With the indoor flying season rapidly approaching...I thought it would be a good time to make a smaller version of my Littlebird. One that I could fly around the garage at work or hover in the house. Plus I love building these things

I already have a T250 scaler...It is an Align branded 500E, with shortened skids to be a hybrid between the tall and short 500E skid heights. The chassis is well tuned and modified for the added weight, and is one heck of a sweet flyer...




But it is time for another alternate set of duds to dress it up...Littlebird style!

So I ordered a HeliArtist 500D "white" fuselage. I figured if I'm painting it, why spend $$ on a pre-painted fuse? Here's what showed up:






I'm not sure if I ordered a heli fuse or a stork! . No worries...I'm modifying this thing. The window 'framing' is painted on cockeye'ed as well, but that should be rectified once I mask it off straight for my painting.

Now there is a version of these fuses that has a different base plate resulting in less of a non-scale skid appearance, but this is not that one. This uses this kind of base plate:




Time to get to work:

After a bit of cutting, the fuselage sits a little better. I'm going for the MD500 'short' skid look here:






As I'm cutting the skid legs down, and changing the leg angles, the legs no longer fit in the baseplate holes. I used some CA applied with a zip-tie to hold it together for test-fitting before epoxying it in place permanently




Now that the skids are where I want them...the next offender is the tail.

Looking over pictures of MD500's and the manufacturer's measurements, I felt that the tail could be improved on. So I made the tail shorter and wider. As I have a crashed Align fuse on hand...I used it for 'testing' my building skills. In this instance, the test piece became the used piece, so that is were the purple/red tail part is coming from:





The last 2 photos are a comparison to the Align fuse's tail...which is exactly the same as the HeliArtist kit tail...only painted. Shorter and wider now Note that on the 500D's, the tail winglets are shaped differently in real life, but the kit supplies 500E style tail winglets. I opted to keep them 500E style and use them as-is.


That's all for now. I am awaiting a non-worn out .9mm hex tool to arrive so I can disassemble the 500E's tail and get the airframe out for test fitting into the new fuse. If all checks out, it will be epoxy time, then paint/decals. I'll take pics along the way, and give an overview of my super-duper T250 scaler airframe. It is a bit different than stock.

Nice, looks like mini MB-6.

G.

Neat project. I'll be looking forward to updates.

I was able to get the airframe out of the Align 500E fuse out tonight and do some test fitting to the Heliartist 500D. I discovered some things that were different...

To start, the floor on the Heliartist fuse is higher than the Align fuse:




While technically, a T250 will still fit with the floor being higher, the rotor mast will be higher than I would care for it to be. It was pretty interesting that buttoning up the nose on the fuse one could actually fly the thing with no actual mounting of the airframe to the fuselage...the upper frame was right up against the fuselage (I have one piece of the included wood planks you get with these kits screwed to the bottom of the airframe).

Another difference which is pretty much no concern to me as my tail servo is relocated on my particular airframe, but might be an issue should one use a larger than the stock DS420 tail servo in the normal location, is that the main body of the Heliartist fuselage is shorter than the Align fuse. I think this is actually kind of a bonus though, I always thought that the body on the Align 500E fuse was a bit too long:




One final thought about the smaller Heliartist fuse...If one were to actually install a T250 as-is into this fuse, the elevator servo would probably have to be moved inboard of the frames for sure, IIRC this was an option on the Align fuse (depending on how high you wanted to airframe to sit in the fuse)


Anyway, as such abstract concepts such as parts actually fitting properly is somewhat lost on me...lets get started:

First, a visit from Mr. Scissors was scheduled:



Amazingly, the spars make perfect clearance for a T250 airframe now...just add mounting blocks to the new 'floor'


And so that the landing gear struts would have somewhere to mount to...some 'landing gear boxes' were added. They are made out of some 1/8" balsa I had laying around, and were 'painted' with thin CA so they would soak it up and make a fairly strong piece.




The landing gear struts will get tacked in place with CA (after cutting them shorter again), then when all is ready some epoxy will fill in the 'box' areas. I think it should work out well.

Then devising an airframe mounting system will be next...but that is for another time.

A couple more pieces of wood CA'ed and Epoxyed, along with some landing gear struts fitted....




...leads to the installation of a 1/8" chunk of balsa, painted with thin CA, here:





And it is airworthy! The cool thing about this is the interchangability between fuses. All I have to do is take the tail apart, cut the ziptie holding the airframe to the mounting base, and transfer it to the other fuselage. No adjustments needed.

On the to-do list...glue on a 'locating' plate to the mounting base like on the Align fuse to keep it from sliding forward, and it looks like the tail will be reworked. I'm finding that it is a bit too short. (Wow, I seem to like to do things twice, eh? ) EDIT: I reviewed my photo collection of 500D's, the tail is staying the way it is. Looking at the rotor disk it seems low, but looking at the overall profile it is a better match to the real thing. Damn flybar...get rid of that and tuck the rotor closer in...

A quick test flight to make sure it doesnt burst into flames...A little preview of the planned color on the tail:

Heliartist 500D testflight (0 min 21 sec)

Nice work, looks great!
I need to get me a HK 250 and a new mini 500 fuselage.
Mine got wrecked trying to fly it with the gaui flybarless system!

Originally Posted by BlackTitanium

Nice work, looks great!
I need to get me a HK 250 and a new mini 500 fuselage.
Mine got wrecked trying to fly it with the gaui flybarless system!

Thanks! Check out the EXI250, I think that actually costs less considering shipping. I'd do some sort of flybarless multiblade with this, but I hate LightningHeli...and a Mini V-Bar ($$)...well, I'm not that into it

A couple shots of the Trex250 airframe I'm using:

This is a basic "super combo" V1 heli. I sanded down the mixing arm bearing spacers for a better fit and less slop in the head resulting in more accurate control. Some other changes as follows:


Relocated tail servo. Aluminum mounting bracket screwed to the motor mount. No worries about fitting a tail servo into the fuselage now!




1300mah 3S battery. Longer flight times, less heat, and no need for lead weights to balance either of the 2 fuselages. Gives a nice slight forward weight bias, uses the stock battery plate.




"Left side" tail rotor with CF tail control rod (stock rod ends glued into some CF tube). Puts the tail rotor on the correct side.




Scorpion 3900kv motor. The stocker motor got somewhat toasty running on higher pitch all the time. A motor with a bigger stator/stronger runs cooler. On 13T (Hobbycity 13T 2.3mm shaft pinion drilled to 2.5mm to fit). Normal flight at 3500rpm headspeed, 4000rpm mode available for higher wind stability (CC25 governed). Note: The stock motor might be happy with a 14T pinion to cool it down some, but I never tried it so...




Elevator servo moved inboard. More clearance




More later...

Just taking a break here from bouncing between projects to throw up a quickie update...

Why do I get the feeling I missed something?

Is it me or is the front windshield seems really to narrow ?
Heres a pic of an actual Hughes 369A (OH-6)

Originally Posted by darthdrk

Is it me or is the front windshield seems really to narrow ?
Heres a pic of an actual Hughes 369A (OH-6)

You're right Ed.

Yeah, the nose profile is...I dunno, didnt actually figure that out yet. BTW, this fuse has 'doors' on it...The window opening for the door is definately too small. I'm thinking of how to cut it bigger and not have it look like a hack job. Although I could just stuff a tinted window from the crashed Align fuse into the hole and be done with it. Not sure what I'm going to do yet.

Well... break out the Dremel if you're that anal about it being accurate scale!
And, while you're at it, don't forget to make the tail boom narrower too!

Originally Posted by BlackTitanium

Well... break out the Dremel if you're that anal about it being accurate scale!
And, while you're at it, don't forget to make the tail boom narrower too!

Whoa there big fella. Time for a chill pill.

Originally Posted by Hoverup

Whoa there big fella. Time for a chill pill.

LOL , BT, we're just pointing out an obvioius. Sideways does a good job, just trying to point out something he may be able to doctor on to have an even more scale looking Loach
Helijunkies