help with used moskito conquest

[mo]

I have just sent off the dough for a second hand Robbe Moskito Conquest and wondered if anyone out there can give any advice on how this helli handles.It is fitted with the Webra 50 motor, CSM 360 Gyro,four futaba 9001, and the tail a 9404.I am flying mossie sports at the moment on standard gear and as you know I am very green round the gills and hope that I have not bitten off more than I can chew.If Stuart or any reader has any tips on the setup of this helli, then I will be pleased for the info.
last but not least, I was not told what receiver was in the helli, if it is Futaba which is most likely, will I have to change this to JR, for that is the radio that I wish to use.
Any helpful tips will be greatly appreciated.

Mo.

[Raptorite]

Hi Mo,

I used to have a Conquest, which I built up from a new kit. Mine was equipped with a Novarossi 50H and the matching Robbe 50 size tuned pipe (looks like a hitori but with a black crinkle finish paint and the robbe logo on the left hand side).

The pipe can be installed in a number of ways on the conquest, either along the boom, or with the aid of a U shapped manifold can be slung under the skids facing forward, if yours has the pipe along the boom, then you will most likely need to both reinforce and extend the radio tray at the front.

The radio installation guide in the manual calls for the battery to be mounted right at the front of the radio tray on the extension panel, which is no more than a piece of fairly flexiblew ribbed plastic with a couple of tabbs at the back that sit inside slots in the frame and 2 very small self tapping screws to secure it at its mid point. This is not really acceptable as it has a tendancy to cause a vibration, particularly with the weight of the battery pack on it.

The most common modification for the Conquest is to replace this extension with a piece of 2mm carbon plate which should be either epoxied or bolted with some M3 bolts to the frame, I did both on mine and it never moved or caused a vibration again.

The next area of the heli to pay particular attention to is the tail, make sure that the bearing support in the boom for the tube drive has its collet that mounts on the tube drive epoxied into place, otherwise the bearing will have a tendancy to move up the tube drive towards the frames, thus causing a vibration on the unsupported part of the tube drive. Again another very popular modification for the conquest is to add a second bearing support equally spaced along the boom to provide maximum support for the tube drive.

The next area to check is the tail gearbox meshing, this, as with most robbe machines needs very careful meshing with the aid of shims to achieve a nice smooth running tail with as little backlash as possible, you will need to be patient with this, as it can take time to get it just right, from memory I think I spent about two and a half hours doing mine. One other point worth noting is the tail pushrod, the tail servo needs to sit on the left side of the boom facing down with its arm pointing in under the boom, that way you will find that if you have a boom mounted pipe clamp that the carbon pushrod will fit through the gap in the pipe clamp and still retain a nice free running linear movement.

The next area to look at is the throttle linkage, this is quite a unique feature of the moskito range, in that the servo is mounted with its arm travel at right angles to the movement of the carb, in other words the linkage system has to some how tranfer the movement round a 90 degree bend from the right side of the heli to accross the back where the carb is located.

A common modification here is to change the standard robbe rod ends to the more traditional ball link sort, these tend to be more resiliant to vibration than the stock robbe ones. The best way to connect the throttle linkage is to have the arm from the servo pointing down towards the fuel tank, you may need a shortish arm to achieve this, the ball should be placed in the outer most hole on the arm which is the closest to linear movement you can get for the rod from the servo to the post.

The rod from the post to the carb may need some minor modification depending on the manifold or pipe you have to clear the top of the manifold in all throttle positions. One thing to beware of here is that the throttle arm is not set to point straight down at mid throttle, it needs to point a few degrees towards the right side of the heli, there is a picture and description of this early on in the manual where it talks about mounting the engine and assembling the upper and lower frames.

The flight controls on the conquest are I believe different to that of other moskitos as it uses the System 88 system which is found on the larger robbe helis, like the futura SE, millennium 1 & 2 and futura nova etc.

It is a bit daunting at first, as the swash seems to move in ways you wouldnt normally expect and does look sort of like a ccpm setup, it is in fact a non ccpm setup, the difference is that the direction of the swash is offset by 45 dgerees to the direction of travel, in other words, if you input a left cyclic command on the TX the swash will lower half way between what would seem like back cyclic and that of left cyclic ( it will point diagonally back left) this is quite normal and you will find that it will be fine in flight.

This is a very good sytem for opperating the swash but you need to spend some time making sure the rods are "just so" to get the best out of it. Make sure all the levers are parallel, the swash is level and the blades / paddles etc are all at 0 degrees, then carefully set the rod lengths, the lengths in the book are guidance lengths and you will most likely find yourself tweaking them a bit.

The other major difference is that when pitch is applied the pitch servo rocks both the 2 cyclic servos back and forth on ball raced rockers. I found that as the pitch servo did quite a bit of work it needs to be either a high end coreless or digital servo like a 9402 or a 9252 to cope with the load.

Flying wise, as you fly a sport 2 at the moment, the conquest will feel quite different and a little lively by comparison, you may find that you will need a little expo to smooth out the hover but it flies very well indeed, tracks straight and true with a very responsive yet accurate feel. It autos very well and is a pleasure to fly.

As for blades, I used MS 97mm tail blades and either MS 600 3d, SAB 600 3d or NHP Razor 600 blades, they all flew really nicely.

The NHP's will make it feel more twitchy and light but dont auto that well compared to the others, The MS blades are good alround blades which give an added sense of stability in the hover but for me the best out of the three have to be the SAB's they are stable yet aerobatic and are incredibally good in the auto. They are a little heavier than the others at 145g instead of the 135g of the razors and I think around 138g of the MS blades.

There are a few tips on the conquest on Bob Johnston's personal web site, which is;

www.bobj.co.uk

Enjoy your new conquest

Cheers,

Pete.

[Stuart]

Hey you can't get a more comprehensive response than that , good on yeh Pete.

Mo, The Robbe heli's are great, personally I was toying with the idea of going back from my Fury Extreme to the Milli III Pro, and I may still do so but later in the year.

My old Futura SE was agreat heli and I sorely miss it, big head solid as a rock very predictable heli and I suspect your's will be the same. We have a guy at our club who flew the Moskito and he throw it all over the place and it handled it very well. Have loads of fun and get that baby into your gallery

[Stuart]

If you don't get a manual with it I think I saw one on the midland heli site under thier new manuals section.

[mo]

HELP WITH MOSKITO CONQUEST

The reply that I have had, or to be more precise, a full breakdown of how to set up my yet to arrive conquest, has left me feeling very embarrased in the amount of time and effort Pete has given to my problem.It seems a shame Christmas has just passed, as Pete would qualify for a gift for services rendered.Never mind Pete, if you ever come down south east way look me up, and you can fly to your hearts content as my guest, using my conquest, and also have a pint afterwards to cool your brow all on me.Your answer was terrific in is entirety, and if I cannot set up and fly that conquest now, then I should be still doodling about with fixed wing, as that is all I would be fit for.MANY THANKS again pete, and my promise was not a flippant one, I do not know your locality but guess it would be to far for me to walk to give personel thanks.I will be sure to keep you all posted on my efforts, and will give you the proof by photo.

Mo.

[Raptorite]

Hi Mo,

No problems my friend, I found through my own experiences with the conquest that the manual isnt always very clear in some areas, so I did my best to make it much easier for you to get it setup right from day one.

One thing I forgot to mention in my post is that if you wanted to put a
header tank on it, not that it really needs one, but I put one on mine more
for safety than anything else, as you still have a minute or so after the
main tank dries up. The best position I found is to mount a quick uk one on its side under the radio tray at the front, using one of the M3 bolts that
secures the carbon radio tray extension to mount the bracket on. You wont necessarily be able to see how much fuel is in it, but it will give you the comfort to know that if the main tank ever empties completely its not just going to flame out and fall out the sky.

I spent about a month flying it more or less every weekend, tinkering with
it before I was totally happy, so what you have here are the results of a
months worth of tinkering.

Thanks very much for your very kind offer of flying together, I live in the south west, Trowbridge which is about 10 miles south of Bath, so compartiavely speaking Im not all that far from you, maybe we could meet up at a fly-in sometime this year.

I think it would be nice if we could find an equally acceptable fly-in venue for many of us here on RCHeliAddict to meet up, as it is the sterling efforts of Stuart that has provided us all with a medium for the transfer of knowledge and experience between us to be possible.

Best of luck with the conquest and I hope to see it fly.

Cheers,

Pete.