Ok. Quickly figured out my gear problem. It wasn't collapsing, it was cycling!

Last night I had mounted the wing before packing the van and have everything ready to go in the morning. I did multiple visual checks to make sure all my servo extensions were tucked away in the channels on each side of the fan housing. Before loading up, I taxied it around in the street in front of the house. Our street is not real smooth so it's a bit of a bouncy taxi test.

When I got home from the field today to debug the problem I powered up the rx with my rx pack but could not get the problem retract to collapse. Then I hooked up the lipo that powers the fan and eased into the throttle. As soon as the fan started to rotate the retract started cycling up and down. Hmmmm. I looked through the intake and could see one of the servo extentions hanging in front of the fan.

I unplugged the lipo and left the rx powered on. Took off the wing and could get the retract to cycle just by wiggling the wires. Turns out the fan ate half the plastic extension connector leaving all three wires bare. My guess is taxing around our not so smooth street caused the extension to work it's way out and into the front of the fan. Good news is it's an easy fix.

Not so good news. This is what my rotor looks like now. The damage doesn't look to bad but I'm not so sure I want to run the fan up again without replacing the rotor.

Too bad about the fan blades but consider it lucky to happen on the ground. Perhaps you can just buy the blades at Xflight to repair your fan.
Retracts have given us our share of grief but now we have found the large servoless type to be very reliable. Not any issues with about 100 flights combined with the F100 & F-18.
With the CG at 280 you will notice easier takeoff rotation and slower stall and approach speeds.
Cheers

Ordered new blades earlier this evening. You're right, I'm glad it happened on the ground and that it was the retract lead and not the aileron. Might not have noticed that until in the air and that would not have been pretty!

Hope to fly mine this week, or early next, its been pretty windy here lately.
This will my second flight, but first with the CS 12 blade.(burnt out a cheap turnigy typhoon heli motor on a Hayo 7 blade, on the maiden).
I just spent hours balancing the fan dynamically( at 10,000 rpm) and it is smooth as silk, I hope it hangs in there and sounds Cool in the air !(as it doesnt sound much different to the Haeyo during static test on the ground).
Anyway, I am glad this thread has sparked back to life Keep em coming fellas.
Steve

Originally Posted by heliclown

Hope to fly mine this week, or early next, its been pretty windy here lately.
This will my second flight, but first with the CS 12 blade.(burnt out a cheap turnigy typhoon heli motor on a Hayo 7 blade, on the maiden).
I just spent hours balancing the fan dynamically( at 10,000 rpm) and it is smooth as silk, I hope it hangs in there and sounds Cool in the air !(as it doesnt sound much different to the Haeyo during static test on the ground).
Anyway, I am glad this thread has sparked back to life Keep em coming fellas.
Steve

HC,

Please do a vid if you can. I am dying to hear what the CS12 sounds like in the Sabre.
Good luck.
Graham

Mine has been on hold whilst I have been testing CS12 setups in "semi happy, semi disgust" on the results. But now I am pretty well satisfied. Going to go for the 4074-1400 on 7S or 8S.
But now the pain of getting batteries to do that job just for that specific plane. And I want two sets at least.... if not three. And that also means making a CHOICE and then that is it - which an 8S set of batteries is a bit more flexible for the future than 7S.
Or if I weaken, I will run that on 6S first, just to get it going before sooking over that need to spend more money on the batteries for it! lol.

So... it is time to get back to completing it.....

Originally Posted by jpbrimmer

...The damage doesn't look to bad but I'm not so sure I want to run the fan up again without replacing the rotor.

X-flight cells fans blades for 30 shipped...get some...looks like someone bought this line of fans from CS...hopefully not to raise the price on everyone

Originally Posted by heliclown

...(as it doesnt sound much different to the Haeyo during static test on the ground)...

A well balanced 7 blade can compete with the CS12 on sound...

Believe it or not it's harder to get the 7 blade balanced than the 12 blade IMHO...

Working with the 127mm 7 blade fan is a pain

But they're inexpensive and a reinforced motor mount does great

Originally Posted by erh7771

X-flight cells fans blades for 30 shipped...get some...looks like someone bought this line of fans from CS...hopefully not to raise the price on everyone

Thanks. I ordered them last night. I like that you can get all the individual parts instead of having to order the whole fan unit. X-flight even sells individual blades for $2 each.

Originally Posted by heliclown

Hope to fly mine this week, or early next, its been pretty windy here lately.
This will my second flight, but first with the CS 12 blade.(burnt out a cheap turnigy typhoon heli motor on a Hayo 7 blade, on the maiden).
I just spent hours balancing the fan dynamically( at 10,000 rpm) and it is smooth as silk, I hope it hangs in there and sounds Cool in the air !(as it doesnt sound much different to the Haeyo during static test on the ground).
Anyway, I am glad this thread has sparked back to life Keep em coming fellas.
Steve

What technique are you using to initially static balance the CS fan? Or are you just assembling it, making sure it runs true, and then rotating the fan on the motor shaft until it runs smooth?

Originally Posted by Eddie P

What technique are you using to initially static balance the CS fan? Or are you just assembling it, making sure it runs true, and then rotating the fan on the motor shaft until it runs smooth?

That with the extra step of making sure the motor shaft adapter is balanced in same way.

If the cone has run out it could make balancing the hole thing a pain, more balanced motor shaft = less run out on the cone IMHE

Thanks for the info. I tend to use HET, NEU and Hacker motors and fortunately those motors are well balanced before leaving the shops. But I do have a no name inexpensive outrunner that's in my F-86 currently running a Jetfan90 fan. I suspect that motor is slightly out of balance as the JF90 rotor is extremely well balanced and no amount of turning the rotor on the shaft improved the resonance at 1/4 throttle.

By run out on the adapter - the easy way to "see" that is any perceptible wobble motion of the spinner tip when running, right? I know if that's the case the adapter is probably unusable? Are the 5mm Xflight purple adapter sets any better than the silver ones that initially came with the CS90?

I plan to get a HET 700-60 specifically for that plane this week to address the resonance and also optimize my setup. The F-86 I'm flying is a good in flight test bed for the fan I'll be putting into my F-100 very soon.

Originally Posted by Eddie P

...By run out on the adapter - the easy way to "see" that is any perceptible wobble motion of the spinner tip when running, right? I know if that's the case the adapter is probably unusable? Are the 5mm Xflight purple adapter sets any better than the silver ones that initially came with the CS90?...

Nah, they're pretty much all the same. When I notice some wobble I make sure tap the shaft on the motor one way or the other. There was some tolerances at first in the motor shaft but I think all of that is gone, I'll have to heat my 120mm blade shaft up to get it off or on.

...I plan to get a HET 700-60 specifically for that plane this week to address the resonance and also optimize my setup. The F-86 I'm flying is a good in flight test bed for the fan I'll be putting into my F-100 very soon.

The CS's were tested with HETs, prolly best plug and go motor for the fans

I use the HET 600-32 on 5S with a HET fan and Hyperion ESC.

Smooth, reliable, great flight.

I was flying the F-100 last saturday at the club, and a felow who was looking the plane said to me: Great plane, beautiful flight. I response that it wasn't realy fast plane. And he said back: It has so beautiful flight that has no need for more speed.
I had to agree with him.

HC,

Please do a vid if you can. I am dying to hear what the CS12 sounds like in the Sabre.
Good luck.
Graham
Sorry Graham,wont be any video of the maiden, but I think Dionysus has great video a few pages back ,which has good sound,.
Steve