Radio Controlled Helicopters

Started with a toy helicopter	Moved up to a micro helicopter (that can be flown inside your house)	A Hummingbird v.II micro (fixed pitch rotor blades)
I've wrecked it many times. The yellow balls on rods are training landing gear.	Here it is with it's canopy on	Moving up, a JR Voyager Electric (.30 size?) variable pitch rotor blades (collective)
Obviously, alot more work to put together	Dewey is impressed by all of this	Dolly could care less...
The Voyager built up and with electronics installed	4 servos, 1 gyro, 6 channel receiver and 8 cell battery (no rotor blades yet)	The transmitters, left is a cheap 4 channel FM radio for the Hummingbird
Right is a computer controlled Futaba 9 channel FM/PCM radio (model 9C) for the Voyager

Notes:
  The Hummingbird has the standard Century Lightning radio set.  It works ok, but the
one I received has the integrated speed controller and gyro.  Heading hold is NOT an option 
with this setup :(  
  The Century Lightning receiver uses a single conversion crystal (Special Note:  If you want
to use a Futaba 9c transmitter, you must get a *Futaba* crystal.  I don't know why, but I went 
to my local hobby shop and we tried all of the crystals (RX) and only the Futaba crystal worked 
with my Futaba 9c transmitter (yes, I know about positive and negative shift :-0)  I'm not a
radio expert so YMMV.
  The Voyager is setup with 4 HS-81's (with special aluminum mounts that I got from a guy
at the local hobby shop).  Even though the HS-81's are micro servos, he said that they would
work fine (he has a Voyager and used them on his).  The HS-81's are fast and light and have
pretty good torque (.11 sec/60 degrees at 4.8V, 36oz.in/2.6kg.cm, .58oz/16.6 grams).  
I think that metal gears would probably be a good idea for at least the rudder (it seems that 
the gyro may have striped the nylon gear already during testing)(I'm going to upgrade the
rudder servo).  
  The Voyager's gyro is a Futaba GY-240.  I don't know much about gyro's, but it has heading
hold and it was recommended by the guy that has a Voyager so it's the one that I'm using.

  And, to end this, a rant.  www.heli-world.com sucks.  I ordered some parts for my Hummingbird
from them and they never shipped them!  I did not enter a real phone number in their online
form (I never give out my phone number to web sites) and that was the reason.  I could sort
of understand this, except that I talked to Shirley (she emailed me and I called her back on 
the day that the order was placed) about a part that was out of stock and she NEVER mentioned 
that the bogus phone number was a problem!!!!  After waiting 2 weeks and 
not receiving the parts, I called Heli-world and Shirley told me that they hadn't shipped 
because of the bogus phone number (even though she had my email address, which she failed to 
use to notify me that she was not shipping).  So, heli-world.com SUCKS, don't buy from them.
  Also, I started checking out their web site, it is really a shared server hosted by 
cybrhost.net in CA (a questionable ISP, IMHO).  And their credit card processing is handled
by a third party!  Dang, I should have checked out all of this before dealing with Shirley, 
but now you know.  The web is a dangerous place.  I just hope that I don't have to
go thru the Fraud procedure with my credit card companies again (I've had my identity stolen 
once before)...

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