Gartt 700 DFC head

[pgkevet]

Arrived today.. and to be fair i cannot fault the visual quality of this.
If one wants to be picky then there's a couple of machined edges that are sharpish but no blemishes or scratches.. nicely polished.
Interestingly the grip bolts are silver. Not sure if that means stainless and dodgy and whethe the align DFC bolts are also silver coloured?
I might check them with a magnet and use the ones off my LE head.
Naturally I'll strip it down and rebuild before fitting it to my 700N.. assuming it fits either witht eh supplied shaft or the original..
To decide on FBL unit to use with this..
I'd probably have gone fu-bar if that was still about .. otherwise its a difficult choice: Id like the BD but don't like the cost.

What I will say is that if the rest of a gartt 700 is as well made as this head then they are the heli bargain of the year for leccy folk

[trillian]

There's more than one BD unit. The one that has the all singing all dancing bail-out feature is really expensive but the other model is pretty reasonable.

[pgkevet]

There's more than one BD unit. The one that has the all singing all dancing bail-out feature is really expensive but the other model is pretty reasonable.

..but that's the bit I'd want. Just don't quite fancy the economical brain option and Angelos hasn't done the job (yet?)..

(If I owned or wanted to own 12S batts I'd be ordering the whole heli though)

[trillian]

Yeah it would be a cool feature to have, maybe have it on the heli that you prefer most for trying new stuff. It makes me wonder if it would be viable for someone to make a separate device that can be used with any FBL unit that just does the self-righting, disaster avoidance thing (obviously the best answer is that it's integrated into the FBL unit but it occurs to me that perhaps the sensor requirements are different and maybe a separate device could be built to a good price point (maybe not, I don't know).

[pgkevet]

Yeah it would be a cool feature to have, maybe have it on the heli that you prefer most for trying new stuff. It makes me wonder if it would be viable for someone to make a separate device that can be used with any FBL unit that just does the self-righting, disaster avoidance thing (obviously the best answer is that it's integrated into the FBL unit but it occurs to me that perhaps the sensor requirements are different and maybe a separate device could be built to a good price point (maybe not, I don't know).

A seperate unit would have to have over-ride over the main fbl.. so all stuff would have to route through it to the main fbl. It'd also have to be monitoring orientation in some way.. either in the same 3-axis mems system used by the fbl unit.. so itd cost the same (well more with the route-through) to build..or with the old type of horizon sensor. I don't see it be economic to make when 'all that is needed' is the added programming into the usual fbl unit.

The arguments will rage over whether folk want it or not and that colours the costs of writing the software. For me I'd rather have that than a load of logs I need a PC to fiddle with and a degree to understand. But if another 1 or 2 units add that then I bet you'll see all the others racing to be in tune.

[trillian]

Back before the whole flybarless revolution the general attitude was sometimes negative. Now I think it is mostly thought of as kinda cool if it really works as advertised.

I think it would be a great thing in those (thankfully rare) moments of panic when you lose orientation. My only crash this year was due to just me being careless, starting to do moves in a very un-structured way and then letting the heli get too far away and getting disorientated (this was with the Beam Avantgarde which is not the greatest for visibility at a distance).
But for the kind of flying I do I can always recover so long as I can see what direction the heli is pointed and assuming it's not already too close to the ground.

If it gets added as a feature to the Vortex it will be a nice little bit of 'safety net'. In fact, the Vortex is on the Dune and on my first flight with the Dune I got a little confused for a sec because I was not used to the look of it and it was at a point where it could have been nose-in or tail-in and I had that little moment of panic (I hate that feeling) but my reflexes were fast enough to get my bearings before getting out of shape.

[George J]

Align 700 DFC pitch control arm bolts are silver.

[pgkevet]

Align 700 DFC pitch control arm bolts are silver.

I'm referring to the bolts through the blades, sorry

[George J]

I'm referring to the bolts through the blades, sorry

No worries. Blade bolts are the usual black on a 700 DFC.

[pgkevet]

No worries. Blade bolts are the usual black on a 700 DFC.

Tat's what i expected..which leads to woder as to the metal these silver ones are made of and whether they really are appropriate.
As above I'll get around to testing with a magnet... as you know stainless steel isn't magnetic and would be softer than the usual high tensile bolts we'ld expect to be using..unless they have been anodized for bling effect

[bikerflier]

Carpenter Technical Articles - Magnetic Properties of Stainless Steels

Take care, there are magnetic as well as non magnetic stainless steels.

[waveydavey]

Austenitic, non-magnetic harder and ferritic, more ductile and closer to normal carbon steel. If they're magnetic I wouldn't worry about it too much

[pgkevet]

Finally getting around to setting this up.
First up was repairing my pitch guage - Doh! he spring ugs had broken off the bigger gauage tha fits my 700 size blades bu a couple of tiny self tappers fixed that.
I also decided to really go for perfection. or as pracitaccly perfect as possible so spent soem time pratting about with the guage to prove it actually reads 0.5degs too high - not that in practical terms that matters.
Then i palyed aroudn with the guage and an inclinomeer ap on my phone and proved to myself i have more than 16 degs of both positive and negative pitch available to me with the Gart head and swahs as supplied just popped on. That meant i could really go to town re setting the swash etc to perfectly match the A-arm at a perfect horizontal - I used to have to make a slight compromise on the flybar head with that.

Next was a disaasembly of the Gart parts. Swah balls not locktighted..which is fine and obviously now done. It looks and feels good. The head itself was mostly not locktighted. Ecept that one DFC arm screw is in so solid that I stopped trying to remove it - poitless cooking it out just to relocktight. The same applied to one spindle shaft bolt.

The bearings in the grips are in solid. I got one set oit without too much trouble and found the order correct and the thrust bearings greased. The others weren't going to come out easily. Yes, i would get them out if i had to - heat and a drift and mallet if necessary - but no point damaging them for the sake - they feel nice and smooth so left alone.

The only flaw in a visually perfect set of parts is up inside the mainshaft bore. That narrows to 10mm diameter at the top as it enters the spindle shaft tunnel and hadn't drilled quite right through neatly.. a few tags of metal on the lip. I didnt have a metal drill of 10mm but did have a wood one..held in vice grips and just reamed that by hand then a small file to dress the edges - job done. Frankly it could have been left alone and was unimportant.

Overall I'm very pleased with the quality - specially at the price.

The blade bolts are indeed highly magnetic even though they are a lovely shiney silver. So I'll use them.

Next stage is rip out the old wiring on my 700 and start setting up the fbl unit.

Software for the Brain you download from the web .. with a demo version to walk/read through.
http://update.mshbrain.com/software/BRAINSTALLER.msi

[Gixxer]

I took mine apart and loctited everything. The tolerences were spot on.

It's a decent bit of kit... especially at the price.

Some pictures.

[pgkevet]

Looks like yours came with short balls on all swash positions.. mine came with a long ball for an antirotation bracket.. but I have the A-arm. Searched through my boxes of bits and no ball quite the same..so the long ball is being used (not an issue really)
Appearance and machining is very good. Did you check inside the head for that mainshaft bore?

I'm still debating the new electonics placement..looks like I'm going to have to make a mess of bespoke leads. The ones with the Brain aren't long enough to link to my regulator. A shame it's not wise just to run a single power lead to the fbl unit