I can just program what I need at anytime by moving the %% in my radio ,up for more gain or less for less gain or I can use the Microbeast Bluetooth adapter and change what I need with my phone.

[DCORSAIR]

So did you figure out what you were going to do about the shaft??

[Aces]

Hello everybody. It has been several weeks since I last posted. So I ordered a new shaft for my motor but ended up being the wrong one. So I went ahead and ordered a new motor. I just decided to go with the align 800 MX which has the longer shaft. I have it installed along with the brace and everything seems to be good. If you have followed this thread you know that I found that my tail gain was set to only 5% in the icon settings. So I increased it to 50%, hoping that would solve the situation, but it did not. The tail did not do any better. I increased to 70% with still no luck. All the way to 85%. So I thought that maybe I was going the wrong direction and xlowered it to 25% but still no luck. This was just today on my lunch break. I brought it back to my shop and went through the tail set up again. Everything seems to be right. At center I have 0°. I have equal travel left and right. So I am really stumped here.
there Hass to be something in the icon settings for the radio settings that I am missing. I have set up many helicopters in the past and had no issues with setting the tail. But this is really driving me nuts. Almost 3 years spent building this thing and I can’t even fly it yet.
I am attaching some photos of my set up and also the icon settings. One question I have is In the tail set up page at the bottom it has a box to check that says “ set in software“ which seems to mean that this is some sort of auto gain set by the Gyro? Right below this, in the green box, it has another box to check for heading lock mode. I assume this is what you want.
I just may have to take F106deltadarts offer and drive to Dallas to go through this thing.

[DCORSAIR]

Are you sure you don't have something to tight somewhere?? when you disconnect the short pushrod at the tail ball link, move it by hand, how does it feel?? should be no resistance at all and nice and smooth, did you check the long pushrod for the same smoothness and the 45 degree bell crank making sure its free to move? I had the same problem on my two blade 800 size Hughes 500, all three would tail wag so I ended up making my own two blade tail rotor and problem solved, I couldn't get the stock two blade to work at all no matter what settings I tried on my Microbeast, now on my Apache, which is the same as yours, I've had no problems with the cascading tail rotor or the stock tail rotor, maybe go back to the stock tail rotor 4 blade and see what it does?? Also trying lowering that ball on the servo horn, that looks like way to much throw, you don't need that much, at least I don't on mine and it has a whole bunch of flights on it with no issues.

[Aces]

Hi DC. I will check all of those things. My dad and I have noticed that there seems to be a lot of “slop” in the gearing. From the rotor all the way through to the frame. I have wondered if this is the cause but I see no way of fixing it. It’s design issue. I have honestly figured everyone has this. I will post a short vid of what I’m seeing.

[PawPaw]

Just an observation….those tail gears look dry in the pics. Could just be the resolution, or my eyes. Some of the drive train slop can be eliminated by shimming the front and rear bevel gears, if found to have too much end play. The remainder is just the clearances between the torque shafts’ splines and the bevel gears’ splines and will always be there unless you shorten the torque tubes. Don’t think a normal amount of gear slop is causing your drift issue, ‘tho. Does your headspeed seem steady on all your stick inputs?