I don't think that paper, reinforced or not, would stand up to the weight of two 3/4lb. fully dressed figures. I am now thinking about making the bench supports out of aluminium bar stock. Something tells me that a 1/2" piece of 5mm ply will not take the weight of two figures, either. Time to rethink the way it will be done.

Don

Originally Posted by Keyrigger

I don't think that paper, reinforced or not, would stand up to the weight of two 3/4lb. fully dressed figures. I am now thinking about making the bench supports out of aluminium bar stock. Something tells me that a 1/2" piece of 5mm ply will not take the weight of two figures, either. Time to rethink the way it will be done.

Don

Well, you can certainly reinforce under the paper with aluminum. That is how I was going to build the MB-8 cockpit before I turned it into a long range FPV scaler...

G.

The latest in the ongoing build is the installation of the new radio system. It consists of the servos from the TOW Defender build with one change (if it was not brought out before) and that is the change of the tail servo to an Align DS620 which has more than enough power to operate the tail pitch mechanism. Removed are the TM1000, the RPM and motor Temperature sensors plus a whole bunch of wiring needed to support all of that. Going in are two separate systems much like in the TOW Defender.

One system is for the flight controls and telemetry system. That includes the iKON2 flybarless contoller, two AR9645 remotes, and an AR4649T telemetry transceiver. That will handle all data from the ESC and radio system battery. The second system is an AR9020 receiver which is in fact a 10 channel receiver when not in use as an SRXL X-Plus 8 receiver. The 10th channel is marked BATT and it is known but not documented. This also has two remotes with it so in total, there are 11 antennae on this chassis.

The next item on the list is how on earth I am going to get the two lighting systems in there ane where I will connect them as I install the chassis. I need the gap underneath the wood battery tray as an installation space to slide in the chassis and then raise it into final position with the aluminium standoffs. This helicopter is going to be fairly beefy up front so I will most likely install the controllers underneath the main wood structure with maybe the second smaller one going in behind the chassis. Time will tell.

Don

One of the most complex systems in my build is not the the radio system but the lighting system. I have two lighting controllers, an RC Lights Nightfly system (out of production) and a ScaleRCHelis 600 (also out of production). Combined, they have 25 individual outputs with the 600 having the most power output of 350mA per channel. Aside from the 6 figures that will be mounted in and on the helicopter, there is little much else going on. The original helicopter had a fairly complex lighting system installed that included the normal rotating beacons, navigation lights, strobe, and combined warning/landing light up front. On top of that, there is a night formation light setup and an infrared system when running with no lights for night collision avoidance.

I was always wondering why the red LEDs on the Nightfly system were very bright compared to the green and this past week I discovered why. The RC Lights systems were simple to install as they didn't require you to add resistors to bring the voltage to the LED in check. They even state that in their manual. What they didn't quite get right were the LEDs they included. I was looking through the packages of LEDs that I bought from them when they were about to close their doors and found an anomaly. The flashing, green, and white LEDs are all 3.2v forward voltage at 30mA draw but the red standard LEDs are 1.9v forward voltage. Now I see why the red was overly bright as it was getting almost 70% more voltage than it should have. Whoops, that's not good for longevity.

I was always convinced that I would not need to make up anything special for that controller but I see I was wrong. The ScaleRCHelis controller puts out full voltage to the LEDs but it is a system that was recommended to only have a source voltage of 5v, max. as it supplies the LEDs with that voltage. There was a buck regulator that you could get with voltage preset to just above 5v and was wired to hook up to the controller for quick use. All you needed was to put a suitable connector on the input side to hook up to your battery. The RC Lights controller does have a built-in regulator but it only drops the output by about a half volt so you need to be careful about your input voltage. A safe input for the RC Lights would be 5.2v so that you would not exceed the forward voltage of the LEDs by too much. Well, it now is clear that I will need to do some planning as the output voltage of that system is 4.5v when connected to a 5v. supply.

The first bit of electronic work I have ever done was to make up a resistor board for the ScaleRCHelis system. There are eleven outputs that cover everything from strobes to landing lights. You can also switch one of the strobe light connections to a second rotating beacon and have full control over its properties. I am using 9 of the outputs with one being used for the instrument panel lights that will take a full line voltage feed and inside the panel, it will be split to run three or four LEDs in parallel, saving a lot of wiring. If I need to dim one down, I can add another resistor on the LED to be dimmed. Unlike the RC Lights system, this one uses a common positive for all channels which makes the wiring of the resistor board much easier than the one I will need for the RC Lights unit. I have made up a wiring diagram that has each lighting channel setup for a specific LED. I even have one that has three resistors in series to lower the voltage thus dim the output of the LED. I could take those out and replace it with a single resistor but it is working nicely as it is.

So to the RC Lights controller, I plan to treat each output as if it has no resistors on the circuits. The voltage is higher than it should be by .9v and I have the technology to correct it and there is no point in trying to beat the LEDs to death. I have made the one system up so far and will be adding the second one for the RC Lights beside the ScaleRCHelis resistor array. This will allow me to install the controllers where space permits and then do the same with the arrays but they will be much more accessible for connecting and improvements. I used a prefabricated circuit board with options on how I could best use their layout. I cut traces to suit and made jumpers where needed. I looked at circuit board fabrication but I see very little need for it once this and the next models are built. Now to figure out where to mount all this stuff, lol. Take care.

Don

I am getting closer to having the LED system up and running. One thing that was bothering me was what I was going to do for the 5 IFR lights on the helicopter. Four are IFR emitters and one is an IFR Beacon. We can't see into the infrared portion of the spectrum but believe it or not, our modern digital cameras can. Well, it's not quite an actual colour so much as its interpretation of the portion of the spectrum that the IFR emitter is putting out. A NASA IFR image of deep space will show blue, green, and red distant suns that may be very much different in the visible spectrum. That is where I got something of a clue how to get this right.

I took my phone first, then my point and shoot Canon and aimed it at the emitter when it was driven by the light controller. Well, to my surprise, the Huawei P10 I have put it in a slightly purple/ blue colour and my Canon put it in the blue portion of the spectrum. Ok, I'll buy that and more. I started to get some light covers that were on my previous Jet Rangers and TOW Defender. The TOW Defender light cover was completely washed out by the extremely bright white LED that used to reside in it. Who knew? The one off my original blue Jet Ranger was in much better shape but needed some help from coloured gel I get at work.

I also used diffusion gel to spread out the light and sanded the tips of the waterclear LEDs to do the same. It's amazing how much better the LED works as an aircraft light when it is sanded as opposed to being left as a very concentrated light source. So looking at the actual helicopter rotating beacons, I needed to find a better red lens for it. I had bought some red panel lights that could hold LEDs but were too small for 5mm LEDs. Ok, I was planning to use 3mm and they fitted fine. The only issue is that I will be using these lenses for more helicopter beacons and I need to make sure that I have a supply of bright LEDs for the future.

I cut two to make one, sanded it to shape, and used liquid cement to smooth out the surface. I then put a low output red LED in, then a purple, then the blue. I will end up using the blue in the rotating beacon and the purple ones in the four other spots for simulating the IFR emitters. I looked long and hard at pictures of the helicopter and you can see the fact that the lens on the full size is red but there is a very noticeable purple tone to it. The blue LED seems to simulate the actual purple tone the best with these red lenses. I have a tube of diffusion inside the lens and a very small dot in the very end. I do this type of modification to a light source all the time at work but not on this small of a scale light, lol. So now, the only thing left to do is to determine the actual light levels and I will do that in a dark room. I will be playing around with various resistor values until I get them right and then I will finish off the second LED resistor array. Take care.

Don

The next phase of this lighting system is the night formation and IFR emitter resistor connection board. I have decided to keep this on one board rather than making separate locations for the lighting system. The main lighting controller will be mounted between the rear landing gear under the main mounting board in the body. The secondary night system will be mounted directly on the resistor array board. Although maybe not the perfect method of connection, I chose to use ribbon cable that is used for computer device connections. One day, I will find connectors that will fit the installation I have done and simply replace the two cables with tidier connections. That's for another day. Here are the pictures of the board as I will mount it in the helicopter. Take care.

Don