Beam E4 Build Blog....

[chopper]

oh where wud i find bob finless videos mate?

[jiberjaber]

Test flight is a little way off, might be tonight but more likley some time over the weekend.

[jiberjaber]

Bob's videos are located here:

http://helifreak.com/showthread.php?t=59486

You will need to sign up to download them.

[chopper]

ok thanks again for your help

[Stuart]

Very impressive build review will be interesting to hear how it flys. Keep up the good work and those pics are perfect quality.

[jiberjaber]

So tonight there was the remaining electronics to do.

I proceeded to swap over the bullet connectors on my ESC for the ones which fit the Scorpion motor and then set about working out where everything was going to go.

I pondered for a while over the way I had arranged the Trex and what I was going to do here.

On the Trex, I had the receiver at the front under the battery and the ESC in the frame. My cell pro DPM was on the top of the front part of the frame and the lipo alarm at the back rear. The slave receiver was located at the rear on the opps side. This setup had served me very well for over a couple of years... maybe this was the way forward for the Beam?



Nah... need something different... so first decision was to put the ESC up front. Will there be enough cooling - well we will have to see.

So on went the ESC. I am slightly worried about any nose in crashes damaging the ESC, it is certainly worth more than the RX - so may review this location at a later date.

I added some spiral wrap to train the ESC motor connections to a position where they will avoid contact with the motor.



Seeing as I needed to change over the tail servo boom clamp, I decided to remove the boom, in fact I went the whole hog as you will see from most of the pictures, and removed the tail and the head so it was easier to get in places.

I also noticed some handy tie wrap locations to bring the front servo leads down through and then route back to the planned location of the receiver. Leaving a service loop at the top of the servo was the first idea, but it turns out the servo leads were just that little bit short, so that was reduced to a light loop out of the servo. I tried removing a servo and it is still servicable with such a small loop.




That route was very tight on length and I was worried about it wearing on the motor mount and lower bearing block. I have never bothered about this sort of stuff till I got a 50 size heli, no I find myself looking for any reason a cable might fail - I think it is the cost of crashing a 50 which focuses your mind

So a little further on and I decided that I needed to mount the Cellpro DPM somewhere. History repeated itself here, and I decided on the same location as on the Trex. I managed to decide on a great location. and it all fitted in great.

I also took the time to add some heatshrink around some of the wires to protect from chaffing on edges where it might look as to occur.

I decided to route the wires under the bottom bearing to provide some extra slack for the receiver install. This worked fine in the end. I think I would have prefered the over the top of the bottom bearing option as the end cableing to the receiver would be neater, if only the servo cables were a bit longer. Maybe a re-route at the servo end would give me some more slack... I might look at this later.

I attached the gyro under the boom clamp and added some hook & loop to the receiver and inside the frame. Connected all the leads up and added some additional velcro strapping to secure the receiver and also the gyro - I might review the gyro strap if it effects the tail action (wag etc). Additional cable slack in the gyro leads was taken up with some loops in the cable and a bit of heatshrink to hold them.

So this is what it looked like.... ready to put the boom and gear/head back on. (can you spot the problem ?)



Well as I was trying to re-fit the main gear, I had a re-visit of the problem I had on the Trex. Finding the ideal location for the DPM clashed with the main gear!

Fairly easy to resolve, just move the DPM, but it was a good fit where it was.

So this resulted in the following and also allowed me to secure the throttle connection to the ESC a bit better:



Left side views. Slave receiver mounted using servo tape at the moment (same as the Trex install)





Right side showing gyro wires etc.




So thats it for tonight, I have bundled up the lipo alarm wires which are connected to the ESC deans connector for now. Not sure where to mount that, as the frame is getting quite busy now!

Nose view showing ESC mounting




It's strange how the layout has turned out similar to the Trex one. I am still unsure about the location of the ESC at the moment and also the location where the motor leads exit out of the motor. I will have a further think about them but I want to get this in to a state to fly soon

So left to do is the head geometry, tail geometry and pitch/cyclic and any other radio settings.

Not sure if I will get chance to fly this weekend yet, you never know

[lumox]

Excellent build thread Jason.

Certainly some nice features on the Beam - the 3 screws holding the 2 halves of the swash together for a start!
I'm just messing around fitting the 2221-8 to my V2 and I'm a little nervous of the cable routing as it's an outrunner. Looks very similar to your setup here though. Let me know if you run into any troubles with it.

[jiberjaber]

Will do Tim

[jiberjaber]

So just a quick update, had a flight in the wind with the Knight today and started the head set up on the Beam when I got back.

Stock link lengths were a little off, I have noted the lengths I have adjusted to, will post them up when I get a little more time.

Headspeed is insane with the new motor and the 13t I tach'ed 3700 RPM at zero pitch in the living room (goggles and a good stand with the heli above my head )

57% throttle yields 3300rpm so I need to hop down a coulple of teeth I think

Had a quick hover in the garden (couldn' resist) and even though the weather sites are showing 17mph / 31 gusts it was quite tame Though I have dialled in 30% expo at the moment.

I did have an incident where the receiver 'un-bound' itself from the tx - not sure how that happened (maybe that was the result of the Trex crash?)

More info and maybe a proper flight report when the weather calms down and I have put the smaller pinion on.

Right gota rush... off out on the beer

[rspblake]

Found another good bit of info here as well!

http://www.rcuniverse.com/magazine/a...rticle_id=1013

Nice write-up by the way Jason, think you might have a future in build logs mate, I know it would of taken ages and a thank-you! I feel is not always enough for the effort some of you guys offer to the hobby.

As a way of saying thank you when the new coloured canopy come in your first on the list for a freebie.

No way covers the time or effort mate, thanks anyway!

[jiberjaber]

Thanks Rob it was fun to do and I am realy impressed with the Heli and it's build quality. Many thanks for the offer of a new canopy, can I suggest the Orange one



Might have a tinker with the heli tonight, need to swap over the pinion to get the headspeed down - unfortunatly the camerawoman is away till Thursday so wont be able to post any video untill she returns

[cambs flyer]

Wow what a fantastically detailed thread, that heli looks the dogs nut's.

Very well done mate.

[Charlie Cave]

Cheers for this Jason
Its really detailed and helps loads,
Unlucky though, you know have to do the k3D and Atom and Odin etc etc
thanks again, Charlie

[Charlie Cave]

By the way the orange canopy showed up really well on the Beam that we had at the masters, even with the dark tree line it was fine

[jiberjaber]

Cheers Charlie - Happy to do builds of other heli's - no room in the shed for any new ones at the moment though